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the plan: cycle from manali to leh. climb over five passes higher than mont blanc. ride 470km over eight days.

that's not all. from leh, three of us plan to climb stok kangri (6100m).

 

man proposes,
god disposes.

the execution: due to car problems and unexpected illness (no, not altitude sickness, but a tooth infection!), we manage to bike only five of the planned eight days. (manali-pang; route in red).

still, that's crossing three huge passes. and some truly
"out of the world" landscapes.

getting to the start: driving to manali (jul 5-6)

day 0, kanpur:
what with bicycling and then mountaineering, we have a lot of stuff:

we have rented a toyota innova which can go to the hills. we have three huge duffels on the roof, two bicycles on a back rack, and the rear is stuffed to the roof with dismantled cycles and bags and sacks....

the four of us: (L to R): amit (trek 3700). mohua (merida matts V40D),
saumyen (canondale f5), nandini (schwinn frontier sport).
image at patseo, by our support car driver, bhimsen.

kanpur to manali is about 700 km. we hope to get to manali by afternoon of the second day, so we can get the road permit made and leave for leh the next morning.

we are out of iit before 7AM. we won't take the main highway (NH2) which goes through delhi where they hassle you for carrying stuff on the roof. so we are going along GT road, which is shorter but much slower. the driver is a careful man, but occasionally we feel he is bit slower than we might like. we cross aligarh and reach meerut by 5, and then the map shows a state highway crossing the jamuna near baghpat but there is no bridge and the "road" crosses over the dry riverbank. we hit the delhi-punjab highway at 7 pm, and stop for the night at kurukshetra at 2130.

next morning, at breakfast past chandigarh, we meet up with a group of five cyclists out for a morning run. vaibhav nijhowne and a friend have quit their IT jobs and now edit the freerider mountain bike magazine, and also organize cycling trips.

after a stop at a mechanic to address a brake noise, we have occasion for some relief. it is unlikely that we'll get to manali in time to get the permit made by today. However, a friend, who's constantly on the phone with us, manages a contact from Mandi to get us the permit - we just have to stop by at iit mandi on the way, and pick it up. we reach mandi at 4pm, get the permit, and we are in Manali by 7.

at manali, the tourist season is in full swing. adventure is in the commercial air. a hot air balloon is taking off near the tax check, and a group of rafters run down the Beas beside us.

what's more, as we enter town with the bicycles on the back, another car starts talking to us. they are a large group of bicyclists from surat, who are also going manali to leh, starting tomorrow!


beas gorge on road from kullu


white-water rafters on the beas at manali. hot air balloon firing up. manali is becoming a magnet for commercial adventure sports... [click images to enlarge]

many hotels are full but we get rooms at the hotel nitesh on the other side of the beas. upon unpacking, we discover that some disk brakes are not working and new pads need to be installed. since there are no petrol stations after keelong, we also get 20 liters of diesel from the market.

day 1 - manali to marhi (jul 7)

By the time we start it's almost 8. The forecast is for rains in Manali these days, and it's drizzling when we get up. Around 0630, we see the other group of 25 cyclists ride past in red ponchos. We'll run into them several times during the trip - theirs is a professionally organized program.


the hills were green and covered with mist. waterfalls dazzling out from the green slopes. one by one you climb the the switchbacks. it was drizzling at the start but halfway through the sun came out and dried us out...

the ride today is a solid climb - in fact, at 1400m, it is the biggest single climb of the entire trip. but it isn't too strenuous till we reach palchan when the road turns away from the river and starts climbing. at gulaba we meet a couple of motorcyclists. amit parandikar and his friend are going to kashmir and blogging about the trip at "chai khai" (we could not trace this blog).

We are passing through a canopy of greenery. A number of rivulets have opened up on the hillsides and tourists are busy photographing themselves on the rocks.


mohua taking a break near the beas. a nagging drizzle kept us wet for most of the morning. roads glistening green on the early part of the climb.


nandini on the road. this was the first time mohua and nandini were on the mountains - even the lower gears were unfamiliar, and nandini was riding someone else's bike to boot. saumyen on the road.

