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Chapter 5 - Got Leh'd

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Plains, Ups & Downs The only thing I remembered from the last 10 hours was puking twice (without even drinking :p ). I never thought that a human body behaves in such’a manner in less oxygen zone. It feels weird when you wake up in the middle of the night just for puking - - but I am thankful to the tentwala who kept that tumbler beside me. This was the first time in our trip that Sumit woke me up and asked me to get ready. The weather was so chilly; mercury would have frozen in the thermometer.   I came out of the tent just for 2 minutes and went right away inside the bundle of quilts. Within next 10 minutes I was forced by Sumit, vidit & tentwala to come out of the tent and get ready. We decided to move slowly and stop at the Army medical camp nearly 15 kms from Bharatpur as told by tentwala. Co-incidentally we met the same riders, whom we encountered at our first naala crossing (refer chapter 4 ).They told us to move with them and asked us not to waste more time a

Chapter 4 - First Glimpse of Snow

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Scary Night – Sound Sleep – Awesome day Last Night was my first experience of sleeping in a tent and the bizarre sound from outside made it even more worth. At first, I thought it’ll be difficult to sleep in a tent but to my surprise the moment I went in the tent after my second check on the source of that sound – the moment I closed my eyes – I reached in a world of deep sleep. We sometimes say to our dear ones “Good Night, Sleep tight” – that came true to us that night as we slept in sleeping bags and once you are in sleeping bags, it is impossible to move any of your limb. Morning view  I woke up the next morning at 5 30 (Sumit & Vidit were still sleeping) and went out of the tent to see how the hills look like at this time. The scenery was out of this world but I could not enjoy the mesmerizing nature for even 2 minutes as it was extremely cold outside and I was in a t-shirt. I came back running towards our tent and removed the jackets from the bags & woke up

Chapter 3 - Sun to Fog

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Get Up ! Get Up ! Get Up! The level of excitation for the trip was so high; it made me wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning without any fraction of laziness in my body. There was no difference between me and an Army Colonel at that time (the way I was shouting at Sumit and Vidit to get up) J J . Keeping in mind - the time bungee ropes will take (for tying our bags) we started moving out of our room at 4. The one day experience of tying and untying bungee ropes was just of little help as we again took a lot of time in tying them on our machines (nearly 1 hour). Tying the bungees , putting on our elbow and knee guards, paying the guest house bill (after waking him up) and consuming some cookies + 5 stars took us 90 minutes and we were ready to hit the road by 5 30. The thump of mine and sumit’s motorcycle was on! but vidit’s machine was answering dead. All 3 of us tried to kick start vidit’s motorcycle but we failed. While vidit was kicking hard to bring his motorcycle to life

Chapter -2 -The Flag Off

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4 alarms set – 4 alarms failed. Sumit came running in our room saying “utho saalo, time dekho zara” (just see the time !!! wake up guys!!). I saw the numbers 345 in my phone and jumped out of my bed. Me  and vidit were astonished as 2 strange things happened: 1.       Both of us set 2 alarms each on our mobiles and still the alarms failed to wake us up. (hate you nokia). 2.      How on earth sumit woke up so early ??? !!! I think we never woke up at this time ever in our lives and it was evident because we were acting like sloths at that time (lazy & lethargic). We thanked GOD coz we packed everything last night. After a tough fight with our laziness, we finally started moving out of the apartment at 0430. We never thought that tying our baggage with bungee ropes will be so difficult and time taking. We had 3 motorcycles and except for the saddle bag we were confused that which bag should be tied on which bullet. After applying different combinations and a lot

Chapter -1 -The Adrenaline Rush..

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  “The adrenaline rush started when Sumit barged into my cubicle and asked me about the Leh-Ladakh trip”. A normal day was going on in my office and I was working in spite of the fact that my manager was on leave that day. I was in my manager’s cubicle and I had no idea why Sumit was there. He was not in a very good mood. He said “yaar koi banda he ni mil raha Leh trip k liye”(We need some riders for our Leh Ladakh Trip and we aint getting any) and my spur-of-the-moment reaction was “hello! Mujhse pucha?” (Hello! Why didn’t u ask me ?). That was the moment when i thought that I am going to fulfil my dream of “Leh Ladakh Motorcycle trip”. He asked me twice “Are u sure?” My answers were “pakka” (yes bro!) and “pakka Bhai Done!” (definitely Yeaz!! Done!!). Sumit told me that vidit is also ready along with his 2 friends. This made the group count = 5, viz. Me , Sumit , Vidit and vidit’s 2 more friends.   We planned to start on the 30 th June ‘12 which was Saturday and