Himalayan Motorcycle Odyssey
India
We had no way of knowing our plan to ‘ride around India on motorcycles for a bit’ would turn into a 16,000 kilometre odyssey from Nepal to Pakistan and throughout the Indian Himalayas, and begin a passionate relationship with Enfield Bullets.
We arrived in Delhi in April and bought two second-hand bikes in Karol Bagh. Rajasthan was the testing ground. Taking our time, we stopped in Jaipur, Jodhpur and Puskhar before spending a week in Jailsalmer, including swapping the bikes for a camel safari into the Thar Desert. But by May the sands were throwing off heat like sheets of molten metal. We raced north knowing only one thing; it was time to head to the mountains.
Kashmir, we were told, was still a security risk, especially on bikes. The snow on Leh’s 5,000 metre passes had yet to melt, so we headed to the Kullu Valley in Himachel Pradesh. The Rohtang Pass was thronging with people having their pictures taken in the snow, but the desolate valleys beyond, where the mountains ride up onto the Tibetan Plateau, and was where our journey seemed to truly begin.
It’s noon by the time we near Kunzum La, the highest pass on the Hindustani-Tibetan Highway at 4,551 metres. The road’s little more than an asphalt gash cut through waves of skeletal rock. It starts snaking up a vertical face, turning back on itself, so as I come out of each hairpin bend, I’m face to face with my friend. We ride slowly but climb fast, and as the mountain drops away we see the road we’ve travelled from a new perspective. Clouds lie below. The gunmetal sky’s no longer above us; we’ve become part of it.
Prayer flags stretch over the ruins of an old temple at the top of the pass. Whitewashed stupas crowned by gold spires stand out like kaleidoscopic projections against grey rock. Snow on the surrounding peaks reflects a dazzling light against the piercing blue sky.
Our legs are wobbly from four hours of straight riding. Wind pushes us from behind, coming up over the plateau’s patches of dark snow like a cold flame. The ride burnt my fingers numb despite leather gloves, and now, without a helmet, my ears and nose are on fire.
This morning we’ve ridden only 80 kilometres but climbed 1.5 kilometres up. We’re in the middle of rugged mountains that surge around us in great oceanic rises and falls. It’s only directly ahead that they open up and fall away, creating a lone valley that spreads out like a map before us, showing the highway entering Spiti Valley. A river also winds into the distance, adding faint green tints to the luminous greys and yellows and browns.
We kick-start our motorcycles, gun the engines, and ride side-by-side, swaying our hips, moving our bikes to avoid potholes and falling rocks from slides that gouge the mountainside like fresh wounds still bleeding. The road twists through a gorge, a sharp drop-off on one side, and cathedrals of jagged rock leaning over us on the other.
The road drops away quickly. It’s long, flat, and straight for kilometres ahead. We accelerate, and soon reach the town of Kaza, pausing to gaze up at Ki monastery, a collection of dirty whitewash square buildings with red rimmed windows built perilously into the vertical rock face. In Kaza we spend a couple of hours getting the permits required to be in this sensitive border region that was only opened to foreigners in 1991; the highway will take us alongside the border with the sensitive Tibetan Autonomous Region of China.
We ride on through the copper coloured late afternoon. People begin to appear by the roadside, gradually building into a stream of men in shades of brown and grey flowing shirts over loose trousers, mixed with the maroon and yellow of Tibetan Buddhist robes. A few women appear in salwar kameez and veils, their bare-headed daughters look on with eyes sharp and green like cut grass. By evening we reach Tabo, and spend the night in its thousand-year-old monastery, built when this valley was part of the Kingdom of Western Tibet.
Next morning we descend further, riding through deep green forest soaked in pine scent and laced with white clouds like Christmas tree decorations. We read potholes like braille as we crawl through the thick white cloud as though blind. Coming out of the bottom of the mist into the greenery of the valley is a sensory overload after the high mountain peaks and plains. We ride for hours, finally leaving all traces of the rocky plateau for the heavily forested, dark green hills, but it’s made dull by grey, overcast skies. The long road thickens with cars and trucks that eventually become a noisy traffic jam on the outskirts of Shimla. We walk up a labyrinth of steep sloping pathways through chaotic markets cut into the hillside, finally opening up to the top of a large ridge, The Mall. We get our breath back among the slow moving crowd and find a place to stay nearby.
