Day 1 - Preparation and start of our ride from Manali to Keylong

Get Set

Day 0 (Jun 24, 2017) was to checkin to the hotel, meet our trip guide, prepare the gear, do some last minute shopping and get to know our ride, the beautiful Royal Enfield that will bear our brunt for next 8 days. We took our beasts for a short ride in winding roads of Manali outskirts to get used to the roads and connect with it (yes, more like Avatar to Banshee connection). Manali traffic was so bad, it took us 1 hour to walk 2 kms from hotel to market for some last minute shopping of thermals, boots and such. Had a wonderful evening chilling out at the hotel's front yard with couple of beers and good friends.

Manali view from hotel.

Go

Day 1 (Jun 25, 2017) Goal - Check out of the hotel in Manali, HP load the luggage in the support vehicle and start our ride early in the morning towards Keylong, HP which was about 120 kms away for overnight stay.

The "scenic" route we were going to take.

The highlight was, we were going to pass through Rohtang La which is about 13,000 ft above mean sea level. It sounded easy peasy and lot of fun, or is it?

First 15 kms was on beautiful winding roads, hardly any traffic, nicely paved. Everyone started enjoying the ride, building hope that it's going to be such a fun ride and then we hit the traffic jam that every rider till today dreads. The traffic was backed up for almost 5 kms from the checkpost at Gulaba that that took us almost 1 hour to cross.

Rohtang La

Unfortunately I could not mount my GoPro to the bullet since I was going to change to another bullet at Koksar. I wish till today that I recorded our ordeal in the traffic jam. We stopped for breakfast in Marhi which is about 35 kms from Manali before getting back on the road towards Rohtang La.

Coke at Koksar.

Traffic was nothing compared to the roads here

When we started to climb down towards Koksar from Rohtang La, we were given the first glimpse of the terrain and roads we will be riding on. For almost 10 kms the condition was "there was once road here". The roads were damaged so badly that riding a motorcycle on it out of question but we still did and that turned out to be the notable highlight of this trip, literally riding on the edge.

We did not realize, that this will become the norm very soon.


We crossed Chenab River and stopped at Sissu for a nice lunch and resumed our ride towards Keylong, stopping at a remote gas station to fill the tanks.

Ride besides Chenab river was both fun and scary, the road was extremely unstable.

Keylong

Keylong, HP is a beautiful little town located in Lahaul valley situated at around 10,000 ft above seal level. We arrived around 4 pm, checked into our hotel and waited for our luggage to arrive. By this time the group had really come together well and started to enjoy together. Luckily there was cellphone signal and I think we even had WiFi connection at the hotel. Our luggage arrived not too far behind us, we freshened up and changed while our mechanic tuned and cleaned our bullets, getting ready for another day of fun and adventure.

View from hotel in Keylong.

We were warned that the Day 2 was going to be rough, as we continue to ride up to higher altitudes. We were advised strongly by our guide not to drink alcohol and stay hydrated. So we all chose beer for the night!!

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