Adventure Trip: A Biking Epiphany In Ladakh

A biking epiphany in Ladakh.

- Manalisa S Arthur

“You must be crazy.” That was my first reaction when I read the itinerary that Adhiraaj Singh had worked out for our trip to Ladakh—1,474 km in six days, which meant roughly 230 km on bikes each day. Granted, our ‘I can ride all day’ friend was part of the K2K (Kargil to Kanyakumari) ‘Run Arun Run’ team, but that didn’t make the rest of us as enthusiastic about being on the road all day, every day. So after many a back and forth, it was whittled down to about 850 km for the trip dubbed ‘once-in-a-lifetime’.

In September end, the eight of us—from Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Imphal and Seoul—flew to Leh, taking a day to acclimatise at the very welcoming Gangba Homestay. The afternoon was spent catching up with each others’ lives—the five men in the group had been the closest friends since junior school, it was only expected that they would go back to behaving like schoolchildren. The camaraderie, roaring laughter and constant ribbing was the right flavour to startour trip. We spent part of the evening going for short rides around town to get used to the feel of the area. But the ride to the market almost led to cancelling our trip when the ‘very responsible’ Anuj Varma left his backpack with all our money on a stranger’s bike in a parking lot while he rode off to fill gas in his bike. The bag and money were still intact an hour later.