Our journey from Kasol takes us out of the Parvati Valley, back on to the national highway by Mandi and from there on to Dharamshala about 100km west. Dharamshala is the town where the Tibetan government and many of their citizens live in exile since the invasion from China around 1950. Having been in Tibet and Ladakh I would like to see what it’s like.

After all the rain we’ve been having the dam before Mandi is in full flood – quite a spectacular sight. The journey is long but luckily the road is mostly good and we manage to maintain a reasonable speed and cover good distance. At some point in the mid afternoon it starts to rain lightly and we get more and more soaked as we wind our way through the mountain roads. We stop off at a small road-side tea shop and attempt to give our layers a chance to dry somewhat, as we replenish our energy. The drying part isn’t much of a success.

When we move on it gets very foggy, which slows us down but it’s a beautiful scene. One stretch of road has been seriously damaged by rain and for several kilometres we find ourselves negotiating mud ruts, rock and stone where the road surface has been washed away. Eventually we’re riding along a soft green plateau on our left, surrounded on all sides by beautiful mountain peaks; the tall ones ahead on the right are where we’re going and they are magnificent: jagged grey rock with a splash of snow in places. The road becomes even and the surface is good tarmac, long curves weaving by several small villages – a dream to ride on! I open up the throttle and let the machine growl us along into the now yellowing horizon of the sunset. We need to make distance as it will be dark soon and driving in the dark here is like walking at the end of a shooting range praying not to get hit.

The inevitable happens: the sun goes down, we’re unable to see anything resembling a hotel along the way and we’re so close to Dharamsala we can practically smell it. A sign informs us we have 8km to go. It takes us an hour and it’s a nightmare journey! It’s dark, our bike is so back-heavy that the headlight beam falls well higher than it should and though I stop off under a light on the roadside I find there’s no way to adjust it. The headlights of oncoming traffic cause everything around us (including the road) to fade into pitch black and we have to proceed at snail’s pace.

Apparently in Dharamsala, we still see nothing around us that looks like a place to stay so we decide to continue on the few kilometres up to McLeod Ganj, the main Tibetan area. The roads are good but strangely the bike stalls a few times when not revving high, and the horn isn’t performing as loudly as before which is a bit worrying – probably something to do with the wet? We finally get there and spend an hour or two finding accommodation, most of which is either expensive or not in particularly well maintained. We decide on a simple room in the Green Hotel at 700INR per night.

By now it’s 22:00, we’re tired, fed up and hungry, so we go out to find something to eat. We walk into a nice looking, open sided restaurant with lovely Tibetan decor. It’s called Himalaya Bar and Restaurant. There are a good 15 people inside and an open buffet. Looking out for a table we realize something unusual is going on so we ask if this is a private function. The guy says to us that actually the restaurant is new and will only open in two days; this is a pre-opening celebration and they had the buddhist monks around earlier to say prayers and such. However they welcome us in, seat us at a table and give us food from the buffet and whiskey to drink, all without any charge. Talk about being in the right place at the right time! Well we end up having interesting conversation with Tenzing, one of the owners, and promise to come back for the opening in two days. What a great bunch of guys.

The next couple of days we spend looking around looking around the town. One day we visit the Buddhist temple at the Dalai Lama’s residence, end up eating a great PIZZA at a nearby restaurant/library and in the evening end up drinking a few drinks with a significantly drunken couple of guys that have driven up from Punjab for a good weekend out and to visit some waterfall. It’s a good laugh.

The following morning we plan to take a trip to an adjoining village starting with B but the Endield refuses to start – looks like a battery fault. A rolling-start down a steep hill fails to work and I end up spending a few hours troubleshooting in front of somebody’s little convenience shop to shelter me and the bike from the rain. Eventually a couple of Indian guys help out and manage to produce a wire from somewhere and we jump-start using the battery of one of their bikes, which allows me to ride the gruelling mile of steep bad road down to an enfield mechanic called Raj. Within a half hour he has established the fault (a shorted contact on the alternator which in turn fails to charge the battery) and with a few tools and a bit of solder the problem is repaired for a very modest fee indeed. I love this guy!

