3 March 2018. The day I was eagerly waiting for. I landed in Chandigarh at 7 am after taking an early morning flight from New Delhi. Thanks to the 11 pm flight I took from Pune to New Delhi the previous day, I was left with no option but to spend the night at the airport lounge and had to manage with just a couple of hours of sleep! Luckily, Abishek had reached Chandigarh a day prior and checked into a hotel in Zirakpur on the Shimla highway itself so we were saved the hassle of entering the main city.
Abishek had thoroughly checked both our motorcycles- a Royal Enfield Classic 500 and a Classic 350 the previous evening. Since we were embarking on a ride to Spiti, naturally we expected the machines to be in top-notch condition, which they indeed were! Duly serviced and aptly customized for touring, each motorcycle came with a raised handlebar, off-road tyres, gel seats, USB charger and a luggage carrier. Just FYI, we had booked our motorcycles through Garrari Junkees, who are hands down the best out there! So next time any of you needs a motorcycle in Chandigarh, you know where to go! (You can thank me later :P)
From a maintenance perspective, we carried the entire toolkit and every spare part (including spare saddlebags) that you can think of- tubes, cables, levers etc. Obviously, if something went wrong, we had to help ourselves and hence, we did not want to take any chances whatsoever.
I reached the hotel, took a quick shower, geared up and put all my luggage into the tail bag so we could directly start riding once we were done with breakfast. If I recollect correctly, it was at about 9.30-10 am that we started our ride after fueling up. The planned destination for the night was Narkanda, approximately 65 km beyond Shimla. A couple of Abishek’s friends, Murli and Ghanshyam, natives of Manali were supposed to join us at Shimla so we decided to head there straight for lunch without wasting much time.
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First halt for tea enroute Shimla
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The road all the way to Shimla, barring a few under-construction patches, is well laid out. The weather improved tremendously as we proceeded and it started getting cold beyond Kasauli. With mountains and hamlets all around, the view was breathtaking and the cool breeze indeed was giving a different high!
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| Entering Himachal Pradesh from Punjab |
With a few halts in between for tea and pictures, we made it to Shimla in good time- around 3 hours and the temperature was somewhere around 8-10 degrees. Yes, it was cold out there but this was just the beginning and nothing compared to what lay ahead in store for us. It also started getting dark so we took out our rain gears. From here, we were 4 of us on 2 motorcycles and 1 gypsy. It is always great to meet new people whilst on the road, more so when you share a common passion.
After spending about an hour or two in Shimla, we started our journey towards Narkanda. We were supposed to ride through Kufri and Theog, where the possibility of fresh snowfall was considerably high. However, apart from some chilly drizzle, we managed to get out of these towns safely.
One of Ghanshyam's friend, a native of Theog, had invited us to his house for some amazing chai and snacks. And of course, it was hard to resist the offer when we saw the house. Look at some of the pictures here-
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Abishek just posing outside Ghanshyam's friends house in Theog
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| Inside the house. Nicely warmed up! |
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| That was how the approach road to the house was |
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| View from the house |
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We made it to Narkanda by about 6.30-7 pm. Unfortunately, there was just 1 good hotel that was open but had only a single room available. It was almost dark and we had no option but to ride further and search for accommodation.
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| This is the beautiful tiny town of Narkanda and there you can see the highway |
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| One on the road! |
Murli and Ghanshyam went ahead and after about 20 km, found a fantastic place 1 km off the highway overlooking the mountains in a small town called Kumarsain. Unfortunately, however, Abishek and I took a brief halt for tea about 10 km before Kumarsain to enjoy the lovely rain and weather and eventually ended up riding almost 9 km beyond the hotel simply because we couldn't spot the hotel on the main highway. It was pitch dark and luckily both of us had full network connectivity so we turned back. Finally, at about 8 pm, we parked our motorcycles and unpacked all our luggage. Good quality rain gears and footwear ensured that we weren't drenched!
Some lovely dinner and conversations followed and since I already wanted to catch up on sleep, I fell flat at about 11 pm.
Looking back, it was an eventful day indeed because we rode further than we initially planned and experienced rains when the surrounding air temperature was about 7-8 degrees. But this was just the beginning. And mind you it rained all night pretty heavily. Probably snowed too, who knows! ;-)
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| All set for some rain and snow!! |
Route- Chandigarh - Kasauli- Shimla- Kufri- Theog- Narkanda- Kumarsain
To know more about what the next day had in store for us, keep watching this space!
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