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TODAY'S RIDE AND MENTAL STATE ;-)
Today was a tough leg through many towns, along stretches of thin hillside roads, flickering between kamikaze trucks and buses. I'm exhausted. I have blisters on my hand from twisting the accelerator. In terms of my impressions of India, it reminds me of riding in Cambodia but with more hills and trucks. It went through my mind that this is actually just another, bigger Cambodia. The same disaster on multiple levels - poverty, lack of education, criminals in government stealing all the money. The same unbelievably poor roads and driving skills. The same seeming disregard for the value of human life. People actually have motorcycles though, so they're a bit richer - most can only afford scooters in Cambodia. There also seems a narrower gap between rich and poor going by cars - haven't seen any Range Rovers yet but if this were Cambodia I definitely would have.
Because of these issues I'm very glad to be doing this route because it takes in natural landscapes and avoids cities, where these problems are most apparent and effect on my mood most severe. I have the same approach for all moto rides really. Call it disrespectful but humans mainly seem to be a force of destruction of the natural world. The pile of rubbish which many human settlements basically are means that it's a better to avoid especially the large ones and go in the hills.
The enormity of this undertaking is dawning on me, I feel unprepared. Mainly because I still haven't recovered from sleep deprivation, I have had Delhi belly all day, I have a headache and what feels like the start of a fever. It was in this state that I just attended a briefing about traveling through Ladakh by Ajay Raina, co author of "Ladakh Simplified", a guide book. As he went through all the potential problems of surviving in high altitude, like not having the strength to lift the bike if it falls, having to avoid running and any other physical excursion, the risk of simply randomly passing out... I realised my top priority in the next two days was to restore my health and get some extended sleeps. So I'm starting that now with an early night tonight. We're also all starting diavox treatment to reduce the effects of high altitude, but this means we have to drink half a litre of water an hour or so. We'll be in high altitude for 3 days, having to be mindful about this medication and drinking water all the time adds to the sense of a survival mission. It's not only drinking but pissing. Basically we'll be drinking and pissing every hour's stop. Reminds me of the Oxfam Trailwalker! Although there we were pissing every 20 minutes!
IMPRESSIONS OF HOW THE RIDE IS ORGANISED
A note about how the ride is being lead so far. It seemed like the leader was racing us. He didn't slow down when someone went to the front to wave at him clearly to reduce speed. He didn't have a system of the person behind the leader stopping at turns to ensure everyone went the right way. We didn't stop for toilet or photo breaks at all. We didn't even stop for lunch! We also rode further than planned, ~350km instead of 250 and to top it all off he couldn't find the hotel as he'd never been there before and didn't plan how he'd take us there. We found it after going the wrong way for 10km. Basically not a confidence inspiring start especially considering we are planning to ride in some of the toughest terrain in the world where getting lost or riding without breaks is suicidal.
So the Kiwi group, who make up the majority of riders, have decided to take over and will lead the ride. We'll use the Indian leader's military experience and connections for all the formalities in Kashmir near the "line of control" with Pakistan, and we'll run this tour as it should be done with adequate breaks and as a group so no one is left behind.
Kind of a pity but the leader's obviously quite inexperienced. Another issue is he doesn't have a GPS, neither does anyone else. Thankfully I have the OSMand app with the whole of India in it so can navigate offline with that. This means we have as good of a GPS as anything else and at least one other rider is going to be using the same on his phone, so we'll have a back up. This will be good for the roads but unfortunately lacks detail for POIs like hotels, for example I had to add tonight's Hotel Samson to the map, wonder how long it will take to appear on OpenStreetMap for everyone else to see.
IMPRESSIONS OF THE OTHER RIDERS
Whilst I've been harsh about the leader, he has an impressive background being a retired colonel. He was involved in unexploded ordnance clearing and one of the last things he did in his career was participate in a UN peace keeping mission to Columbia. He therefore had some useful skills for the militarily tense area we're headed to and might even save us from some mines if we come across any! There are 5 other Indians in the group, 2 who live in NZ the rest are in the airforce (chopper pilot), army and navy. These latter 3 are my age, are very capable and have done some pretty impressive things. The guy in the navy was describing how his ship takes 7 hours or so to start, and consumes of the order of 450 tonnes of fuel a day. The army guy showed us some pictures of. mountain camps in 18' of snow! There was also a shot of a smaller camp up a mountain manned by 6 guys for 3 months over winter. They can't leave it, they have no Internet or TV and have try not to go postal.
Then there are the Kiwis, who've done a group ride in India last year. They're on a charity ride really, for Guru Prabh Aasra, an NGO for the homeless in Rai Singh Nagar. They'd all visited it last year and donated $NZ10,000, enough for the NGO to look after 4 people for a year. They're going to double that amount in fundraising this year. They're fairly well organised with a special blue T shirt with their logo and a flag mounted to each bike. It's nice to hear English spoken how I'm mostly used to it again. It's been a year I've been away from Australia so these guys are the closest I've come to home in a long while and I'm really glad to be with them.
CONCLUSION
I just remembered a dream of mine to ride a moto in the Uri Mountain Range in Tibet when I was there on a tour in 2002. I think this ride, given it's in the Himalayas, is a close enough fulfilment of that goal. I'll see how I feel at the end, it will be interesting to see if I'm up for more extreme riding like this.
Starting weight: ~79kg
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