The climb is non-stop and Mohua is beginning to cramp so she rests a bit on the car. Both Mohua and Nandini are also learning gear shifting for the hills - this is the first time that mohua and she are riding on uneven terrain. Nandini's going strong till there's a problem with the front brake and she packs up for a bit. A few km below Marhi, we all stop and manage to fix nandini's brake and all of us climb the remaining 3km to Marhi, with Nandini going like fire - we realize that she is a strong climber.


tourists snapping up roadside waterfall. amit, nandini, mohua and saumyen: lunch break at beas nala.

Marhi is a set of small shacks or dhabas - the ones closer to the checkpost are more elaborate and commercial. There are some tent accommocations, but after some tortuous negotiations, the caretaker of the PWD guesthouse gives us one room, charging us 2K (no receipt).

; we patronize the smaller Pioneer hotel at the start of Marhi, and they help charge some batteries for the two hours that they get shared generator power. They also run a very basic toilet, which is free to everyone - the more upscale ones restrict their toilet usage to customers only.

It is said that Marhi has a power connection but the "transformer had burned out some months back", and the PWD sockets don't have a bulb, so this may be somewhat mythical.


view of marhi (green plateau) and the beas river (far below). image taken from rani nala, where a mudslide shuts down the road whenever it rains. note the many switchbacks that start at marhi, (700m climb to rohtang). [click for larger image with annotations showing pwd GH etc.]

The road to Rohtang has a huge mud slide on it at a point called rAni nAlA, which is constantly under repair so the traffic is blocked for most of the day. The switchbacks of the road can all be seen from Marhi and this evening a bus can be seen tottering on the edge. People are watching with binoculars to see if it will fall - a few years back a car had been hit by a stone - its carcass can still be seen far down the slope. If the bus cannot be cleared, the road will remain closed tomorrow as well.

With this threat hanging over us, we crash for the night.

Factsheet

Manali (1896m) to Marhi (3303 m). 36.2 km.

The first 10 kms till solang nala (Palchan) is a gentler climb along the Beas. Then there are stretches where the road has a sharper grade, but on the whole it's a sold climb with a total ascent of over 1400m. In fact, this is the biggest single climb of any day, but most of it is under 3000m altitude.


elevation data from my gps. though it shows a steady climb, the feel on the road varies a lot, since even a slight increase in grade can make a lot of difference at the leg.

route landmarks:

cross bridge on beas, follow river to left
10km: Palchan / solang : beas river goes off to left, rohtang tunnel opening (due 2015).
some steep stretches. 2400m at 14km
16km - zigzags start 2600m - 2850m in 8 zigzags (4km) to 3050m in 7 zigzags (5km)
28.5km Rohilla Falls. climb 3100-3200 in 7 zigags (4km)
33km go down to "beas nala" +3km (two switchbacks) Marhi 3250m.

Food at Marhi: The closer you get to the barrier on the Rohtang La road, the more pricier the shops. Lodgings at Marhi: There are no hotels. A few food joints offer overpriced low-quality tented accommodation. The PWD guest house roof had collapsed in the winter snows, and it had just been repaired. There was no electricity all over Marhi since last winter, when a transformer had blown up. The PWD GH caretaker kept saying he couldn't give it to us, because higher-ups could be coming at any time, but in the end he negotiated a rate (rs. 2k) and opened up a room for us. Initially he said there was no running water, but even that turned out to be working.

day 2 - marhi to keylong (by car; jul 8)

We get up at 5 - pack up and are on the road by 6. The group of 25 cyclists have left a little before us. Their expedition is supported by six vehicles, two of which have crossed the rAni nAlA and are waiting on the other side.

Our driver, Shashank, has been a bit grumpy froom the very start. He's been complaining about the roads earlier also, but as we start the climb to Rohtang La, the large puddles and watery patches that we have to drive through have gotten him particularly worried. ("La" = pass)

In the end, as we are waiting to cross the muddy stretch that at rAni nAlA, our driver simply refuses to go further. Click on the video to see the road that prompted him to give up.