When we eventually reach the village we view a temple site with a swimming pool fed from a mountain spring with many Indians swimming in it, and about 20 minutes walk uphill there is a beautiful mountain waterfall splashing into a rock pool – again with many Indians swimming in it. It’s very rainy on and off so we have to pull into small “cafes” under the rocky overhangs and wait, which results in numerous photo shoots with the abundant Indian holiday makers there and lots of good laughs. (Incidentally it’s the first and only occasion I am asked to pose together for a photograph by a girl). We also discover a nice shanti little affair called the Shiva Cafe, which lies about 15 minutes up a steep rocky path in the most serene surroundings.

We stop there for a Honey-Lemon-Ginger tea and guess who rocks up? The two guys from the previous night, once again in a very happy mood and armed with a decent bottle of Indian whisky. As I’m on the bike and it’s getting dark we cannot join them and we manage to get back downhill before sunset – and I hope they slept up there because decending that path in the dark would have been an attempt at suicide.

On the Sunday before we leave we visit the Tibetan restaurant again as promised (Ebru enters first and I have to pick asomething up from the room). When I arrive I’m turned away by a waiter stating that the restaurant doesn’t open until tomorrow. I am sure it’s Sunday and this is really confusing; Ebru is nowhere to be seen and I explain that the chef and owner invited us to for today.. Eventually I get inside and find her sitting at a table and only two other tables occupied, one by three westerners and the other by a local crowd including the owner, a monk and someone familiar from the first night. The chef Shyam is happy to see us and cooks us up a lovely meal of chilli chicken. I have brought them a string of Tibetan prayer-flags as a good-luck gift, which I hand over to Shyam and the owner and there is applause and appreciation and the flags get strung above the entrance. I am sure they will serve their purpose.

After dinner when all have left we have a nice conversation with Shyam and tells us much about his interesting past and India. Also it turns out that the opening has been delayed til tomorrow because some guests of honour could not attend, however he specifically kept the place open as he had expected us to show up – apparently the waiter had mistaken the three other western guests for us and led them to a table – LOL – so lucky for them they also enjoyed a meal there that night.

Thanks Shyam and Co.!! You’ve been very kind to us and we hope that your restaurant will be a great success!! When we return I look forward to tasting the barbecue – in fact I might even lend you a hand at the grill!

SEE MORE PHOTOS OF DHRAMSALA

We stay in Kasol 2 nights. It’s small and beautiful with many little restaurants and cafes, some with great food and coffee/teas, and each pumping out sixties music or psychedelic trance. Yet move a few metres away from any establishment and surprisingly the sound doesn’t carry because of the thunderous rush of the river.

We spend a day sitting at a restaurant from breakfast to dinner time, working on updates for the website while rain pours down around us for most of the afternoon and evening. It’s an unusual feeling, but nice to be able to sit in a comfi place for hours without any need to go somewhere or do something.

We don’t meet anybody here really. The Israelis seem to be a pretty closed community here, spending their time together and talking in their own language; aside from a few sentences we exchange with one or two guys in some little chill-out place. I have loads of questions running through my mind I would love to ask them though. For example:

– Why do you all have dreadlocks? Isn’t that an Afro-Caribbean thing?
– Are you Jewish? I’ve heard on television that Jews have a thing about cleanliness and thus wonder how you cope in India? (Similarly the Kosher food thing…)

In the night we return to our room (lovely clean place in a new hotel called Purnima (yes again), near the start of the village coming in) and lay down for a good night’s sleep. As it’s been raining all day and still is, the river which is only a stone throw away from us, is raging and the roar is unbelievably loud. Every now and again there is a deep thud like a distant explosion, which I am sure is caused by large rocks being hurled into each other by the rapids. Smashing!

