Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in Overland Journal’s Fall 2022 Issue.
I sat on my Bullet at the bottom of the steep slope, eyeing out a potential route. Huge rocks dotted both wheel spoors, and the deep layer of fine, flour-like dust was surely doing a good job of hiding holes beneath it. The overhang on the narrow track made it look like it had been hacked out of the cliff, and it had. The rock wall above and below was purely vertical. A wrong move would mean a manic free-fall through the thin Himalayan air and a quick end in the rushing icy waters far below. It wasn’t called the Cliffhanger for nothing, and it was exactly what I had come back for.
Happy’s Workshop
I had first heard of the Cliffhanger track and the famed Sach Pass, which joins it, in Happy Singh’s Royal Enfield workshop in Dharamsala. Happy’s, a hole in the wall on the edge of a hill overlooking the Dalai Lama temple, is something of a shrine when it comes to Royal Enfield or Bullet riders in northern India. His casual no-rush attitude makes his garage feel more like a cafe. On this occasion, I had dropped by to have a chat over a beedi cigarette and a cup of masala chai to discuss the region of Ladakh and what work my bike would need to get there.
“There is a pass not so many know,” Happy began in his affable Hinglish. “It’s much better route. On the other side, Cliffhanger is also fun ride. After that, you go Pangi Valley and then Ladakh. But take extra petrol and please genuine spares.”
It was an easy decision. It was August, and along with it came the brief weather window I required. India’s impressive vaccination drive had opened up domestic travel while borders remained closed. I was one of the lucky foreigners who had got to stay during the pandemic and was now in the unique position to see India as life began to return to normal—with a fraction of the usual tourists on the road.
Sach Pass
On a cold, grey morning, in the parking lot of a deserted hotel at the base of Sach Pass, I strapped my luggage and gear on with a tangle of bungee cords and donned gumboots in preparation for crossing the deep glacial-fed streams or nullahs.
And then it started to rain. I directed a recently learned Hindi profanity at the sky and went back inside to the kindly proprietor, Vinayak.
“There is rain at the top, and mist,” he reported back after calling a friend in the police. “Big danger is some vehicles not blow their horn on corners; so if they don’t see you, bye-bye. Maybe you wait few hours.”
The thought of one of those huge green and white buses appearing out of nowhere to knock me into the ether made me hastily agree, and I accepted a sweet chai while we chatted about the pass.
Sach Pass peaks at about 14,500 feet. While not the highest pass in the Himalayas, it has a reputation amongst bikers and 4WD drivers as being one of the most challenging crossings. It is only open part of the year, from June or July to mid-October, but the best time to go is the short window of September to mid-October. Early in the season, walls of snow tower over those green and white buses, and melting glaciers make crossing the nallahs rather tricky. Not to mention the monsoons that bring landslides and cloudbursts.
In an hour or so, Vinayak’s phone rang. After a few words, he hung up and said to me, “Rain has stopped. You go now.”
“Yes, I go now,” I cried, pulling my boots back on as I thanked him before taking off up the road. The tarred or “metalled” (as they say in India) road ended abruptly, and I clicked down into first to ease up the first of many a rocky climb. The bike was fully loaded with tools, spares, and camping gear, but she ate up that first hill like a dog on a greasy roasting pan. I laughed with excitement and sang her praises at the top.
Pushkarini is a 2013 Royal Enfield Electra 350 in chrome and faded black, which I had bought from an American plant medicine aficionado in Goa. It had more than enough torque and could go like hell when duty called. As any rider or driver of older vehicles knows, performance can be temperamental and often relates to the mood of the bike or the rider. Even as a relatively newer model with the one-piston 350 Twinspark engine, she had the lines, the soul, and the satisfying thump of a classic. That’s just the way Enfield makes their Bullets and the reason why so many of us fall for them.
As I climbed, magnificent old-growth pine forests made way for bare cliffs, with raging waterfalls and nullahs flowing over the track. Here I stopped often to hydrate as I gained elevation, savouring the fresh Himalayan glacial water. Shunning the ever-offered plastic water bottles in favour of this option in my canteen was a novelty that never wore off over the coming months.
