" The Trail " : Day 12

Manali to Anandpur Sahib : 20.09.07

A good evening in Manali, a brisk walk down mall street and a really cool dinner at Khyber Restaurant made us a tad late for the next day's trip. To make matters a bit more trifling, there was a steady downpour all morning. An hour later, the rain was showing no signs of abating down. Well, we couldnt waste much time sitting inside the hotel rooms and we reckoned that the rain would probably stop after Manali. So , we donned our rain suits and set off on the day's journey. As we had imagined,as soon as we had passed Manali, the rain stopped and we made good time thereon. It was quite a fast ride..and I got a wee bit reckless as I tried to outpace a Maruti Alto in a turn.....only to jam hard on the disc and swerve back to avoid an oncoming Qualis!

Well, I was a bit wiser from then on, but nevertheless making good time. Some time later on the mountain road and sometime behind Sanjay's bike (I like to ride behind and see the bikes ahead of me making the turns) I thought I noticed yet another wobble on Sanjay's rear wheel. Fearing the worst, I asked Kenny for a second opinion. But Sanjay had picked up speed and it was impossible for Kenny to make out whether it was really wobbling or not. However, after a while when he had slowed down, Kenny did confirm that the wheel was indeed out of alignment. I gunned my engine and zipped ahead of Sanjay before he could scoot off again and indicated him to park his bike. On inspecting his bike, it was confirmed that the wheel definitely had to be taken to a mechanic. The nearest town was Mandi, and somehow they limped to a mechanic. Darn! 5 spokes had kicked the bucket and there goes atleast 2-3 hours of travel time! So we did what we had to go - wait patiently while the mechanic does his thing. The skies turned ominous and as Himanshu had predicted some time before, it started pouring cats and dogs. The rain did serve a good purpose of showering our dusty bikes, but made a mess out of my sleeping bag. What the heck, I wasnt going to use it anyway; so I let things be.

A good hour and a half later, Sanjay's bike was ready and we resumed on our journey. We decided to fill up our stomachs before we left Mandi, and so we did...at a roadside dhaba. It hadnt stopped raining entirely, but we decided to move on slowly instead of staying put.

It was an uneventful ride onwards till I had a scuffle in Sundernagar. At a traffic junction, a CBZ extreme leapt out of nowhere cutting me off. I had no option but to jam as hard as possible on the brakes. My bike screeched and wobbled and it was impossible for me to control the bike with all the weight and the backpack on me and finally after depositing rubber on the tarmac, I skidded to a fall. Luckily, I had retarded completely and suffered no injuries and none to the bike whatsoever. I was almost ready to pick a fight with the reckless fools, when Amol and Sanjay just stopped me and got my bike up. I proceeded with a glum mood until after sometime, we caught up with Kenny and Himanshu and narrated the incident.

Tired as we were, we were impatient to reach Anandpur Sahib; But darkness had caught up with us while we were still some distance away. A very horrible ride from Bilaspur onwards, with all the dust and flakes, Himanshu had had enough of it and suggested we make a pit stop at the nearest hotel. But as fate would have it, we didnt find any decent hotel before Anandpur Sahib and we proceeded to the hotel we had logged in on our onward journey. It was well into the night when we had finally got our bags inside the hotel rooms. We had clocked 2475 km till this point.

Wiser from the previous failure of finding a "theka", this time Kenny and I got onto my bike and went in search of a watering hole. Some 4 kilometer outside the city wall, we did find one and loaded my saddle bags with precious "holy water".

A good dinner and "cleansening" with "holy water" later, we plonked on the bed and were sleeping logs in no time.