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Today we entered the Himalayas! They began in Sonemarg, 80km NE of Srinegar. It finally felt like today we had begun the ride that we'd signed up for. Another cool thing was I got to ride with the lads from the armed forces, who planned to start half an hour early and stick ahead. Actually we started half an hour late because one of their back tyres was flat! This was ok though because we got to see how to change one on a Royal Enfield. This is a complicated process if you don't have a wheel stand like our mechanics, a troubling omission on their part.
Following is a blow by blow (sometimes literally) account of how to change the back wheel. You unscrew the bolts as per usual, including the one holding the drum brake linkage. You then have to lean the bike over with the help of friends and struggle for a while. Finally the back wheel will grudgingly release itself like a shellfish giving up its grip on a rock. You then get any scrap of paper lying around and bang the wheel until the washers, bearings and other odd bits in the middle fall out on it. Oh I forgot to mention you need to pull the axle out first. This will be used again later, as opposed to only some of the bits that came out of the wheel, so keep it somewhere safe. Then you put the replacement wheel in after transferring from the old wheel the 4 rubber seals from the left side of the hub. Put some of the other bits that came out of the hub back in too, like a few bearings, in the same order they came out of the old one. Don't forget to transfer the brake housing from the left side too. You're almost done! Once you've struggled a bit more to get the wheel back in, this is kind of like getting the horses into their stalls at the start of the Melbourne Cup, you put the axel in. It's okay to smash the living s*** out of it, it should go through, don't worry about the thread on the end. If that doesn't work, lower the wheel so the hub is below the frame where you can gently, slowly push the axel through from the left side to align all of the delicate, complex, low clearance tolerance internals. Then again gently raise the wheel so its centre's aligned with the frame tabs and slide the axel smoothly through from the right side. Rebolt it, don't forget reattaching the brake rod. Adjust the distance from the front sprocket to take up the chain slack using the crescent shaped metal pieces with ratchet looking notches round the edge. You're done!
Without further ado off we puttered in the direction of Kargil on NH1D. It was really nice hanging out with these guys. I have some Indian friends in Kuwait and wanted to do the ride here with them but at least I got to do this one with some similar aged people, as opposed to the Kiwis who are all late 50s early 60s (reminds me of the age group that was on the Tibet tour in 2002). Really there is not much to say about the route except a torrent of babble about the amazing scenery, multiple glaciers which the road cut through, a raging river accompanying us most of the way that is fed by them, snow filled valleys right next to us, snow capped mountains surrounding us, mountain ascents via strings of hairpin bends on rocky, dusty, thin roads with nothing to protect us from certain death skidding down the precipice off one side but our wits and calmness in the face of constant oncoming, black fume belching, lurching trucks and careening buses. We were flies, we dodged today's swats... For the most part.
The main site visited was the Operation Vijay memorial. This commemorates the 1999 war pushing back Pakistan which had encroached upon Indian territory from Tiger Mountain to Tololing. The Pakistanis did this over winter, despite a gentleman's agreement that both sides would retreat to camp over the colder months. Come spring, they began bombarding NH1 from the mountain tops, taking out army convoys. India won this tough uphill battle obviously with the aid of artillery and the airforce. There were still some legitimate acts of bravery amongst soldiers which were documented in the memorial museum. For example, a captain managed to take an enemy fixed machine gun and turn it on them, killing 6 before succumbing. He and many others received posthumous medals for bravery. No matter which army it is it's always riveting to read accounts of these sorts of acts of sacrifice and audacity. On the face of it their commitment seems stupid, I still think all wars are stupid, but you can't really argue with someone being so patriotic as to, in the words of a number of signs at the memorial, give their today so we could have our tomorrow.
On we went. I mentioned swats earlier. Well, one of the guys narrowly escaped a swat today. He was whip and about 5km before Kargil I noticed I couldn't see him in my mirrors. Not anticipating anything was amiss because he seemed to be the most competent rider of all 3 and the road was perfect here, I retraced wondering what was the delay. 7km before Kargil I came across a group of people helping him pull his bike up off some rocks next to the road. He'd briefly stopped paying attention and clipped some rocks laying on the edge. Luckily he'd been thrown onto the road and only the bike went across the rocks, they were quite sharp. The bike was written off, he had only a small cut on his right little finger and a big scrape on the back of his helmet. The lessons are obvious, but it also highlighted a positive of their riding style - they average 40km/h... As opposed to the Kiwis who go up to 110 and essentially race each other, even through towns. If he'd come off at that speed he'd've been in the aforementioned raging icy river after first being battered and bloodied across the the rocks. We may never have found him. So he had the best type of crash, where he could walk afterward and even better he got to exchange his broken bike for the perfectly good one on the back up ute rejected by the Kiwis for its having a right hook gear lever!
At about 9pm we rolled into the Ladakh Highlands Camp. We were tired but safe. We even got to do about an hour of riding in the dark on the twisting dirt track that is the 20km section of NH1D after Kargil.
That was not all, however, in terms of crashes today. When we arrived at camp none knew where Manoj was. This is because he'd had his third off, possibly caused by his clutch failing. It happened somewhere after the Operation Vijay memorial. Apparently he called the back up vehicle as they'd gone ahead(!!!) of him, but they refused to backtrack because he was 30km behind! This turned into quite an ideal for Manoj because he then had to battle his way to camp alone, for a good while in the dark, on a banged up bike, no clutch and probably many bruises. Quite how that backup vehicle got ahead of him I don't know, and quite how they convinced themselves it was ok not to go back for him is also something I can't fathom. Manoj was very lucky because his crash was bad enough to break the headlight lens and bend the housing, but the reflector and globe were intact. He also mentioned to me the following day that he is not familiar with riding using a right footed gear lever and in stressful situations finds himself reverting to old habits like searching for gears with his left foot. There is one extra piece of information which explains a lot of so far inexplicable things about how he has struggled to fill his role in this trip. Read tomorrow's entry for that.
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Piyush Liked it very much.....