Forward Operating Base Leh

Little house cleaning.  Gotta give some props to the town of Leh, the people, the Yak Tail Hotel.  Place is great, no crime, no begging and really nice people.  It is a big tourist town, but mostly for people to fly in and hop on Adventure Touring, Trekking, Rafting.....you name it.........trips around the local area.  Prices are very affordable and we haven't run into anyone who has tried to rip us off.
We have been staying at the same joint in Leh and it is awesome.  Family owned forever, oldest hotel in Leh and run by a dude named Bobo (Baw-Boo) who hangs out with us and arranges everything.  When he walks through town, everyone knows him.  He just lounges all day at the hotel, sipping tea, while his wife is a Gynecologist at the local hospital. Most of his staff have been here for 12 years plus and helped raise him while he was running around the place when his parents were running it.
  
Took a day off to nurse my whip lashed neck, sore ribs and do some bike fixing mostly with a hammer, and I think I even used a wrench twice.  Only have a few days left, so I need the Royal Hoopride to hold together. 

Here is the entrance.  Bobo let us park our Battle Wagons inside the gate.  The Courtyard is all green marble.  It's running us 12 bucks a day for our room and if we eat here, another 6 bucks for so......a day.....three meals.  Check out the old school RD350, Bobo has two of them things, they are very rare and cool as Shi'ite.  People are always stopping by and talking about them.  The rooms would probably gross out most people, but what the hell, I'm only sleeping in the joint.

Better look at the courtyard.  That is one of his dudes, does everything and has a twin brother.  On his way with SchlepRock's 50th cup of Chai milk tea of the day.........stuff is tasty......even when it's 90 out.  OBTW.....I've dropped 17 big ones since getting to India.....Curry and tea is the way to go!

The "Bionic" Enfield, 24 hours after going down around 40.  We rebuilt her, but as far as being stronger and faster like Steve Austin, ferrrrget about it.  Restored to original, no power, zero suspension and the ergonomics of a tricycle. Fires up first kick, these things are pretty tough.  Check out my prayer flowers wrapped around the front.....still in the mix baby! 

 

Fixed all the stuff on the right side of the bars.  Mirror was crunched, break lever needed repeated skin graphs and you can see the old school crash bar, the right side was pushed in......2 hours at Clearview Auto Body (Mohans Enfield in Leh) and we're back in the fight.

 

Right Pannier looked like a Coke can that had been smashed by someone.  I think if you click on the image, you get the actual size and can see the tears and ripples in the upper outside corner.  On my G-rides back home, I have used soft bags on hard core trips up dirt roads like the Dempster because of the horror stories of smashed legs when going down in a crash.  Crashing with hard Panniers scares the shit out of me.  10 minutes with a hammer, the lid closed and locked back up.  For the record, those Panniers are about as worthless as a third row of tits on a boar hog.  Dust and everything got inside.  

I sense being light headed in my near future!

Ching-A-Linged at Chang La

Yak Tail Hotel has provided us a nice base camp for a little rest.......now it is time for for a little road trip out to Tso Pangong........That's Lake Pangong for the crowd.  Situated at 14.5K on the Chinese border, I failed.........or maybe I was just in denial, but there is a pass we have to cross to get to this lake revered by most Indians.  Chang La pass.....what a freaking ass kicker!

Here's a little look back around half way.  this was the WORST, I REPEAT WORST road we have seen over the last few weeks.  It was bone rattling, spine crunching and had everything from water running off the snow pack to dust that was suffocating the last 10KM on both sides of the summit.

The road was narrower than hell and had these little monuments sprinkled along the way.  Right above the truck in the background is a white line cut out of the mountain, that's where we had to go.  There were DOZENS of military trucks on the road and when we got on the backside of the pass, the entire valley for the final 60KM were enormous bases with Army dudes everywhere.

So........ we motor out in the morning thinking we are gonna go over a little hill and follow a valley into the Promised Land.  I check the map out of Leh and see that Chang La is at like 17K........WTF?  It was a massive grind, but once again we made it to the top.........first pass we have come to that has medical tents.....Indian Army dudes hanging out with O2 tanks for people who's brains start swelling and talking in tongues, we stayed 15 minutes and got the hell out of dodge since my fingers were tingling and Winston was three deep already into his cigarette pack!

 

Dub Ya in the climb!