On our last morning we go for a nice breakfast at the place we were the night before before setting off, and get into a lovely conversation with two very friendly people about our age. They are also Israelis, but without the pitch tattoos, the sunglasses and the dreadlocks. They’re up here recovering from a few weeks in Rajastan where they spent a tough time filming a series for television back home. We talk about traveling in India and the Israeli community here, whom these two themselves are trying to avoid because they’ve earned them a bad name around here. Apparently many of them have gone off the rails following their army conscription back home.

Disappointingly we have a long ride ahead of us and cannot stay and get to know these people better – they seem very nice people. But we pass on our website details and who knows, perhaps we will be in touch and be able to catch up in the future.

SEE MORE PHOTOS OF KASOL

To my disappointment I hardly recognize the place. A lot has changed in the last seven years and the beautiful green river valley is now dotted with countless hotel complexes, guest houses and shop stands. In a conversation with a local I find out that seven years ago there were about two hundred hotels in Manali – now there are about two thousand!!

Riding along the main road towards the Rothang La my heart sinks – alas progress has inevitably made its way here too – and I am filled with the temptation to motor onwards and upwards to meet the great desolation beyond the Rothang pass. Of course I don’t do this because I know what kind of roads lie ahead, so we turn around and decide to check out the small village of Naggar, about 16km down-valley, to find a bit of nature less tainted by the human hand.

On the way we stop for breakfast at a small road-side cafe called Cafe Sunshine – fried eggs, chapati bread and double strength Nescafe is just what we need. As the only guests, we get talking with the owners, Mark and Anna, a lovely couple in about their forties by my estimation. Having made their fortunes in the property business, they are near retirement and own a cottage on the river bank across the street and also a house in Shimla and Goa. They move between these places every few months and they run this store for their own pleasure.

Mark is a very interesting guy: following some incidents in his past, he became obsessed with study of the holy scriptures of the major religions (Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism) and claims to have studied these for fifteen years – which seems evidently true listening to him!  He is not a follower of any particular church – he detests them – yet he is clearly a man of deep faith. We lounge at the shop under an umbrella for hours, enjoying perfect weather and having long, deep conversations about the past and present of various religions. Listening to Mark is a real education and I truly enjoy it. Conversing with him is like getting a compact summary of all the bibles I have never – but have intended to – read, plus a whole lot of historical background which would never come to light without the due research.

We exchange contacts, they offer us a place to stay with them any time we care to visit again, and we say our goodbyes and head to Naggar. Naggar is small and all the roads are narrow and steep. I am really impressed with the Enfield’s stubborn grunt pulling us and our luggage up these hills. It’s afternoon now and we’re tired, but we check out several guest houses in the area, most of which we do not like and some of which want to charge us an arm and a leg. But eventually we find a beautiful clean room with a beautiful view of the valley at a very reasonable price, in the Poornima (Purnima?) Guest House.

We freshen up and go for a drink at a nearby roof garden restaurant and then take dinner at the guest house, as prepared by the owner’s wife. We take along the rest of the pint-bottle of whisky as we’re both looking forward to a few drinks and I am hoping to annihalate the bout of diarrhoea that caught me somewhere before our arrival in Karsog.

A dinner of black dal (lentil), red rice, mixed vegetable and chapati bread is served on the roof-top. We are the only ones there and right in front of us in the darkness are thousands of tiny lights on the massive mountain sides and the valley and a clear starry sky and a half-moon. It’s spectacular, it’s romantic and the meal is the best we have eaten in India, hard to compare with the exquisite Tiger Prawns we had in Arambol.

The dishes aren’t spicy at all, which is very unusual for India! We sit, we talk, we eat and get a tad drunk as we finish the rest of the bottle of whisky with coke. It’s a perfect evening!

SEE MORE PHOTOS OF NAGGAR

We make our way from Karsog at about 09:30 towards Mandi, on roads winding through beautiful mountain forests. The views are spectacular and the riding is challenging and at some points downright scary. We average between 30 and 40km/h so it takes us a few hours to cover the 100-odd km distance.When we see a road sign signalling we’re 18km out of Mandi we get excited and contemplate our lovely guest house stay in Mandi.

