Totally pumped up and so excited to get our motorcycles, meet the crew and fellow riders. These engines have fired up our souls. This is it! It’s really happening 🙂
The gang is all here – 15 brave souls, 4 gorgeous and braver pillions, a very experienced and cool ride captain (Sachin), a 20+ years RE experienced tail sweeper with a great funny bone (Bhuvan), a tempo (van) chauffeuring mechanic and our baggage – all totally fired up to use these 18 mean machines (Royal Enfield Himalayan) for a fantastic adventure to experience the ride of our lives!
Started the day with introductions and a quick briefing on to grab our Optimus Primes (Motorcycles) that’ll take us from this Gotham city (Srinagar) to Krypton (Manali) via the Valley of Peace from Kung fu Panda (Leh). These autobots will be sure to transform us from planet earth to the “heaven on earth”. All the superhero analogies are courtesy of our 4 year old son 🙂
After the delicious dhaba lunch thalis, Hiren, the 3 great guys from Dubai (Pramod, Praveen, Cjo) and I went on a tail-of-the-dragon-like curvy and hilly test-drive up the Shankaracharya temple. The top of the mountain portrayed the serene beauty of entire Srinagar with views of Dal lake.
Evening detailed briefing session revealed some interesting aspects – just yesterday, another landslide washed away the entire road on Manali-Leh highway, just like it did on the way to Nubra Valley last week!!! Also, this year has marked record-breaking low temperatures with some roads still snow covered. Some water streams we’ll be riding on are more like muddy river crossings this year. Hey, we’re here for an adventure and that is what awaits us :). Many of us would be hit with AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness) – we just need to pray that it is not that severe or doesn’t last too long. Thankfully oxygen cylinder, backup and medicine kit will be in the tempo and luckily one of our fellow rider couple from Lucknow are both doctors.
Hopefully yesterday’s relaxing and a total chilling day at the house boat recharged our bodies for a very long ride tomorrow. Morning kick start will be at 8am leaving the romanticism and terror of Srinagar behind en route to war-laden Kargil.
Stay tuned to follow our #rideofourlife adventure to the #topoftheworld.  Our network connectivity will be none to very poor, so expect some delays next few days.