DAY 3
Kalpa to Spillow (40km)
Today has been an incredibly interesting day as the ‘plan’ slowly fell apart due to incredible, uncontrollable circumstances on the roads…but more of that later! (See what I’m doing there, tying you in to reading the whole thing!)
So Rich and I woke up not frozen to death and after many, many prayers actually to brilliant sunshine blazing through our window. After how cold it was the night before, and all the talk of -17 tomorrow I was dreading the worst, but I have to say the sun was beating down and helped us start the day in a positive mood. Once we had dressed (oh wait there?, we slept in all the clothes we had to avoid hyperthermia) and enjoyed breakfast the next thing we had to do was visit the local government office to secure an ILP. (I didn’t ask a lot, but it’s essentially a bit of paper that lets you ride your motorbike across the Himalayas).
This was not a simple task. One thing that Rich and I have learned in our 72 hours here in India is that it is very much a ‘paper based’ system which takes lot of time and patience…and this experience was no different. We filled the forms out in about 17 seconds, had our photo taken in about 43 seconds and then sat and waited for about 90 minutes for some high ranking government official to sign our form. We sat, waited, chilled and generally tried to embrace the process but it was quite frustrating. The sun was shining, we finally had all the right gear on and yet we couldn’t go anywhere. This would 100% come back and bite us on the ass later on as you’ll see! (Still tempting you with a much more fun and interesting blog later on!)
Eventually Rich and I said “let’s go and have a wander around the village whilst we wait”. Then, just as when you are in a restaurant waiting for your food and you finally decide to go for a wee and your food turns up just to annoy you, the government official wandered back over with our bit of paper. We quickly jumped on our bikes (Eddy is doing very well, thanks for asking) and headed off for the day. We had a little, tiny bit of a false start as we initially stopped for petrol but they wouldn’t sell it to none locals so we got turned away, but we had enough fuel to get going.
The initial riding was again very cool and lots of fun. The roads were good, the weather was good, Eddy was purring and we cracked off 25km with no issues whatsoever. Eventually the incredible roads started to be interspersed with sections of gravel roads, or shingle roads, or sharp rocky roads or worst still wet muddy roads, but it was all still fun as the weather was incredible. We enjoyed some hairpin bends, we crossed some small streams, we rode along roads that passed under huge, overhanging rocks, we crossed rickety old bridges that should be in Indiana Jones films and we zoomed along beautiful tarmac roads. It was amazing fun. And then someone fell over. Me!
It was such a stupid, nothing fall as well. We’d rode along loads of roads consisting of rocks and shingle, stood on our pegs (rather than sat on our seats because it is much more comfortable) with no issues and no big deal. Then somehow I ended up at the front of the group (as Mat stopped to film us going through a stream) along a particularly rocky, uneven and thin part of the road just as two massive dumper trucks came at us. The first truck passed us with no issue (as there was LOTS of room to pass) but then the second truck and I came face to face just as the road narrowed to the width of a piece of spaghetti and I may have panicked a little. I decided to stop, to let the 15 tonne truck come through, but as I braked and stuck my left foot down to stop, I put it down on some loose shingle and my foot slid out from under me. What followed was a slow motion ‘fall’ as I tried to stop the bike (and myself) from falling over with zero success. I eventually found myself stricken on some sharp, jagged rocks but had luckily fallen perfectly and had no weight of the bike on myself. The bike was quickly lifted off me and I picked myself up sheepishly to much initial concern, and eventual merriment as I was the first to fall. Whilst I was fine I soon noticed that EDDY WAS HURT! I’ll never forgive myself, ever!
We were soon back up and running though and despite my embarrassment, with no ill effects. We continued for about another 10km before we decided to make an impromptu stop in Spillow for some coffee and snacks. Spillow was a very small village but we landed at the one coffee/snack place and enjoyed some hot, milky, sugary coffee along with some freshly cooked Samosas. Soon we were again back on the road, fully content, enjoying the amazing conditions and all set to push on the relishing 90km to Chango Nichla. But this is where the plan fell apart! (Aren’t you glad you kept reading!)
Zipping along nicely we soon came across a growing queue of traffic parked on the road. We pushed to the front, as you can on motorbikes, and parked up. Asking around we heard that whilst undertaking some blasting to improve the roads, there had been a little landslide that needed clearing up before we could progress. OK we thought, no problem, we’ll join the queue. After about an hour sat in the road intermittently being covered on huge dust clouds we went to check on what had happened. We soon found that the ‘little landslide’ was in fact a huge landslide that they weren’t in any way prepared for. Whilst blasting out a small rock they had in fact caused a huge overhang to fall into the ‘road’, for which they only had one digger on site to deal. Now. Whilst I like to think I am pretty capable with words there is no way I can describe the scale of this. Check out Rich or mines Instagram and you’ll see what I mean.
This meant a huge delay. Initially we were kind of told one hour so we sat by our bikes and waited. Some played Uno, some slept and some made friends with a stray dog (yes, that was me). Anyway, after a couple of hours of waiting we decided that rather than wait and risk having to ride another 75km in the dark, we would go back to Spillow, eat and chill out for a bit and wait for traffic to pass us once the road was opened. Once back in Spillow we went back to the same cafe and relaxed. Initially we had some more coffee and some more Samosas, but eventually it started to go dark so we realised we would need to stay here and try again tomorrow. Mat soon sorted rooms and food for us and we realised we could now chill the f*^k out. At this point two things happened.
The first was that whilst we sat and drank coffee overlooking the road, a randy bull started to mount a willing cow right in front of us. The problem with this was that right in front of us was where we had parked our motorcycles and the bull was pushing the cow right at our bikes. The poor doe eyed thing was bounced onto Mats bike (Leopard) which looked like it was going to topple into Richs bike (Honeybadger) and ultimately into my bike, gorgeous Eddy. Mat ran out and scared the two bovines in the middle of their love act though so the crisis was averted. Thank goodness,
The second thing that happened was that we gut drunk. As a group, We all got drunk. VERY drunk. We started out on large Kingfishers, which soon became large glasses of rum. We drank a bit and played UNO. Then we drank a little more and played some music. Then we drank a LOT more and started singing and dancing. Like REALLY singing and dancing. We were having SUCH fun that we barely noticed that the village became full of cars again as the road had obviously reopened. Even sooner again the town was quieter once more as all the blocked up cars had passed through. But it wasn’t quiet for long as the last ‘car’ to stop in town was in fact the local bus service driven by their ace driver, Subash Sharma.
Subash immediately wandered over to our little kerbside party, drank his body weight in Rum (in about 15 minutes) and then really got the party started. Soon people were doing the ‘light bulb’ Bollywood type dance, holding chairs in the air (whilst dancing) and generally acting very, very drunk. This continued for a while, and was very funny. After the stress and tension of the morning at the Government office, followed by 2 hours sat waiting for the road to open, this was just what was needed. Soon all the lagers were gone, all the Rum was gone and it was time for a quick chicken curry and then it was time for bed.
After the previous nights sub-zero conditions I am pleased to report that tonight’s accommodation was much better. Rich and I showered under a lukewarm stream of water and then retired to our warm, single beds ahead of tomorrow’s further adventures. We agreed as a group on an early start to try and make up lost time, but it will be interesting to see who makes it after the partying that we enjoyed this evening. On the plus side, if we don’t fancy riding we now know a decent bus driver!
BTW – For the record am writing this using an Apple iPhone ‘notes’ in bed, at 00.15am following lots of Kingfishers and Runs, so apologies for any mistakes.
#SorryNotSorry
#WhatsImportantToYou
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