Ride the Himalayas Day 8 7-17-19 Sissu to

 

Ride the Himalayas    

Here is the route for the day and below is a bigger picture of where we're headed.  The city of Leh will be the home base for a few days while we zip up to the Nubra Valley and the incredible Diskit Monastery and then back to Leh.  Then we head up to Pangong lake which goes into China.

7-17-2019       Day 8 of the "Ride the Himalayas" Starting in the village of Sissu

So after a wild night at our hotel (Plm dhara Hotel) in Sissu many of the guys were taking their time getting going in the morning.  Our clothes and boots were dry for once (woohoo!) and our view of the Sissu waterfall across the valley and a large army base were clear as day this bright sunny morning. 

The hotel had a couple of small stores which I purchased more lip balm even though my lip was toasted beyond repair and I also picked up a couple of wool shawls which were beautifully made.

 

After breakfast we were getting ready to leave when a little boy came out and Evan let him play with his cell phone.  Evan turned on the camera and it was like magic for the little guy.  Vanna and I were trying to talk with a beautiful elder woman sitting next to us who had some nice modern clothes and some traditional accessories as well.  She was well respected and the young boys at the hotel brought her tea.  

Today would be the most brutal day of the trip by far, everyone was exhausted.  Every time I got off the bike my hands and face were tingling like they had been asleep for hours, my chest was even tingling!  We would cover a LOT of ground, see some incredible scenery and incredible roads.  Rahul told us it would be one of a couple long days and it was. 

The views here are so vast, we are mere specks of sand compared to the enormous mountain vistas.  These roads were opened just 2 weeks ago an will be only open for 3 months tops from all the snow they get here.  Of course we went through many more streams and fun sections of the road.  It is totally amazing to see all sorts of people and vehicles on these roads (if you can call them roads).  Everyone was helping everyone to get through the really tough sections like the video below.

 

At some point during the ride I took spill #2 in some deep gravel (ATGATT) and not a scratch on me or the bike, ya shake it off and keep on truckin.  I think I had passed a few guys and was hammering hard on the rocky road when I went around the curve and hit some deep gravel.  Oh well, education comes at a price.  LOL

  

We saw many Stupas along the road and you could tell we were continuing to gain elevation as even in some of the valley areas we were coming up on LARGE areas of snow.  One of the most memorable areas was where we had to climb a mountain and there were switchback after switchback which was basically only 1 lane and we shared with the large fuel and other trucks.  This mountain climb is called the Ghata Loop.   I had Evan on the back and the Royal Enfield Himalayan was huffing and puffing up the hill.  At one curve there were like a few thousand water bottles which kind of upset me that they were dumped there.  The story is that a truck broke down and the driver was trying to fix the flat tire or something and the truck fell off and either rolled over him or something happened and it killed him.  When folks got there to help him all he could say was he wanted some water so it is actually a shrine to the poor guy that passed away.

 

The next big obstacle was Nakeela Pass (15,647') and up the mountain we drove through cut out glacier type areas where the snow was probably 30' high.  I don't know how they paved that area and figured out where the dang road was to start plowing but it was very impressive and fun to ride through.

It was stream crossing after stream crossing and some were super treacherous.  On one of the last BIG crossings I had made it through the hard deep part and was going down the easy area which the stream was covering the entire road about 4-6" deep and then I hit a rock and went over on the right side.  The right side was where the cliff went down hundreds of feet so I'm glad I was still ON the road.  I picked the bike up, got back on and rode off to the few guys that were waiting.