A Himalayan griffon treated me with a flypast at eye level, but I was soon well in the clouds and couldn’t see a hundred yards ahead. Ice walls next to the road told me I was gaining height, and Pushkarini refused to idle in the thin air. I adjusted the carburettor, but only after nearly fainting while standing up did I understand the effects of the elevation.
The rain returned and duly began to seep through my second-hand jacket. But it also occasionally cleared the air. Steep drops were revealed alongside me, with views of vast tan scree slopes decorated with huge patches of ice in different shapes, like white continents on an enormous map.
The road, at times, resembled nothing more than a river. I got colder and steadily wetter and scowled when I had to pull over for a smug group of new Mahindra and Toyota 4WDs to fly past me. Their windscreen wipers dismissively cleared the way as oversized knobbly tyres ate up the same track that I had to negotiate so carefully. No doubt they had warm air and music in their cosy interiors, but at least my feet were still dry. Gritting my teeth against what had become a downpour, I pressed on.
A Shiva temple appeared around the next corner, resplendent in red flag and bells, and the words “Sach Pass 4500m” spray-painted on a stone wall. I made it. But shivering, and with no view to speak of because of the weather, I could not have imagined a more anti-climactic summit. To bring some occasion to it, I went to ring the temple bell to announce my arrival to Shiva and the 33 million other Hindu gods. Temples like this are often dotted haphazardly along mountainous roads, and no self-respecting traveller misses the opportunity to pay their respects. But in following temple etiquette here, I automatically removed my boots to enter over the wet stones and was divinely granted wet socks for my descent.
Ladakh
After spending a few days thawing in Killar at the base of Sach Pass, I followed the Chenab River up the Pangi Valley to a confluence at Tāndi to start one of the holy grails of motorbike rides in India: the Leh–Manali Highway. This time, I prepared for the passes with a new jacket and gloves and carried 2 gallons of extra fuel to survive the 250 miles between petrol pumps.
I set off and climbed pass after pass, overtaking vibrantly painted freight trucks and being overtaken myself by the odd rider on a faster, unburdened KTM or Enfield Himalayan. The surroundings got drier and rockier until there was not a sniff of vegetation anywhere. As I crossed the last pass, the immense 17,500-foot Tanglang La, I was properly ensconced in the rain shadow, and the kingdom of Ladakh unfolded before me.
The word la means “pass” in Tibetan, and at the summit of each one were endless strings of multi-coloured prayer flags, a mere appetiser for the eyes before taking in the astounding sunlit feast below. Snow covered only the highest peaks this late in the season. The bare slopes below them served as huge canvases of mountain-building art—their dramatic fold patterns evidence of the biggest continental collision event in Earth’s history. The Himalayas welcomed me, and I bowed in submission as I panted haplessly and shivered in the cold, thin air.
For hundreds of kilometres, I saw no settlements, bar the stone-walled enclosures of nomadic shepherds and the odd dhabba eating house, serving the standard dal chawal, providing beds to truckers. Towards the main city of Leh, clusters of traditional flat-roofed, double-storey dwellings began to appear. The majority of Ladakhis keep sheep and yak and farm barley if they can get water. In this arid climate, with less than 4 inches of rainfall per year, these hamlets rely entirely on the ever-decreasing seasonal meltwater, which reaches the fields from glaciers via elaborate channel systems.
A part of Tibet until the 9th century and an independent state until the mid-1800s, Ladakh is a union territory today, as is Jammu and Kashmir. Tibetan Buddhist culture is everywhere, from prayer flags to the ubiquitous domes of stupas to ancient whitewashed monasteries overlooking nearly every village. One of the most endearing things about the region is the sing-song greeting of “Julley,” and I got immense joy from exchanging it with every passerby.
Ladakh was, for me, my very own Moonland. It not only simulated the satellite’s surface with its stark emptiness and lack of vegetation, but I felt so removed from the day’s changing times that it often seemed like I wasn’t on Earth anymore. I camped alone under clear skies on sandbanks, bathed in the freezing glacial streams, and hiked miles to stay in a remote monastery with no road access.
One night, over a bottle of Old Monk rum in Leh city, some eccentric friends from Delhi told me of a little-known route into the Zanskar Valley to the west. It sounded like the perfect route for me to enter Kashmir, where I was meeting up with my partner, Ellie, for the last leg of the trip.