We finally arrive. Mandi seems to a hole – dusty, grimy and it’s currently hosting a protest so the streets are absolute chaos. Unanimously we decide that today’s destination has to be Kullu instead, about another 70km further. We haven’t had breakfast and it’s about 14:00 so we park the bike opposite the only bar we see, hoping they will serve coffee. It’s a dark, grimy place with tinted windows facing the street. Aside from the bartender there’s only one Indian man sitting in the corner smoking cigarettes. We order coffee; it arrives; we cannot identify it as coffee, only brown water. We request more coffee powder and 15 minutes later about two tea-spoonfuls arrives on a saucer. We divide it up, drink our beverage and leave for Kullu.

3 hours or so later we arrive and I don’t recognize it. It’s a small town straddling the river and it’s chaotic and dirty. We cannot find any decent guest houses near the centre so we drive off the outskirts. We find a hotel which is on the river bank, a beautiful house with balconies, nice views and a lovely garden, but the room is disgusting. I don’t think cleaning staff come into play in this establishment. Yet we have no energy to continue the search and we know the odds of finding something better are slim.

After a shower and a rest (I watch Terminator Salvation in English on some sat channel) we ride down the main road about 1km and find a very simple Indian food kitchen. We have no idea what we will get here but we need to eat. I look at the food they’re simmering in their pots and order a dish of dark lentil stew, one of beans, an omelet each and some chapati. The meal is delicious and perfectly rounds off the hard day. Satisfied, we return home with a small bottle of whisky we buy at a nearby wine shop and have a couple of shots with coke before sinking into our sleeping bags for some well deserved rest.

From Shimla we plan to drive the back-roads via Karsog to Mandi, which we hope to be able to accomplish in one day. This way we may be in for a slower journey but it’s less time spent behind buses, cars and trucks, breathing dust and exhaust smoke and generally fearing for our lives. We have inquired with some people and they say the road is good. This I cannot dispute for the most part, but it’s high, steep and winding. As a driver I need to focus and concentrate on the road ahead, but the occasional glimpses of the massive voids to my side are enough to subconsciously let the fear take effect. Occasionally I have to consciously tell myself to relax and just ride the road ahead as any other because I find that without noticing it I have become quite tense sitting on the bike. Though my focus is on riding, my mind is bring perplexed by the massive sense of scale around me and it’s not sure whether to panic.

Ha ha ha ha! These are the joys of riding the Himalaya! There is a small price to pay but once you realize where you are and see the stunning landscape your mind is overwhelmed by the sheer hugeness of it all and the smallness of yourself, and it brings about (for me anyway) a tingling sensation of euphoria and awe inside my gut.

We ask people along the way for directions to Mandi and it seems that we’re on the right track. However a few kilometres before Karsog we make a most fortunate mistake: we take a wrong turn which takes us on a 25km detour through mountain forest and again, about 3km before Karsog, I recognize that this trail has led us to the same guest house which, in 2005, my friend Marcus and I so fortunately came across after a full day’s ride.

The Hill View Guest House is a beautiful little establishment just below the residence of its owner, Mr Saklani, who slowly built up this place following his retirement in public service health care in this area. And to my delight, Mr Saklani is alive and well, now aged around seventy three. The guest house is surrounded by orchards, forest, beautiful garden flowers and mesmerizing views of the surrounding mountains and the great valley, stepped with lush green crop plantations. This place is nature pure and we decide to stay for two nights to take it all in.

The rooms are quaint, clean and warmly decorated. We take our dinner – mostly made from his own farm produce – on the immaculate lawn Mr Saklani has planted before his house and have warm conversations with him while he puffs eagerly on his hooka pipe.

It it a revitalizing stay and we’re glad to have chanced upon this place, as I had no recollection of where it actually was. We say our farewells on the last morning before we head off and I hope that I may visit this place again some day and have the pleasure of his company once more.

We have breakfast in a small cafe/cake shop, which also has a library of Krishnamurti books for sale. It’s a nice clean place run by an Indian chap in his fifties I guess. The walls are covered in pages quitting various statements from Krishnamurti. We order an omlet and some cheese buns and I get into a conversation about the books.

