"The Trail" : Day 11

Darcha to Manali : 19.09.07

We woke up the next day on lazy notes and had a leisurely tea at Lama's before moving on towards Keylong at 07.30 hrs. Keylong didnt take much time as we had no stops in between and soon we were at the Chandra Bhaga Resort for breakfast. We decided to log more miles and reach Manali well before the evening by skipping lunch , thereby hoping to shave off a good 90 minutes of our travel time. Breakfast was a medley of toasts and omlettes, followed by Himanshu's order for paranthas.

Breakfast completed, we hopped onto our bikes again and started off quick for Manali. Amol and Sanjay topped up their fuel tanks at Tandi, wherelse we decided to use the last litres of petrol left in our jerry cans and dump the cans.

The journey was relatively uneventful, saving a few video shots of us negotiating a stream/road crossing. Before Koksar, the road was particularly pebble and rock strewn, owing to an on-going road construction. Somehow Kenny and I felt like letting go of inhibitons and ripped our bikes on the stretch. For long I had been nurturing my "babe" on rocky terrain and I suspect the suspension had softened up quite a bit after all the play; So I decided to let loose the throttle and I must say, we did ride quite fast. Himanshu later caught up with us and was like "Guys, you ripped on the dirt track"...to which Kenny replied " We are rockstars , man"!! Not bad at all!!!

Rohtang came up quite fast, faster than we had anticipated. Just some kilometres before Rohtang, I stopped to take a few snapshots of the valley below. It was getting windy and hardly had I parked my bike and taken off my gloves, when a gust of wind blew one of my gloves on the edge of the cliff. Kenny was shouting at me to grab my glove, but the helmet prevented me from hearing him prperly. By the time I knew what he meant, the glove had been carried away over the edge. There I was, one glove in hand and the other down below. Kenny sported me on to go do to mountaineering and salvage my glove, to was I replied in negative saying I wasnt nuts!! Kenny insisted...but not before requesting my bike keys before I went ahead, and then Himanshu chimed in requesting my digicam...and then Sanjay requesting my shades!!! One look at the edge and I dropped whatever idea I had in mind!! But the weather looked worse at Rohtang top and clouds had settled in. I searched for my woollen gloves and decided to make the rest of the journey with the woollen gloves. It was hard, my fingers getting bitten by the cold wind, but I managed it somehow to Rohtang. A cup of tea later a Rohtang, we moved on towards Manali. After riding on the treacherous terrains from where we had come from, the metalled road from Rohtang to Manali was like an expressway for us!! I made it to Manali in an hour flat, docking at a service station at 16.00 hrs.My tripmeter read 2226 km when we reached our hotel.

We checked into the same hotel at Manali and a somewhat luke-warm bath later, we went out roaming on the streets, got pics of both our digicams burnt onto dvds and went to a Khyber bar and restaurant. A few bottles of beer, one limca for celebrations and dinner later, we went to our hotel rooms and crashed into our beds first thing.