From Shimla we ride straight through to Corbett National Park, stopping a couple of nights in huts inside the vast forest. Early morning elephant rides are more an experience in themselves rather than a means to spot wildlife. A jeep ride on our last morning rewards us with the sight of a tigress and her cub crossing a jungle path. Our appetites were well and truly whetted for park life, so we decide to head into Nepal, fording long river crossings a couple of feet deep on the way to Bardia National Park in the Western corner of the Terrai. We’re amazed to discover the existence of the Gangetic dolphin in the Karnali River. We cool off with a swim fifty meters from a pod slowly making their way against the current. The lush green of the Terrai tempts us to travel on to Kathmandu, where we atone for sensual excesses with a ten day Tibetan Buddhist retreat at Kopan monastery before chilling out at Lake Pokhara. But by now the monsoon is threatening.
The perpetual snow on the Annapurna’s is glistening in the distance as we eat breakfast, but the 8,000 metre ranges are overshadowed by mountains of clouds. We set out for the return journey to India, but by afternoon, the rains begin. Fat drops hit the road, and then start to merge into each other. The smell of warm asphalt and the wet forest floats in the breeze. The rain accelerates, its white noise drowning out the thump, thump, thump, of the Enfield’s engine. Large drops explode on my head, penetrating to my skull and running down the back of my neck into the warm air-pockets in my shirt. Then the rain turns into a waterfall and within sixty seconds I’m soaked to the bone. We finally find shelter and sit shell-shocked at a roadside café, joining everyone in staring out at the rain like it’s a Bollywood blockbuster. Ponds form in potholes; huge drops fall like bombs in violent watery blasts of creation and destruction. It’s then that we agree to break our rule against putting the bikes in trains. We plot out the quickest route to the Indian railway network. We ride slowly through the rain, cutting down via Nepalganj to Lucknow, where we board a train for Amritsar. We’re heading for Northern Pakistan, where the three great mountain ranges of the world meet; the Hindu Kush, the Karakorums and the Himalaya – and most importantly they collectively create an impenetrable barrier to the monsoon.
We cross the Wagah border into Pakistan and spend a night wandering Lahore, cooling off with numerous ice cold mango drinks outside the central station. A day relaxing in Islamabad’s pre-planned splendour prepares us for the next stage our journey – the epic Karakorum Highway, cutting 1,000 kilometres through the North West Frontier Province. First are the hill stations, a retreat from the heat for the city dwellers well catered for in towns like Murree. The road gets rougher and the landscape more ominous and forbidding as we ford on through the high winds of the Indus Valley, passing the base of Nanga Parbat, which rises from the road at 1,500 metres above seal level, and gives an unobstructed view as it propels itself straight up a full six and a half kilometres, becoming the ninth highest peak in world at 8,125 metres.
After five days riding, including a day in Gilgit watching a polo match, we arrive at the end of the road. The Khunjerab Pass, the world’s highest international border at 4,733 meters, is a couple of hundred metres higher than Kunzum La in Himachel Pradesh, where our mountain journey began. Here it’s less rocky; instead vast highlands, meadows sweep down into China’s claim on Central Asia. Our bikes aren’t allowed to cross the border. We are forced to turn around and go back the way we came, all the way back to Delhi. We sell our bikes in Karol Bagh; the next set of travellers can buy them and set off on their own motorcycle odyssey.
Check out Will’s book “The Highway“, which was published in India in June 2004.
Zac Goodman disappears while paragliding in the Himalaya. The only clue his companion finds to aid his search is a manuscript describing their motorcycle journey from the Himalaya, to mystical encounters in the sacred cities, and on a violent reunion in Goa.
Set entirely in India, The Highway takes a lucid, otherworldly trip to the end of the road. For more info please see www.willmarks.com.
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