Zanskar would prove to be the most scenically spectacular and deserted section of my entire 2,000-mile journey. The driving was tough, with two passes over 15,000 feet on a rocky and unmaintained road. I soon gathered help was far away, so I prayed that Happy was as good as his word and Pushkarini would hold it together. It was getting on in the season, and even with my good jacket, the cold made me stop at times to warm my bare hands over the engine. But the ever-changing views made up for it. Towering tooth-like peaks were folded and tilted into haphazard arrangements of reds, purples, and browns. In the depths below, the same azure water responsible for carving the relief of this dramatic landscape meandered peacefully around the bends.
Once, camped next to just such a river, I awoke to the sound of what I thought to be another Enfield approaching my hidden campsite, only to realise that it was just boulders tumbling in the riverbed. I rolled over to sleep again, smiling at the idea that India’s quintessential bike was so linked to her land that its engine mimicked the sound of her rivers.
Kashmir
As I passed out of Zanskar Valley and into Kashmir, the mountains began to grow trees, and a more schistose grey-green replaced the granitic-orange hue of the slopes. Here, the flat-roofed Ladakhi homes gave way to wooden edifices with corrugated iron apexes. Women in flowing robes, who had stooped in fields under wicker baskets of barley, were replaced by Muslim Kashmiri women in hijabs pushing carts of apples. The clunking sound of Buddhist prayer wheels turning ceded to the hypnotic midday singing of the imam’s call to prayer. Ladakh faded behind me, and here was Kashmir: greener, lusher, with a different (single) god.
On my first afternoon, I was following a track up an uninhabited valley to try and find a campsite for the night when I got off to scope out a likely looking spot. But I froze in mid-step as my eye caught a sign on a rock. Hand-drawn in red were the words “Caution mine area do not move away from road edges.” I gingerly retraced my steps to the road before allowing myself a shaky sigh of relief. Checking the map, it made sense: I was only two miles from the de facto India–Pakistan border and right on the site of the Kargil War, which did nothing to slow my racing heart. That moment in the minefield was my first taste of the military tension in the region but not the last.
The next day I found myself on blacktop for the first time in ages, heading to meet Ellie in the capital of Srinagar. The city proved to be a juxtaposition of guns and smiles—the kind of experience that only India could provide. Kashmiris were thrilled to see foreigners and invited us into their homes countless times for delicious kahwa tea. Meanwhile, armoured cars and Kalashnikov-wielding soldiers roamed the streets, flexing their muscle to any would-be nationalist protesters. We stayed in isolated comfort on a houseboat on the erstwhile colonial retreat of Dal Lake. On excursions into the city, we learnt to ignore the guns and curls of razor wire that covered the streets like tinsel on a Christmas tree.
The Kashmiris were comically dismissive of the military and vehemently pro of being an independent state but understandably lamented the fact that recent conflicts had dried up the tourist dollar. We had not felt in the slightest bit unsafe, and were enchanted by Srinagar, vowing to sing its praises to anyone planning to visit India in the post-pandemic era.
Too Close for Comfort
With little over a week before Sach Pass, our route home, would be closed for the season, we headed off into rural Kashmir. Ellie had an older single-piston Royal Enfield, a Machismo model in battered army green, called Ullu, or owl in Hindi. It didn’t hoot, opting for a discordant bellow, and had a distinct affinity for spitting oil and breaking tappet rods. Even with the mechanical headaches, Ellie loved its character and had taken it upon herself as a solo female traveller to learn as much about the bike’s workings as possible, often stunning roadside mechanics with her technical prowess.
While riding together, I much preferred breaking gender roles and letting her lead. She did have a heavier throttle hand, but I liked to follow because when we passed through villages, I could sit back and chuckle as heads turned and jaws dropped at the passing apparition of a white woman on that thunderous set of wheels.
We cruised along smooth, winding, alpine roads flanked with pine trees overlooking deep gorges below, stopping whimsically to make coffee over roadside fires. Our camps were on grassy banks next to rivers where horses belonging to gypsies grazed. However, the frequent army checkpoints with their lengthy forms and endless questions became the bane of our lives.
