India is arguably the most interesting human habitat on Earth. With 1.25 billion people, as of 2013, it is second most populated to China and closing fast. The majority identify as Hindu, though significant numbers are Tibetan Buddhist, Muslim and Christian. India has a caste system that dictates great wealth to heart rending poverty. India has orbited Mars, has the bomb, created the Taj Majal, and yet some people have to defecate in the street. Himalaya India is little known, mostly remote and much of it is disputed with Pakistan and China. The far south has a strong Christian influence.
How did we come to chose India as our next tandem bicycle adventure? We had read on several bicycle touring web sites of experienced tourists slinking away in defeat after a couple of weeks in the intensity of India. It didn’t appeal to us, until: We covered the Overland Expo in Flagstaff, Arizona, for a magazine. Overlanders are motorized adventurers, who drive their extreme motorhomes, four wheel drives, or motorcycles in exotic locales around the world. Actually the majority just buy the gear and dream, but never go, much like around-the-world sailing dreamers. One way the motorcyclists can have an adventure with the risks greatly lowered is by going with a tour company.
We found a flyer advertising a video presentation by one such tour company promoting a Top of the World tour in a place we’d never heard of, Ladakh. The combination of a place we’d never heard of, and in the high Himalayas yet (we love cycle touring in mountains) sent us scurrying to see the video.
We saw the motorcyclists struggling with brutal roads; causing crashes, extremely high passes: causing altitude sickness, and primitive accommodations in parachute camps. This adventure was capped off with a ride up the highest moterable road in the world with views into Central Asia.
Halfway through the video, we were sneaking looks at each other trying to gage the other’s thoughts. We were both having the same idea, “Wonder if we could do this on our tandem?” Smile. Decided. All that remained was to do a little research, buy air tickets and pack the bike. This had to wait a year due to previous commitments, and unfortunately another year when Bob’s doctor suggested a hernia had to be fixed first lest it go gangrenous when we were far from medical care. So Bob decided the trip would be a 70th birthday present to himself. Sick.
Somewhere along the line we figured we might as well stay another couple of months and explore the far south of the country, the provinces of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and the Southern Gats, a tropical mountain range. There would be a long train ride in the middle as a break from the bicycle, and because trains are the second best way to see a culture, second to a tandem bicycle.
Come along with us!
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Applause, Zippy ready for India
We leave Tucson today for a few months in India. We begin in Ladakh, tight between Pakistan and China, in the Tibetan cultural, and landscape land. We start in Leh, in an 11,000 ft. valley in the Himalayas.
We’ll hang out exploring temples while we acclimatize, then test some passes, and ourselves. We’ll stay about a month in the mountains and then descend, we think via the Spiti Valley, into the plains where we may take some trains/busses to avoid the most populated areas, and go to the west coast. We’ll be working on stories for Desert Leaf.
We have a one way ticket, so we’re don’t know where we’ll fly home from. It’s nice not to know. We don’t have a phone. We should have internet fairly often and we’ll post here.
The preparation craziness is done, so now we can allow ourselves to be excited. This is going to be fun. No doubt some physical and mental challenges along the way; hey, that’s what makes life interesting, memorable.
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I expect my camera to get a workout: Ladakh is called The top of the World for good reason, with the highest motorable road, spectacular scenery, and the Tibetan people are colorful and friendly. We rode across the eastern part of Tibet on our In Search of Shangri-La trip, and want to see how the Tibetans are different here in their western-most range. We expect some differences: they are free in India, not so much in China.
Comments are welcome.
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Leh is a Shangri-La with a storied past and an uncertain future. Once the center of great kingdoms and a crossroads of trade routes, Leh is now the focus of rapid growth and diminishing resources.
Situated at the crossroads of cultures from South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East, Leh changed hands for both economic and religious reasons, finally reaching a stable peak when Tibetan Buddhists held sway, evidenced by the hundreds of sites dotting the green valley of the upper Indus valley and surrounding high Himalayas. Buddhism and an energetic and creative Tibetan populace provided the motivation, and kingdoms provided the structure for the development of a vibrant culture. Besides an amazing Buddhist architecture the most important accomplishment was a system of irrigation ditches to capture water from glaciers and snow fields surrounding the valley. This allowed for a stable growing population focused on agriculture and yak herds.