 

Living large with a couple of Bro's we met and ended up hanging out with at Pangong.  Good dudes and they would help me out later on during this little escapade.

 

We will come off the pass and end up on the moon.  Just miles and miles of boulders, rocks and just nothingness.  Traffic was light and we made pretty good time.

  

First look at the lake.  We are above 14,000 feet, it's salt water......how the hell did this thing end up here?  That's China about 2 miles down shore.  2/3rds of the lake is in China and the Indians have a little base on the north end of the lake with gun boats docked.

Boootiful!

 

It changed colors about a million times while we were there based on the sun angle and the wind making white caps.

 
 

Our hooch for the night.  Most expensive place we've stayed at 22 bones a night.  Included dinner and breakfast which was freaking tasty.  We met quite a few  people here and played cards into the night.  Mostly early 30's kids who were professionals.....everything from IBM consultant to children's nurses to teachers.......every one of them quit their jobs and are just Schlep'n around the world.  We met a cool Swiss dude who just came from Sri Lanka.  Quite a few Indian motorcycle dudes on a road trip from Dehli, we exchanged email addresses and hopefully will stay in contact.

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 Well I guess it is my time to pay the man.  Coming back from the lake about an hour back home I come around a curve on my 6 inches of pavement to find a F'n taxi on my side of the road hauling ass..........all I see is a big ass Toyota symbol..........God has given me this amazing gift to slow things down around me.....playing sports, getting shot at....... watching Homeboy swing a bat.....coming up with a solution......when things start going bad.  First thought....Take this bitch head on.....Pause.....NOT! Second thought.....I got another six inches of road, I can fix this......so I'm just gonna slide on over......shit....it's sand........as my Hoopride is starting it's one way ticket to low siding........half way down......I say to myself.....this is gonna Fucking Hurt........I look down and see my old school crash bars hit the ground and I actually think......I got 3 grand in the best shit money can buy....solely built to crash in.  Smack.......right shoulder and right side of my head hit the ground in a eruption of flying debris, dirt and sparks that made Winston's 10 mile an hour low side going into Ganj look like  Friday Night Grab Ass at the country bar he hangs at in Calgary.  I slide on my right side about 30 feet......sit up on my knees, bell a little rung.....but I know it's the 18th....I'm coming back from Lake Pangong and some asshole is about to die.  I take my helmet off and stand up.  Taxi dude walks up to me raising his voice and pointing at my tire tracks that are THREE F'n inches from the edge of my side of the road.........remember the two dudes that photo bombed Winston's Chang La Pass photo......they roll up.....I go to the tall dude.......tell that F'n dude in Hindu to shut his F'n mouth or I'm gonna rip his head off.........Bro starts talking.......booo babbba nnayyya hanna.......F'n.....hyttaaa gaaaa nnnyaaa jaaaayy.....F'n.....Taxi idiot shuts up......Guess the translation was good....lmao.....

Pick bike up, flooded like a mofo, takes about 20 minutes to get started, rest of the ride back was uneventful. 


..........right side pannier is fruit bowled......Butch Sukut special the same day with a hammer at the local Enfield repair joint.....fixed.....right side crash bar a little tweaked....but hardly noticeable..........Head light bezel seems to be a magnet for frontal impacts.......fixed .....right foot peg looked like a soggy mustard soaked pretzel from one of those traveling gypsy amusement parks on wheels.  Hardest part was riding up and down that miserable pass with about 3cm of my boot on the only useable portion of the foot peg.  I'm out 8 bucks and the bike looks brand new!

Casualty.....Ghost HD Cam destroyed on impact.  Camera was mounted on right side of my helmet as you could see in one of the above pictures.  The destruction of the camera just raised the cost of my vacation 25%.........damnit!

KLIM gear with D3O armor......amazing shit.......It's hot.....uncomfortably hot.....but it puts you in the position to get up after a crash and kick the shit out of whoever just tried to ruin your day.  Helmet #5 that I hardly needed and just bought because it's cool looking probably saved my life.  My friend Len I met in Alaska last year was wearing a helmet he decided to impact test the same way I just did, the shit works, if you don't wear one you're a F'n IDIOT!

On a positive note....I landed on my right shoulder they told me last year needs to be replaced anyway.......my ribs are sore and my beloved gear still looks nice!   