One weary afternoon, looking for a campsite near dusk, we pulled up to our third army stop of the day, one that felt a bit more sinister than the rest. The AK-47s on these guys’ shoulders looked more battered than usual. A large poster on a stone wall showed the bearded faces of wanted terrorists, with two crossed out in red. Another face was smeared with what was unmistakably human excrement.
One of the soldiers informed us that the major would like to meet us; we begrudgingly followed him, accepting yet another delay. Casually sitting under a tree was a man wearing the immaculate moustache and dastār turban of the Sikhs, dressed in a sports tracksuit and trainers.
“Why do you want to go to Sonder?” the major asked coolly after we exchanged formalities. He oozed the style and grace of a mafia don—all that was missing was the tiger on a chain.
We explained that we had looked for the most remote-looking valley on Google Earth to camp in and had settled on Sonder.
“Nobody comes here,” he began with an amused smile. “I have been in command of this post for 28 months, and you are the first foreigners I have seen. Did you not know that this valley is a hotspot for insurgency? The terrorists could be in these hills watching us as we speak.”
My agitation at being delayed completely disappeared with those first few sentences, and I listened in amazement.
“Targets are mostly military and political, but they have been known to kidnap foreigners. I recommend that you stay here in our barracks instead, where you will be safe.”
I glanced at Ellie, and we shared a nervous laugh at the folly of trying to get off the beaten track amidst a heavy military presence that was clearly here for a reason.
It was tempting to accept the major’s offer to stay, just to say we had done it. But it was Ellie’s birthday the next day, and as easy-going as she was, we foresaw a night of more polite small talk with the officers. We opted for the dark drive back to Kishtwar, our engines revelling in the curves, our minds sharpened by the reality of the danger we had inadvertently brushed shoulders with.
The Cliffhanger
Over the coming days, we followed the Chenab east. The road gradually worsened until it was little more than a tunnel-like wagon path blasted out of the schist walls. No name other than Cliffhanger would do it justice. After waiting for this return for months, I noticed with a sinking feeling that it also marked the fast-approaching end of the trip. I gulped as I looked down to see the Chenab eating up rock far below us and then up at the suffocating overhang above. Trying to ignore the grim imaginings in my head, I aimed at a route over a pointed finger, favouring the inner side of the narrow track where possible, away from the fatal drop. Streaks of white paint on the rock wall told me that Jeep drivers also used the same life-preserving tactic.
Before I could overthink it, I forced myself to click into first and pull off, keeping my revs up and clutching in and out to ride the bigger rocks and holes. Urging Pushkarini along, in no time, I was laughing maniacally from adrenalin as I bounced and banged to the top, thankfully too focused to give any more thought to the drop below me.
The Return to Sach
The following morning, it was with mixed emotions that we set off for the last soirée of the trip, a second go at the mighty Sach Pass. This time, the weather could not have been more different than the bitter grey of my first crossing. The sun radiated warm on our backs as we crossed the bridge over the Chenab one last time, and I looked up to see in plain view the peaks that awaited us.
While the conditions were drier, the ascent from this side was certainly more demanding, at times necessitating us to take turns pushing each other up steep and loose sections. Our engines and clutches took a beating, but the torque and soul of those spirited bikes, tweaked by Happy’s magical hands, got us up sans catastrophe.
At the summit, we visited the temple and rang the bell to announce our arrival to old Shiva before heading off down the other side, where the setting sun lit up the valley like a stage set for one final performance.
I let Ellie go on ahead and stopped for a moment with Pushkarini, patting the tank and thanking her for all our journeys as I looked up for one final glimpse of the Himalayas. The mountain behind me glowed in vivid red—the peak’s perfect farewell before the sun disappeared and my back finally turned. I switched on the high beams and opened the taps to catch up with Ellie, lighting out for the hot food waiting at the hotel.
International flights eventually resumed, and India kicked me out. But Pushkarini still sits in storage under an old hotel in Dharamsala. I could tell you that I ran out of time to sell her before I had to leave, though the truth is that I didn’t have the heart to say goodbye. Instead, I dream of returning one day in the not-too-distant future. I’ll be sure to take that queen of a bike for a cup of chai and a tune-up at Happy’s before swinging her into life and gunning down the hill to the start of the next Himalayan adventure.
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