Today Leh struggles to reconcile two cultural identities: agricultural Tibetan Buddhist (and Muslim merchants) and twenty-first century modernity brought on by the booming tourism industry: You can book a week-long trek, a whitewater rafting tour, a downhill mountain bike ride from the highest road in the world or an all-inclusive Buddhist meditation retreat.
[Click on any photo in galleries to enlarge all.]
In the same modest sized town, centuries old agrarianism is practiced: From our guesthouse balcony, we see cows wandering the irrigation ditched alleyways, walled gardens and freshly scythed hay drying on flat roofs.
Our hosts prepare greens to dry for winter soups (just as we do), are interrupted to reset the wi-fi for an Austrian tourist, and check in a family from France. I joked with “Mom” that she must be looking forward to the winter cold, when all of the tourists go home, and was rewarded with a wry smile. She probably works harder than her mother or grandmother did, but she will be able to afford to send her daughter to the medical schooling she dreams about.
The small downtown is a bustle of construction, insane traffic dodging wandering cows and donkeys, tourists and beckoning shopkeepers; red robed monks walk past the mosque at call to prayer.
Less than two kilometers away our guest house sits nestled among farmer’s homes, tiny walled fields, and near a stupa. Dogs bark, cows moo in the night and warblers serenade our breakfast on the deck.
Increasingly the two worlds are competing for the same limited water in this Himalayan desert; some hard choices await.
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Late morning sunshine dapples a small stone walled paddock; cottonwood fluff drifts slowly, incense infuses the warming air. A cow lows, already wanting her milking grain, otherwise silence.
Zeepata’s Guest House in Leh, India, exerts a gentle hold on guests: The Austrian motorcyclists postpone departure another day, for no particular reason they muse. The Eastern European/North Carolinian family of four, read and do maths and work remotely, architects, “It’s too comfortable. We have no reason to go.” The French couple return between strenuous treks to rest, recuperate, and then stay another day, and another, make plans to come back. The American bicycle touring couple delay the beginning of their tour, for acclimatization they say.
Zeepata’s is a benign Hotel California: you can come, and you can leave, but you don’t seem to want to. Perhaps the Buddhist laid back sensibility is catching, or the food is too good, the quiet village atmosphere so close to town. There is ninth-century stupa down the alley with far more ancient rock carvings to ponder, to wonder at and speculate. But, I think, it is Mom’s smile, broken English, and pampering.
We always begin our foreign tours with a few days at a guest house, rebuilding Zippy (our tandem), respecting jet lag, resting from the travel getting our bearings. This time we landed at 11,000 feet and needed to add acclimatization to our regimen. One week we thought, no more, but day ten and we dawdle, blaming it on a stomach ailment, some breathing issues, but maybe those things, yes, but more.
It will be day thirteen when we leave. No, I’m not superstitious, except we do walk around the stupas clockwise, always. Zeepata’s teaches patience; desultory days are okay, liberating. Will this sensibility follow us throughout our tour of India?
One way tickets are a good thing. . .
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Mom told us a way to the Sankar Gompa,
“You go up, up, up beside water, at bridge right [hear the trilled r?]; follow path on on, other way [hand gesture left] go and go little more, then get!”
With this description, even given with her signature smiling nature, we of course had little hope of actually finding the gompa. But we enjoy exploring lost. We always find a way to what we need, if not what we sought.
We started through the local warrens of walled compounds and cow enclosures, wood yards, tool storages and clothes lines. Dodging the ever-present cow pies, some fresh, not yet picked up and stacked on the walls to finish drying for winter fuel. The snowmelt is picking up and many of the ditches run over; sandals sans socks are always a good choice.
We found the main stream, clear glacier water falling over rounded polished granite, stones with increasing power, still contained by garden walls showing damage from flooding. The banks were green with grass and fragrant with mint. Claire said the grazing cows had minty breath.
We rounded a bend where the stream narrowed and the banks widened and saw people washing clothes, and bodies. Naked little boys washed and then ran rolling bicycle tires with sticks. Mothers smiled and scrubbed carpets, “juley” as we passed. Sunday is laundry day in Leh.
Others worked scything hay from the verges of a grain field, hauling to dry for winter. They paused under streamside willows to have tea and savouries at mid day.
The sun was kind, warm enough for bathing and for clothes drying on the stone walls of canola fields and stream rocks. We were surrounded by contentment.