I want to personally thank the Indian Government for not caring enough to pave their roads......the combination of gravel, sand, concrete and whatever else there was helped me slide rather than tumble......tumbling on concrete kills the team....ask those dudes racing Moto GP.

Best part about it.....after telling momma what happened, before going out for next ride....only thing said was "Love you, Have a awesome ride".......Peace out Turkeys!




 

No Plan Survives First Contact.............

Or even third or fourth contact with the enemy, India traffic or road conditions.  If you do the math, we cannot make it back to Dehli in the next week or so.  Our plan now is to set up base camp in Leh and ride out from there, returning for a day and then going out again.  We are shipping the bikes back to Dehli at a whopping 90 bucks 'Murrican and then flying back to Dehli for our trip back home.  Let's get to it! 

Find us here.........Where is the Bozo Brigade?

Out of Pang for a leisurely 180km or so jaunt to Leh.  Right out of Pang we had 40km of good tarmac on a plain at over 16, 000 feet.  Kind of like driving through Wyoming on I-80, but in the Moronosphere.  Then the climb to Tanglang La, gnarly.  Peaked at 17.5k and the climb was on a 10 foot wide road with ten foot snow and ice walls on opposite sides of us.  We ran into a small traffic jam and had to dig a path to widen the road.........small delay........some dudes who left about two hours after us were stuck on the pass 10 hours with one of their Australian dudes getting pretty bad AMS and having to ride in the support truck while a mechanic road his bike to Leh........weak sauce!  

Look back at climb up Tanglang La........massively long steep straight away cutting up the valley on either side of the mountain!

The altitude and ZERO suspension on my Royal Kidney Shaker is crushing my program.  Note the small snow capped mole hill in the background laughing at our 17.5k speed bump.  I'm about fed up, I'm climbing Everest so I can finally look down on things!

 le

W after going five rounds UFC style with a 50 pound bag of flour.  This part of the ride was a dust bowl.

Down the back side with ease and any easy stroll into Thicksey.  We stopped at a ginormous Gompa (monastery) for a little photo shoot and I talked a little sports with a few Monks.  As we cross into Ladakh, the military presence is crazy.  The road went through several Army bases the size of Camp Pendelton, I'm talking tens of kilometers long.  

Perspective doesn't do this place justice, it is huge and towering out of a mountain.

Just inside the gate looking up to one of the main temples.

After this dude was done praying, he came over and asked if I was "Murrican.  He asked a lot of questions about sports and was a big baseball fan.  We rapped about Cricket and the World Cup. 

Good shot of the prayer wheels.  Gotta spin them walking "up the stairs" and they must spin clockwise or you'll be in the hurt locker.

 

Good feel for how high I was.  Not even on the top floor and only half way up.  Even though we are now in the "high desert" at 11k, the valley was very green with farmlands and people actually have grass on their property.

 15KM to Leh and we arrive in one piece at the Yak Tail Hotel......oldest joint in Leh!

Headaches.....Hypothermia and Happiness!

Arrived in Pang.  Basically a tent city where people come down from Leh when the snow melts to set up tents for travelers to say on their transit between Leh and Manali, a 475KM stretch of not much.  We chose Pang over Sarchu because there is a Army base at Pang should AMS set in and put us in the hurt locker.  I brought a bunch of kids books with me and have been giving them out along the way to little ones, this will be the most memorable!

Won't find this joint on KAYAK or HOTELS.COM!

Downtown Pang looking down from the front gate of the Army base that is there.  Traffic was horrendous!

My rack for the night.  Four bucks and actually the most comfortable bed I have slept on since arriving in this country.  No joke, 4 bucks!

Time for Rack Ops!  Yep that's a blanket below me, my sleeping bag, I had long johns on, a jacket with another blanket over  me.  Those blankets they gave us weighed in at 20 pounds a piece.....no lie.  I woke at 1am with the worst headache I have ever had in my life.........like someone was taking ice picks and ramming them into my temple.  I touched the side of my head and my temples were pulsating like a freaking paint shaker at Home Depot.  I grabbed some Diamox and popped one.........all better in about 15 minutes.  Then I had to get up and go Pee.........it was Arctic Ocean  cold......We are at over 15K and the freaking wind was howling!.......  I know cuz I have been there by the way, and I was practically frozen by the time I climbed back into my Tonn Tonn!  Mild AMS can kiss my ass........that hurt!

