This tumbled outta my cupboard...
Ride dates: 24th October 2007 to 30th October 2007.
Riders: Me, Sumit (Crimson) and Dixit (CBZian).
Started early morning on 24th October. First stop was Jhilmil.
Plan was to reach Manali, but sleep took over, and we had to stop at Chamba for the day. Day 2, started pretty late, spent over an hour on breakfast, and decided, "to hell with the plans". We'll ride when we feel like, and stop when it is dark. If there's no place to spend the night when it got dark, we'll camp! So, then on, it was a pretty relaxed ride.
We knew Spiti would be a pretty cold place towards October end, but we were really not expecting to see what we saw. We crossed Rohtang around 4 PM, and hoped to find some place nice to camp once it gets dark. From Gamphoo, there were no roads as expected. But then came the unexpected! As it got dark, the numerous streams that we crossed so gleefully started freezing up! There was a layer of ice at the top, that broke in as we rode over!
It was a moonlit night, and I shot these during a break. By the time we were done shooting, my hands were frozen numb, and it was a struggle to put the tripod back in its place!
It was apparent by now, that camping would not be a good idea, given the freezing temperatures. But then we didn't have any choice. We knew the dhaba at Batal would have folded up for winter, and our last hope was that the remains of the dhaba would offer some kind of protection for us to spend the night. We continued our ride forward, reached Batal, and found the roofless ruins of the dhaba. But the silver moon light showed us a shimmer of hope. Sumit noticed a bright white structure some way up on the other side of the road. We went up hoping this would be our saviour for the night. And saviour it was! The door was not locked. We unloaded our stuff and thanked heavens for this little oasis (rather igloo). Brought out the Kabson stove, cooked Maggi and settled in for the night. Inspite of all our warm clothes, sleeping bags, jackets, gloves et all, and the shelter of a insulated double layered fibre glass structure, we could hardly sleep because of the cold. Camping would have been fatal!
Day 3, we got up and found the water we left in PAN has frozen over. Getting out, we found a hand pump right outside the shelter. But the lever is jammed as the water froze inside it over the night. Some effort freed up the lever, and some more effort got some water trickling out. One touch and I decided against bringing my face any close to the water. Sumit dared to wash his face in the freezing water, and when he came back inside the shelter to wipe up, he had beads of ice where his hair got a bit wet as he washed up!
Water, it seemed was only too eager to freeze up anywhere and everywhere!
And the sun seemed to have no warming effect this morning! This was pumped out barely 5 minutes ago and is already frozen.
We were not in a hurry to get started. Riding over solid ice was not exactly our idea of an exciting stream crossing. And it was a beautiful place that we had landed up the last night. So out came the cameras and we spread around shooting things we found interesting.
Our shelter.
The road from the shelter.
The bikes.
Batal.
Climbed up a hill behind the shelter, and got these amazing eagle eye view of the whole area.
The shelter, remains of the dhaba across the road, and the road itself
The Chandra river winds down...
The ever so familiar stone pile on hill tops...
Another view of the area.
It felt sufficiently warm to start the days ride safely. We grouped up again inside the shelter, had bread and packed Dal Makhni (it is a delicious combo!) for breakfast, cleaned up the shelter and got ready to leave.
I started the engine and let it idle for some time to warm up. Loaded our stuff up in the meanwhile, and just as i was about to start, I yelled, 'F***'!
To be continued...
