TEMP:  10 DEGREES MORNING & -20 DEGREES AT NIGHT
ROUTE TAKEN: Sarchu – Gata Loops – Pang

TECHNICAL ISSUES: None

ROAD CONDITION (Sarchu – Gata Loops): Good condition, one lane. No road breaks, could manage 50 kmph with ease.

ROAD CONDITION (Gata Loops – Pang): Fairly good condition except the passes. The condition drains out all power from your bike. Can manage 30 – 40 kmph

CLIMATIC CONDITION: Bright and Sunny over all.

5:30am : Since I and David had issues with dehydration and acute mountain sickness we slept a lot more than others, we must have had over 15 hours of sleep. Woke up as fresh as ever, got the rhythm going. Sarchu was the last stop in Himachal and now we were entering Jammu & Kashmir territory and the first sign welcoming the tourist said, “Welcome to the Paradise”. Paradise would be an under statement if you asked me. The sheer beauty of the Landscape was unimaginable. River following every inch you step with huge mountains surrounding you. No one around and peace all the way. Some times you might hear loud roars of Fighter Jets as they fly by to airstrips. Last evening, while I and David were far asleep Anshuman and others join Indian Army for a game of Cricket. The high altitude meant only bowling and batting but fielding was something they were least interested. Even Jonty Rhodes would have felt lazy catching a ball. We said Bye to Himachal and Hello to Kashmir.

Our start was ever so perfect but, in a Hurry I started first, following me was VikashK and David. We were riding a lot faster than any one else, David was simply dragging along since he wanted to get to a lower altitude as fast as possible. We started off on Gata Loops and attempted a few short cuts, we managed to reach the top but my bikes drive chain was a little too loose now and was falling off the alignment. I stopped a lot and simply fixing it, it required an extra half and hour as we had to tighten the chain but all the tools were carried by Croc and he was the last rider to have started from Sarchu. Madhav caught up with Vikash for a brief moment but lost him on the way, I didn’t even know that others were right behind us. We crossed the passes and reached Pang by noon. We managed to grab something to eat at that time. We had a few boiled eggs and a few packets of Noodles. By the time we were done eating David had a bad nose bleed. Blood all over his suite and we manage to rectify the problem at that time, we waited for the rest of the group but they were far behind us. We checked in at the J&K check post and decided to ride on to Upshi as we were too close to our final destination.

Rest of the group too so slow, that’s because we were ahead of them and did see Madhav on the loops, he fell off on one of the loops and could not do much as he really required help. Same time even Croc had fallen off and broke his bike’s foot rest. The entire group following behind stopped and fixed Croc’s bike first then managed to catch Madhav on the loops and fixed his bike too. They were almost an hour behind us but we had no clue, all the Trucks we overtook had already passed us by then and looking at David’s condition I decided to get down to a lower altitude as soon as possible.

We rode on and the Great Plains started, no roads just gravel and soft dessert sand. We met a couple of 60kph members and discussed about the route, they were returning from Leh and we were on the opposite route. They described their experience of the roads ahead and we explained ours, we headed towards the final pass Tanglang La which the toughest for our bikes. Some how the bikes were struggling for more power, we were riding at second gear almost all the time. We reached the top and the roads condition started to look like roads now.  This was the sign of some fast ride and we managed to get the best out of the roads. Reaching Upshi by 4pm, we took our second break. David was now a little relaxed and could make out with his face full of life, we rode on to Leh and managed to reach our Hotel room by 6pm without any issues at all.

Rest of the group stayed back at Pang that night with no one being affected by AMS thanks to the perfect planning we had to acclimatize.