What Happens When You Put A City Slicker On The Discomforting Road To Leh?

What happens when you put a city slicker on the distractingly beautiful yet equally discomforting road to Leh? It is an unending adventure. Yes!

- Shaun Chicharito Pais

Comfort zones are tricky creatures — they creep up on you, lull you into a happy zone, then bite you in the rear. Over the last five years, I’ve spent many weekends burning rubber along Maharashtra’s coastline and open highways. My blissful ignorance led me to believe that the nastiest twisties were the ghats of Igatpuri or Lavasa, both of which I had aced several times. But a twisty surprise lay round the corner...

Royal Enfield invited me to join them on their Himalayan Odyssey 2019: A trip to the Himalayas that would have 60 riders start from Chandigarh, and for me, end in Leh. At 787km, I figured that would mean about four days of riding. I’ve done Mumbai-Udaipur, which is roughly the same distance, in a single day. How different could this be?”

First, a little detour: What exactly is the Himalayan Odyssey? Santhosh Vijay, Group Manager at Royal Enfield Rides Marketing, describes it as an event to introduce their customers to pure biking. The Odyssey is RE’s marquee ride that takes participants and their machines on a 2,066km ride over 15 days across smooth tarmac, broken tarmac, gravel, dirt and mud in the Himalayas. Which biker worth his riding boots would say no to that?

I find myself at the Mountview hotel in Chandigarh, ready to tick one off my list…

DAY 1

ALL PARTICIPANTS fly/ride into Chandigarh and check into the hotel. With no activities planned for the day, we are free to socialise with the group and that’s when I meet Arun, Pratiksha and Parav who are the other media persons joining in for the ride.

The participants hail from different backgrounds and are from various corners of the country, even abroad. There’s a group of best buddies from Madurai, two passionate bikers from Saudi Arabia, and a gang who has ridden from Pune to Chandigarh.