"Yo white dude with the sunglasses on, is that a book in your Monkey Phalanges?"

"Hey SchlepRock, I'm totally digging this book about Zebras, but do you have something a little more in my wheelhouse, say.......about trucks or race cars bro?"

So I went to the well one more time and ponied up.  There were several kids in Pang and I handed out books to dudes, little girls and one lucky girl scored the coloring book, all the way from the dollar store way back in the hood.  Her and the fam went ape nutz!  Everyone was pretty happy and  we could see the kids playing with the books until it was dark.  When I gave homeboy above the two books in the bonus round, he started dancing in circles and spinning around with them above his head...........then he did like this dance like the "Icky Shuffle".......remember that from the day?  If you don't know Icky Woods.......you don't know know the NFL..........and you don't know SH&%!

Meet Saved......pronounced (Saw-veed).  What a story.  We pull up, trying to talk to some locals with no luck and up walks Saved.  Perfect English and a big ass smile on his face.  He is a school teacher from Dehli who teaches English to 6-8th graders at a private school in Dehli.  26 years old and his family are all educators.  His brother is also a teacher (heard that story before Steve) and his dad was (is) a Principal.  For the hell of it, he has two months off and decided to ride his mountain bike from Leh to Dehli, opposite direction as us.  He told us the tent was clean and the people were good, so we moneyed  up.  We talked about everything from India's school system, politics, the way females are treated in India.....the entire gambit.  He had great info on the roads up north and the works for our ongoing journey, and it helped he spoke the local language so he could hook us up, including buying Petrol from our host in Aqufina bottles.  He was a really smart young man with a hilarious sense of humor, even dropped an occasional F-bomb when talking about terrorists, getting married, and Dehli traffic.  In the morning we all hugged it out........ I got his contact info and when he bikes across "Murrrrica in a couple of years, I told him I had plenty of hookups back in the hood to stay at. 

Pang was really good to us.  The people are incredibly kind and.........as you can see, have that Tibetan look as their skin tone and eyes are changing as we move north.  Leh or bust for us next! 

Into the Moronosphere

Happy Father's Day to all the Dad's out there, especially mine.

Road to Pang!  India 2014!    My Head Hurts

Up early to head out of Keylong.  First time on the trip I didn't spend 30 minutes trying to navigate us out of a city, Keylong, one road in and one road out.  Couple of shots from town and the surrounding area.  The thing most impressive is we are up hanging out at just over 10K the mountains around us are dwarfing the Bozo Brigade.  We headed north on a slow climb to 15.5k and enough water crossings to choke a horse and of course, two passes.  Overall good day with no drama and always a success when arriving in one piece.  Here we go!

View from our balcony looking north! 

Downtown Keylong.

 

Followed the valley north for about two hours before starting our first climb.

Couple thousand feet down with no guard rails, standard, considering there roads were built forever ago and their idea of maintenance is bulldozing rock slides out of the way.

I been hit by a bus, low sided on my way to a Yoga class, T-boned a clown car......150KM's of water crossings ain't got nothing on me EH'.

Nakeela pass coming in at a modest 15.5K complete with tingling in the hands and lips.

So......I'm reveling in our highest pass yet and look over to the right and see this bad boy.  This place just keeps going up and up.

Had lunch with these cats.  They just sat there talking to each other pointing at different parts of our gear, cameras.  I think they were nomadic goat herders, because there were camps set up everywhere along this portion of the route.  No I am not some Freak'n artiste trying to do some cool contrast shot.  Had camera on wrong setting.

Climbing the Gata Loop.   One of the ten famous roads on the planet.  I think there are something like 36KM of tight switch backs as we climb up back into the nose bleeder section.

Pass number two for the day, up over 16K now, feeling pretty good!

Finished off the day motoring through the high desert.  Reminded me of Fallon back in the day except we are up above 15k.  It was warm, around 70F, but dusty and gritty like you read about.  We have been joking that every ride of the day ends up behind big ass slow TATA's spitting thick diesel exhaust and kicking up so much dust we can only see about 10 feet in front of us.

 

Manali to Rhotang.....TWICE!

Ok….....been awhile..........since we have been basically cruising around on Mars, off the grid and zero connectivity with the outside world…….so let’s get back on track!!!!!!

