The Ultimate High
Reader's Digest India|March 2017

Cycling from Leh to Kanyakumari, Gagan Khosla, a Delhi-based chartered accountant, fulfils a lifelong desire to mark his 60th birthday.

Gagan Dhillon
The Ultimate High

APPROACHING MY 60TH YEAR, I was suddenly beset with the feeling that my life’s major milestones had whizzed past. With more than half of my life behind me, I was still looking for adventure. I remembered the book The Ultimate High: My Everest Odyssey by Göran Kropp where he rode on a cycle from Stockholm to Nepal, and then scaled the peak without a Sherpa or canned oxygen. I wanted to summit the Everest too, but convincing my family was simply impossible. Instead, I decided to pick something that would measure up in intensity and thrill: I was going to cycle from Leh to Kanyakumari.

This 4,000-km ride was to take me 29 days. I would travel across 13 states, through bone-chilling cold, sweltering heat and blinding rain. In my journey, I was alone with my thoughts and my constant companion, pain. Excruciating, agonizing pain. That is how I was to bid adieu to another decade of my life.

People ask me why I chose this ‘hell’? A party would have been painless and a whole lot cheaper. But I wanted it as a gift to myself. During the trip, my batchmates from The Scindia School, Gwalior, became my cheerleaders. They rooted for me, following me in a ‘tempo traveller’.

The Ride Begins

The only place in India where even soldiers give you a thumbs up is the Leh–Manali highway. Cycling up the unforgiving, yet breathtaking, landscape is strangely rewarding— there’s pain one moment, oxygen-depravation the next. On the morning of 21 September 2016, my sister-in-law, my friend (who accompanied me until Chandigarh) and I started out amidst cold winds, under a clear, star-studded sky. It was exceptionally challenging— together we negotiated five snowed-in passes, reaching Manali on day six.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 2017 من Reader's Digest India.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة March 2017 من Reader's Digest India.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

المزيد من القصص من READER'S DIGEST INDIA مشاهدة الكل