The Family Site

Troubleshooting..

Were we lucky or not? It is up to you to decide but in the end we did the 1000km with quite a few breakdowns, but no punctures at all. Yet we were equipped to deal with punctures, with three inner tunes, a special set of ‘rustines’, leavers, a 2 kg foot pump which cut it’s way through my saddle bags and many other spare parts. There were other things we had to deal with besides punctures such as……

Altitude Sickness. First there was the mountain sickness or altitude sickness as a result of the shortage of air, which we seriously underestimated. The pills I brought where mainly diuretics to avoid swelling and edema, so every morning after the coffee, we had to stop to empty the blatter. We had many symptoms, but Paul and Fred had insomnia with severe headache, in the Morey planes Fred was very badly off with lack of appetite, nausea, vomiting all night on all four. I had pains like pins and needles in my hands and arms and one morning both my hands were swollen. Shortness of breath upon exertion of any effort, even starting the bikes in the morning was a continuous symptom.

Fred found a miracle treatment to the disease and we are still figuring out which was the cause or which was the effect. Cigarettes and alcohol at high altitude might have helped him overcome his fear to cross the snow, but it might have been the cause also of him camping in one latrine for a whole night.

My Chain

Finally let me come to my most challenging experience on the trip. We were not prepared for the chain snap and after 2 hours of driving on our first day and going up the Rohtang pass for the first time, my chain broke. We were stuck already and had to improvise locally on how to deal with this. Luckily we had a spare chain link, yet it took me two hours to knock it out. All was well and a chain would not stop us on the trip. The motivation was high, spirits good and we had fuel, schnapps  and smoked ham. We remained positive untill the next day in the evening, when crossing a river, the chain snapped twice, while Fred and Paul had already gone, I was left on my own in the wide open planes before Sarchu, with only a freezing cold wind as a companion.

Fred and Paul came back after 10 minutes, only to find me in despair, ready to put fire to the motorbike. But than again, where we lucky or not? There was a tent camp at 1 km from where my bike broke down, we only had to roll it there….

Next morning, early rise with Chapatti and omelet as breakfast we started changing two more other chain links, which Paul skillfully recovered from fellow bikers. By then I had discovered that the chain was broken in 5 more places ….and that an emergency repair would only be a short exemption from a final execution on the many passes which were lying ahead of us.

But the repair held and despite the many broken links, I got to Leh.

Fred’s bike.

Carefully observe the motorbike of Fred when we arrive in Leh. You will see that a) he misses the right part of his baggage carrier which we abandoned some where in the planes b) the battery being fixed with belgian ducktabe, french plastic ropes and an elastic women’s suspender band which Fred had in his pocket.

Believe it or not but this skillful man drove 300 km like this, slightly leaning to the left to balance the absence of any weight or luggage on the right, tapping on his battery every mile to feel if it was still hanging in there… useless to convince you we had rotten bikes.

The trucks and the trucks and the trucks and more trucks….

We had kind of forgotten that the idyllic scenery we were driving through was actually on the ‘

Manali-Leh’ highway, and that the poor track was the main supply road for the whole of Jammu and Kashmir, including the military supplies. The truck and army drivers were all very courteous, in sheer contrast with the aggressive traffic b**t**ds in Delhi. The price we had to pay for their courteous driving style was very heavy however. The trucks’ diesel fumes could be compared to a mixture of oil and burnt vegetables, sometimes like an overdone honey pancake, sometimes just carbon black powder into our nostrils…. The amount of dust we absorbed daily was measurable in grams. …

The final 30 k’s

 

The return trip went extremely well and we were really enjoying the ride. We were actually doing about 160 km a day, the sun was out all the time and we had ample time to stop, make pictures and enjoy double and well the landscape which we missed on our way up because of the rain, hail and snow… The bold plan emerged that we could leave one day earlier and step on the Sunday plane to New Delhi… we decided to go for it. We crossed three passes in one day and were only left with the Rohtang pass to descend 30 km from Manali, all was well and we were overconfident that we had completed our exploit. … until…. disaster struck. A landslide had washed away the road a couple of hours before we arrived. We had encountered a similar incident before which was solved in no time. This one however was more serious… the army blasted rock after rock with dynamite and made no progress. Every time the bulldozer cleared the road, few vehicles would pass and the boulders would come down again within 15 minutes… we waited for 9 hours…. and could not see any progress. Night was falling, it was getting cold

 

We spent that night in a small makeshift mountain cabin where we shared the bunks with truck drivers and soldiers. We had noodles for the last time ans slept without taking of our clothes …. The hospitality however  was unique and for less than 300 rupees we had a wonderful night, at least protected from the cold, wind and rain. The next morning we returned to the landslide , moved up to the first lines 20 hours after we first arrived, only to notice that the progress was 0.0% and we would be stuck for three more days…  Fred took things into his hands and was already thinking about his appointments in Kuala Lumpur two days later.

With Paul we kept him from a straight drive from the hill with the old and scruffy  Enfield, (not easy but we managed) and agreed that if he could find some horses, we would abandon the bikes and finish the last 30 km on foot. …. One hour later our luggage was packed on a small horse and we were walking down the hill between the rocks with our helmets in our hands… not a glorious end to our trip but a very efficient one, and good for an anecdote….. that same evening we were having a hot bath in a luxury hotel in Manali…. and fell asleep in front of the TV while the dutch were loosing the soccer final….

 

One Response to “Troubleshooting..”

1. Paul Frichet says:

   August 16, 2010 at 9:32 pm

   Excellent ! J’adore tes commentaires et je me retrouve plongé quelques semaines en arrières en te relisant ! Ce voyage, tous les 3, me restera longtemps en mémoire. Et on a eu beaucoup de chance finalement…