The man is an absolute Krishnamurti fanatic and the conversation (mainly his) is very interesting. I have, for example, learnt that Krishnamurti is not something to do with a deity, but a man not long deceased, who was apparently a very profound thinker. After breakfast Ebru reads out some pages from one of the books. He has some very worthwhile things to say. It sounds like his teachings/thoughts are very much in line with those of the Buddha. Sounds like an interesting fellow to read up on so I take down the name.

After breakfast we take a walk up the steep path to the monkey temple, a huge orange concrete sculputre of the Monkey God Hanuman with adjacent temple site. Not surprisingly, along the whole upper path and all around the temple it it teaming with monkeys. Apparently they are very notorious for stealing things like shawls and especially sunglasses, and in few cases even aggressive. So we put our sunglasses away and walk with stick in hand to ward them off if they look like they want to approach. We spend an hour or so viewing the temple site and head for town to visit the old bazaar.

The old bazaar is on the smaller streets below the Mall. Narrow, uneven, crowded and lined with shops selling everything you can imagine. (Except good biking waterproofs) We take some photos and investigate some interesting spice and vegetable stands and start looking for a place to eat at sunset.

We find a small Indian style food kitchen on a cliff-edge which looks quite authentic so I go in and have a look at what they’ve got going in their pots. It looks good and we settle in for dark lentil, bean stew, chickpeas, chapati bread and radish-carrot-cucumber salad. The cooks, a team of 4, some North Indian-, some more Nepali- / Tibetan-looking, are very characterful and look like they definitely belong here. They’re full of smiles and take their work seriously, swinging about their large clunky ladels and cleavers. The one who is serving us is also very friendly and humorous. The meal is delicious.

As the cherry on top we want to finish off with a drink. The first bar we enter doesn’t want to serve us at first and then allows one drink, but we may not sit on the outside roof terrace like the other guests. Naturally we leave the place in search of something better. We manage to find a bar recommended in the Rough Guide. It reminds me of what an old English Raj Officer’s bar might have been like: bar with bar-stools, ornamented ceiling, ornamented lamp shades, painted walls with mirrors, fans, low round tables with plush upholstered chairs and a small window viewing to the valley. The place is small, there are two younger Indian men eating a snack and getting drunk in the one corner, an older Indian man sitting by himself having peanuts with whisky-soda and tapping his finger on the table surface whenever he wants a refill, and three waiters behind the bar. We enjoy a few whisky-cokes and then retire.

Driving in Delhi at this time of morning is an absolute dream! Traffic is more or less nonexistent, which means your journey is safer, cleaner and faster than ususal. We stop a few times to ask directions out of central Delhi to get us en route to the Grand Trunk Road going north by Karnal (also known as the NH1 or National Highway 1) but all-in-all we have no problems. In fact, once on the outskirts of northern Delhi, we miss an offramp at a major fly-over, and a few kilometres on two young men on a motorbike come buzzing up next to us asking where we’re heading, and as we tell them we’re heading for the NH1 they kindly point us back 4km into the right direction and to the turn-off we need to take. — Did we look lost??

Leaving Delhi, I am amazed at the distance we have to cover. I didn’t remember it taking so long the last time I took this route. Also there has clearly been a lot of development, because there are huge metro stations straddling the highway every few kilometres which weren’t there a few years ago.

However the traffic, once there is any, hasn’t changed at all! We’re left with clear roads almost all the way out of Delhi and the traffic materializes only about 2 hours into the drive around Sonepat. Scooters, moto-rickshaws, bicycles and animal-drawn carts mostly in the left hand lane; cars, trucks, buses in all lanes but especially straddling two lanes as suits the driver’s fancy at the time. Overtaking is done from any side and especially by cars, the only quasi-requirement being a toot on the horn somewhere during the manouvre. This is not riding for the faint hearted and requires full concentration at all times and healthy predictive skills! (Or alternatively blind faith in a God of your choosing.)