Actually, there was no reason for us not to have made it in an Innova. It was just that this driver had no hill experience, and he was simply too scared. There were many innovas that passed - and even smaller cars - maruti vans - were going through. The border roads people that were repairing the road - and opening it up for short intervals each way - did know what they were doing. But the moral of the story may be to plan such trips in May or June rather than July!!


These are the kind of roads that our driver simply refused to go on, though we pointed out how many other toyota innovas were going. We called up the owner of the vehicle, but in the end it was of course the driver's decision.


view of marhi from rAni nAlA. by now, however, we are completely disinterested in the view after the driver gives up.

So we are forced to come back to Marhi. At the restaurant where we have been lunching, we run into a local driver. He says he can go; so we manage to negotiate with him and book a bolero camper in which we get going, some six hours behind schedule. It will cost us Rs. 25,000 for the drive to Leh (one week plust two days for him to get back.

The money is of course an issue, but there is the even bigger question of how do we get our cycles back to Kanpur - the original plan was that they would go back in the car we had come in.

Anyhow, all this means we will now be driving to Keylong instead of riding there.


emergency!! after our driver ditched us, we had to scramble for resources. at the lunch shop we managed to hire a bolero camper that would take us across today itself... here is the team that loaded the car. our new driver, bhimsen, second from left.


squeezing in between the tata trucks, this is the fleece that prized pashmina shawls are made from.

en route we will cross several large herds of pashmina goats, thick with wool. this flock was being driven by three nomadic shepherds and their black sheep-dogs. these flocks travel across huge distances - coming down to the plains in the winter and moving higher in these summer months.

here is a video of the dense pushing and shoving fleece coats crossing the road above Marhi. we were then waiting for the road to open.

Furthermore, by the time we start, the barrier is down, and we have to wait (had we known this, we could have packed breakfast and headed down with the previous batch of cars). Once we cross Rohtang La, the traffic diisappears, and we are in Keylong by evening. We check into a large family room at the Himachal Tourism hotel, The Chandrabhaga.

Factsheet day 2

JUL 8: Marhi (3303 m) to Keylong (3145 m) via Rohtang La (3988 m). 86 Km.  

        10km - climb to 3700m 10 switchback / zigzags 
        16km - Rohtang La 6 + 2 zigzags 3950m
        23 ? 32km - Gramphu - Chandrabhaga [Chenab] river valley 3200m 
   	       (road to Spiti/ Kunzum la 4550m going to right) 
        36km - Khoksar cross the river
        51km Sissu / Jagdang  - 3120m hotels
        	         [ small climbs ~200 m ups and downs]		
        79km - Thandi 3000m Chandra river from W joins Bhaga
       	       junction - road to Udaipur going left
        86km Keylong 3145m.  Night at Himachal Tourism hotel		[+86k 122k]

	Facilities the way: Small shops at Sissu and Gonda.  Petrol station
	at Tandi.

	Hotel at Keylong: The Chandrabhaga, about rs.3K for 4 people
	including dinner and breakfast.

ved vyas temple: source beas river; the beas river is named after ved vyas.

we cross the vyas rikhi snow peak just after the pass. our new driver bhimsen is resourceful and competent on the hills, and soon we have come down the hill to the small hamlet of gramphoo. this desolate place with its nondescript shacks is an important junction -the road to spiti goes off from here. Even at the junction, it was unpaved.

our car gets checked and an "entry" is made at khoksar - not so for other cars.

the mouth of the rohtang tunnel comes out -just before the village of Teling about 5km west of khoksar.

manali-leh cycling pages:

* page II: day 2-3: [keylong-patseo-sarchu]
* page III: day 4-6: [sarchu-brandy nala-tso kar-leh]
* page IV: day 7-9: [leh, pangong lake, masked dance, zanskar]

[bumpy trails bicyclists homepage]     

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