I met a Canadian paratrooper called Filipe on a bus one day. He told me that he wanted to ride a motorbike to the Pakistan border. I said OK, I’ll come with you. Two days later and my first ever time on a [mans] motorbike we were riding over the 5600m Khardungla pass, the highest motorable road in the world. We headed north-west of Leh into Nubra valley, through wild beautiful landscapes, mind boggling rock formations with crazy colour spectrums, blue mountain waters streaming into huge muddy rivers, friendly road builders waving us by and military men stopping us for a chat - generally about my moustache, and offering us the odd cup of chai. Or a maNgo. Kids flagged us down wanting to play on our bikes or simply left their hands hanging in the air waiting for a passing HI5! Faces and attitudes changed with each village we passed through, some of the more remote nomadic communities arrived here generations ago on the trans-Himalayan silk route and settled here with their century old traditions.
Into the second week we rode east towards the Tibetan plateau where we slept at 4300m on Lake Pangong. Over 130km long 2/3 of the lake lies in Tibet and the rest in India. Night time there was one of my most memorable moments of the whole trip - looking up at the sky it felt like we were floating inside a snow globe with stars fluttering down all the way to the horizon. The midday sun melted the snow-capped mountains hugging the valley around us and the simple streams we’d crossed on the way to the Tibetan border where knee deep rocky rivers on the way back. The bikes took an absolute beating but we got through it, with huge grins on our dusty faces. Yes we had a few hairy moments, I got thrown off my trusty steed on a rocky descent but my helmet took the brunt, we saw trucks that had plummeted to their grave off the sheer cliffs, I was kissed by a reckless passing van and had to chase the rascal to kiss him back, we ran out of petrol and were rescued by the Indian army - but I would change a thing. It was perfect. The feeling of camaraderie both with my wingman Filipe and every other biker on the road, the freedom of rolling through wild untouched beauty on nothing less than a British made Royal Enfield, with dry desert air rushing my face as I opened up the throttle and found myself alone in one of the worlds most beautiful places. Here’s to road trips. Here’s to new friendships. Here’s to India.
