From the Plains to the Hills

Day 1 August 10 2009
Started at 4:20 am, lost Martin and James by 4:45, found them an hour later, and stopped for alu pranthas at 7:30. Then we sped up to 90 kmph-my bike seemed imbalanced, back brakes barely working-I was using my front brakes and gears to stop. Scary!

But it started to kick in again, an hour later I was back-15 years of not driving enfields faded away.

The heat was killing-my arms burnt red-we stopped in the afternoon only for drinks-couldn't eat.

My bottom felt like someone had kicked it several times, my shoulder muscles were on fire when we finally arrived at Bilaspur to stop for the night, it was 5 pm. It was slow driving, we had to keep stopping waiting for the jeep to catch up.

Any mishaps-just one-almost. Took a bend to find two trucks neck to neck racing madly down on me. No time to brake-managed to squeeze by just a foot away from the edge of the 500 ft khud.

Ashish loved it-just wanted to enjoy the ride. He drove a bit and handed it back when it got too much.

Talked a bit later and we dosed off tired and wiped out!

Day 2 August 11 2009

Set off at 8:00 am-great fun on mountain roads all the 170 km ride from Bilaspur to Manali. We lost each other often-we thought we had lost Steph once and Rajan and Jeff in the jeep were trying frantically to figure out how to phone the UK for his nuber-we forgot to tell them we had found him, 30 kms ahead.
After breakfast at a roadside dhaba 11 kms off mandi, I took off and crashed into another bike who was doing the normal Indian thing-to turn left, first turn right! He was ok after a fall scraped his foot and his bike handle dug into my belly.

My back brakes were almost non-existent by now-so we reached Manali the quickest.

Bikes needed fixing and tuning for the really tough grind ahead-that took 3 more hours and we found time for a quick shower to head off to dinner later.

5 am tomorrow for Kehlong-

Can't believe I'm doing this!!!!