At the gompa all was quiet. Flowers and bees. Whitewashed walls and bright door curtains. We circled chortens, clockwise, accompanied by a shaggy black dog. Another dog lay by a gate, not guarding it as it allowed me to open the gate for our companion.
At a red prayer wheel, we each made several turns, thinking of family members, friends and people we know in distress, people half a globe away, for now. It made us feel good. Perhaps it was the thinking of people we care for, or the repetition or the small bell that rang each revolution; or the day, the smiling people at happy work, scent of mint and ripening grain, meditation of flowing water, all; who can know?
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Claire:
Up early, before the alarm, I was already fretting about the day ahead. I’d ridden up 7,000 feet fully loaded in one day before, but never by starting at 11,000 something and going to well over 18,000. Would I be able to breathe in air that thin? Would Bob? He was eager to get going and we were on the road by 8:00, a little later than planned.
The first 25 kilometers went well on smooth road and we had a delightful visit with day bikers at the tea stall just past the permit check station. We should have kept moving as the clock would somehow speed up at higher elevation. I briefly considered asking Bob if we could camp at a grimy road workers’ shelter that smelled of fuel. It was already around 3:00 and we still had seven kilometers to go.
Higher up, I remember visiting with a downhill biker/motorcycle guide who confirmed that the rest of the way up was rough but no steeper, though when you’re tired, some pitches feel steeper. By four kilometers from the top, we were stopping every half kilometer, just enough to catch our breath. I didn’t notice the decrease in traffic, I was focused on breathing and probably wasn’t eating as much as I should have. Bob was still peppy and encouraging all the way to the top.
By 6:00, the sun was getting low and we’d made it to the pass, 5602 meters, 18,380 feet. In our ten hours on the road, we’d been pedaling 5 hours and 44 minutes. Except for us and a few motorcyclists, the pass was deserted, cold, and a weird kind of lonely. We posed for pictures, donned our jackets and started down the back side.
We’d mistakenly thought the backside was paved, but it was actually in worse condition, partly because of the snow-melt from enduring fields draining onto the road. The wind from the snowfields chilled us through and it was getting dark.
Bob:
You would think I would be glad to see downhill after such a climb, but you are probably not a tandem captain. Sometimes down is worse:
Loose dirt, hard to see rocks, round, sharp, slick? Embedded boulders, roller baby’s heads, water how deep? Brakes maxed, scan, scan ahead, how far? quick dodge close rock, scan and miss medicine ball buried bolder, scan. Getting darker. Cold, two pairs of gloves. Neck and shoulder clenched for an hour now. Please hold front wheel, please. Don’t go down. Don’t go down, Whatever, don’t go down.
We stop for a break. Claire is shivering. She can’t work her upper body like I am, just her fear muscles. We have to get off this mountain.
Every moment, over and over, don’t go down, focus, focus. Nearly two hours now. Dark. Out of the gloom; like dark furry rolling boulders, darting heavy, across the road, rolling to a stop, unpredictable: ghost donkeys. Dodge. They roll down to the next switchback, waiting, then flee at the strange specter Zippy presents: no motor, long, two heads.
We round a steep switchback and are blinded by an oncoming truck, and car wanting to pass; the lights dance with each other, spectral highlights in Himalayan black. Night blinded, we stop to rest, then roll slowly into North Pullu, the first Inner Line (disputed territory) check station. We hope there is shelter, food, though we have a minimum of both. No lights. Can’t read the signs, or see anything, donkeys. We stop and push Zippy, feeling the road. Looking. Looking.
Finally figures emerge, human figures. One wears the red robe of a monk, one camouflage of the Indian Army. No English this far out. Pantomime.
They talk, then direct us into a closed restaurant, move tables aside and point to a two person space on the floor: home. They show us the squatty potty. We have water and food. A straw mattress appears which we lay over our own sleeping pads and crawl into our old familiar sleeping bag: home. At well over 16,000 feet we snuggle and sleep like babies: home.
Sometimes home depends on the kindness of strangers, strangers without a common language, without a common culture (who are these strange people on this strange contraption), but with a common humanity. The core of my life’s passion has been to share one thought:
Humans: we are so much more alike than we are different.
We have had it proven to us so many times, in so many small and important ways. It is one major reason we put ourselves into uncertainty, to discover again this truth. I hope one person reads this and understands. Pass it on.
Robert Rogers
https://newbohemians.net