Over the first step…….Manali to Keylong

Ride along here!     Manali to Keylong

Outa dodge at 5:15am this morning in hopes of beating the rush up Rhotang Pass and definitely ahead of the dreaded TATA trucks.  Hit the road and in standard SchlepRock fashion took a wrong damn turn and wasted 15 precious minutes beating the rush out of town.  Headed north on the steepest climb in or on a vehicle I have ever seen.  The Indians are efficient to say the least, steep switch backs with tons of altitude gain in a quick amount of time.  Followed the valley north and we could see our first obstacle, Rhotang Pass.  Only bad part, they seem to have an aversion to making roads wider than one lane and dealing with the TATA trucks is serious work.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of big TATA’s, but you every think of trying to motorboat one of these things, life as you know it will never be the same.

You wanna piece of me sweetheart?

 

The traffic is insane.  It took over four hours to go 40km and then we experienced a MAJOR setback.  16km from the summit there was a check point the Indian Po Po had set up requiring “permissions” to go to Leh……WTF, are you kidding me?  I try to sweet talk em, bribe them with a little white skin tax….they say no, go back 10 km and pay 50 rupees……..then come back.  I did see the checkpoint back there, but…….nothing applies to motorcycles here, no tolls, no nothing.  So we head back down, through the same absolute madness we had just fought our way through coming up.  No choice, has to be done.

See them snow caps in the background......yep that's where we need to get to.......

Why me....why me....why me?

Crocket and Tubbs and his two bro's ruining my morning.  They did it with a smile on their faces too.  So you mean you're gonna turn us around, burn 5 bucks in gas and 1.5 hours of our time to pay 90 cents "Murrican to ride my bike 475 KM's to Leh?  Yes Mr David, but first, can you take our picture please?

 

Approaching the summit Dub Ya received an urgent request via satellite feed  from the NTSB.  After crunching the data from his previous collision, they wanted data on say maybe………..his Enfield broadsiding the driver's door of a small sub-compact car the size of a Yugo with six generations of one family inside.  No problem, with the precision  of a Ginsu  Knife, Winston T-bones the side of this white car…….F^%$  ME!!!!!……….I’m in front of the dude this time with my mother scratching helmet  cam on…….I can’t buy a break…….ROTFLMAO…….OBTW, I couldn’t script or make this shit up in a million years.  So.... I hop off and walk back and holy guacamole (I would give my left nut for some Mexican Food right now) the freaking door of this reproduced Yugo is caved in like you read about.  If we were in any other country, you would see a family  packed in this car with all the air bags having gone off.   The Mob forms……There are 30 Indians in a circle snapping pictures with their cell phones, talking a million miles per hour, shit you see in a movie, and the negotiations start.  In India, if you are in a wreck you negotiate on the spot, come to an agreement, pay up and things are settled.  Winston’s like, shit, I do million dollar real estate deals in my wiener dudes with a Jack and water in my hand.  Ten minutes later we are on our way……..Winston’s wallet is 4K lighter…….about 80 bucks.  After further inspection Dub Ya’s Himalayan Demolition Wagon only has a crooked from fender and some damage around the head light and scuffs on the Mad Max style front knee and leg protection bars.

Dub Ya's headlight and crash bar 1-Yugo Clown Car Motha Scratch'n ZERO!

Made it up over the pass and stopped for a quick photo shoot of the summit.  There are prayer flags and little shrines at all the summits, I am told……..we shall see.  All the way up we are looking at 12-14 feet of snow pack next to the road.  It actually just opened up a few weeks ago so the roads are in horrible condition.

W posing next to the ice pack.....about 14 feet high and just cleared two weeks ago!

13K not bad for our first one.

Sup people, how's your cubicle treating ya today?

Victory!

Back side of the pass was BRUTAL.  The worst road I have ever been on in my life in a car or on bike.  Most of it due to the archaic yet tough bikes we decided to use on this endeavor.  We had some Triumph Tigers go by us like we were parked, definitely imported or some guys doing a big continent ride or something.  Uneventful, Winston did a really nice job riding in the dirt considering he has almost no experience off road.  Kept a good pace and we made it to Keylong and found some digs…..nice views, Chicken Tandoori was pretty damn good, and we look forward to pressing on towards Leh in the following days.