Royal Excitement: Taking the road less traveled

This is in continuation of my previous articles, visit the Homepage below for links in the order of our journey.

Ladakh Diaries.

When you say Leh Ladakh journey, then by any means this has to be on a motorbike. After all, it’s the Mecca of bikers, a road trip to the highest motorable roads in the world, a place that was scarcely inhabited by humans and more by mountains. With roads that open up for only a few months a year, the Manali-Leh road trip has epic written all over it. It's a test of one's grit and the passion towards travelling that drives you through the difficult roads, high passes, tough weather conditions and unpredictable obstacles. Also the Manali-Leh journey is a photographer's delight. You drive through some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world.

We reached Manali on July, 17th and will be starting our journey to Ladakh the next morning. We have rented 13 bikes from Manali for the trip. When you imagine Ladakh, you cannot ride any other bike than a swaggering Royal Enfield, trundling through the curvy roads. After testing the vehicles and spending some time in the local market, we reached our rooms to retire for the day. I went to bed only to realise that it’s very difficult to sleep, my mind is completely occupied with the journey. It was going to be a tough journey, but an adventurous one which I had never done before. The very thought of travelling in the mountains, making my heart pump more and more.

I had been on the mountains before, but this one is different, the place is different, the climate is different, I know this trip would be completely different. The thoughts are making me restless, I kept twisting and turning on the bed, and suddenly the alarm starts singing. Yes, singing I said, guess when am travelling I feel like my alarm sings, else I feel it shouts at me, this is the only time I won’t be using the snooze option. After getting ready, we took the luggage down, to tie them on the panniers. Once everyone’s luggage is tied, we had a test ride, to check if the load is balanced or not. It took us almost an hour, to tie everything. So finally at 7 A.M. we started our journey.

There was excitement on everyone’s face. It’s just the beginning of a ten day long journey, the excitement that hit my heart was almost more than I could handle. I could not believe what am seeing right now and where am travelling the next ten days. I had always wanted to travel the manali-ladakh roads and now here I am lost in my thoughts just moments before kick starting my bike. All my thoughts were interrupted by a thumping sound, the sound of a Royal Enfield (RE) bullet on full throttle. We pumped heat into the heart of the RE engines in the cold morning, and the result is just awesome.

The heart beating thump of 13 bullets had added more to the excitement. So we finally started our ride, the group was led by one organiser Avinash and the other organiser Sai used to tail. We had some rules that we need to follow throughout our journey, the rules were simple, nobody will overtake the first bullet, and everyone will always switch on his bullet's head light, and no over speeding.

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