The NH1 is for the most part just a long straight stretch of relatively even tarmac lined by dusty towns and large eucalyptus trees backed by green fields. Having left so early we’re enough ahead of the traffic that we’re able to ride a steady 80km/h along most of the NH1, except that there is a lot of maintenance going on, meaning that every few kilometres the highway is diverted along a smaller side road of lesser surface quality and more moving obstacles, thus requiring a reduction in speed.

To Ebru this is a new experience altogether: not only is she new to riding pillion on the back of a motorbike, but on a fully laden cruiser in these Indian driving conditions, I can understand why she looks a little bit nervous. We stop a few times for short breaks, to have a refreshing drink or some food, and when I ask her whether she’s comfortable and enjoying the ride, she doesn’t have much to say except that it’s “scary”. Yet fortunately whenever we’re about to move on she still bravely climbs back on and I’m sure she’ll get used to it soon. I don’t mention anything about mountain road riding as I’d rather she have the opportunity to savour the experience fully.

A few kilometres after the city of Chandigarh we start to see the foothills of the Himalaya rise out of the ground ahead of us. Once we reach them the road conditions deteriorate dramatically and the traffic situation decends into total chaos. There are hundreds of jeeps and cars carrying mostly local tourists to the cool heights of Shimla and beyond, heavily laden bicylce rickshaws being pushed uphill by sinuey, sweating men, buses providing their services to various destinations local and remote, and of course, and endless stream of questionably maintained trucks ferrying tons and tons of supplies between the low- and high-lands or making their way to and from a major cement plant somewhere up in the mountains.

As a two-wheeler you need to be under no illusions about your position in the food chain and the journey up the congested, winding road to the city of Shimla is a finely calculated combination of eating dust and exhaust smoke, ganging up with other two-wheelers to form a more effective wedge between larger vehicles, and using your size-advantage to swiftly clear your way past stationery or slow-moving traffic wherever your way is not blocked by obstacles, ditches or cows.

We cover the 100-odd kilometres up to Shimla in about 3 to 4 hours. We stop at a tourist information office on the road side and Ebru makes some inquiries inside. I greet a local police officer outside and am about to light up a smoke, when he stope me and informs me that smoking is not allowed in Shimla.. he must be joking!

It’s been a long day’s riding and we’re glad to have arrived, but finding the accommodation – even the ones recommended by the Rough Guide – is not as easy as we thought, because the main road through Shimla has been declared pedestrian only. We ride around the outskirts for a couple of hours but find no accommodation up to standard or within our price range. Eventually we have to leave the bike chained up in a parking garage at 40INR per 24 hours and carry our luggage up the steep streets and stair-cases to the town centre.

This is tough going! I look at Ebru’s face and she looks like she’s about to pop. There’s a helpless plea in her eyes saying, “please let it not be like this?!” I can understand this feeling from trekking at high altitude – it’s a mental challenge. Aside from a minor break-down she keeps it together and survives the extreme uphill struggle which eventually brings us to Hotel Dreamland, which is up behind the Christ Church and has a nice view of the surrounding hills and valley.

The room is simple and a bit shabby and mouldy but we’re safely checked in at last! We’re not overjoyed with the rate of 500INR per night but it’s half season and we’re at the top of the hill near the centre of town, so we accept it. After a much needed shower we have enough time for an evening-walk through town and we have a dinner of Chicken Tikka Marsala (tandoori) and Mutton Seek Kebab, which is decent and tasty. Exhausted, we head to the hotel and hit the hay!

We arrive at the hotel at 3AM. They try to overcharge us on the prior agreed rate – “tax” being the excuse. We don’t get much sleep and our day from morning to evening is spent checking and test driving the Enfield and arranging helmets and our luggage configuration on the bike for the trip. This takes us until about 7PM and Ebru’s a bit sulky as there’s been a lot of waiting around for her and we haven’t had the chance to get anything to eat yet.

We head off to the main road opposite the train station and have a very nice meal of nan, aloo parantha, tomato-paneer and tomato-potato curries. After that we stop for a quick beer in on of the roof-top restaurants on the main bazaar and head back to the hotel for a relatively early night.