Tour de Leh: Biking from Leh to Lamayuru

After reaching Leh we stayed at YHAI camp for 3 days, getting acclimatized, roaming around Leh city/market area, few warm up biking sessions and making sure our bikes are in good conditions ( cycle repair works :) ) for 6 days biking expedition.We also met 5 other guys part of biking expedition, so we formed Navratna/Naujawan team :)

Morning Walk

Navratna/Naujawan team for Biking expedition

Shanti Stoop - Leh

Finally on D-day we started off from YHAI camp for our supposed to be 6 days biking expedition covering ~220 KMs. 

Cycling in Ladakh was not as easy as cycling in low altitude regions ( like Bangalore :) ), at least it was for me on the first day, guess it was mainly because I started feeling un well on the wrong day. Oxygen is less, its cold and windy all the time, making it physically very challenging. We could easily feel even 1 degree of inclination on the road as pedaling becomes tough... and soon we realised that newton's law of velocity/momentum doesn't holds good in Ladakh... when you go downhill with full speed and then if its uphill, under normal conditions, the momentum makes it bit easy to pedal at least some distance of the uphill... but in Ladhak, no matter at what speed you get down the hill, as soon as there is uphill, cycle wheel just stops until u pedal hard again...

We stopped at Gurudhwar on our way, which was maintained by Military. It was lunch time and we ditched YHAI's packed lunch and had good food at Gurudhwar. I was almost dead at that time. My condition just got worse with tiring cycling. Food and rest at Gurudhwar had induced some energy just enough to reach our next camp site... but Waheguru had planned some thing better for me ;) my cycle gear got jammed and there was no way I could ride... right at that point a lorry was about to leave and within few seconds me and my cycle both were in lorry... I reached first campsite - Bosco (FINAL DESTINATION 2) , well ahead of other folks... Took a long walk along the river side and experimented with self portrait pics... The pic tells how tired I was... Guess the beauty of campsite made me take a walk than resting at campsite...

 

 Next day we headed off to second base camp - Nurla. Morning I had completly recovered and was full energetic for Day 2 cycling. Route from Bosco to Nurla was not as tiring as first day track, because it had flat roads, ascend/descend in between unlike one continous strectch of ascend and one descend on first day. Cycling in Ladhak is experience in itself and guess best way to enjoy the majesty of ladhaki mountains..... 

By around 3 PM we reached our FINAL DESTINATION 3 - Nurla Camp. Again the camp site was very scenic. I have done 4 expeditions with YHAI and best part of being with YHAI is camp sites they provide, apart from the scenic trekking trails they take us to. Till now I have never been disappointed with any of the YHAI campsites, and every camp site is an experience which none of 5 star resorts can fullfill. 

Day 3 we set off early in morning towards Lamayuru...stopped at resto on the way, called Samyas for yummy pakodas.. had heard lot about resto and they didn't disappoint us. Its near place called Khaltse on Leh - Kargil highway. If you happen to pass though this village then do stop at Samyas. After certain point it was complete uphill to reach Lamayuru and YHAI itself had suggested us to dump cycles at store room at foothill or carry cycles on bus top to reach camp. We managed to dump all our cycles on the bus top and headed off to our FINAL DESTINATION 4 - lamayuru. I preffered sitting on bus top along with Chirs, Jital and Ravi and it turned out to be once in life time experience :). Imagine sitting on top of bus, which is going uphill with atleast 60 degree ascend... passing thru ghats... right next to road is dead deep valley/cliff... and scariest of them all is to watch out for rocks that obstructs like the branches of road side tree does in normal roads... 

Lamayuru was nice little village. Visited popular Monastery near by. Had enough time left in the day, so we had good chat with local people. One more interesting highlight of Lamayuru is the Moon Land. A stretch of mountain glows during full moon night and is brighter then rest of land, giving feel of it being moon. 

We had good fun chit-chatting and pulling each others leg at night. We were pretty relaxed that night because we had decided not to cycle back to Leh. The reason was simple - we had to take the same path back to reach Leh over 3 days time. Which didn't make sense because we preferred exploring more places in Ladhak then tracing back same path for 3 days. Hopefully now YHAI might have changed route to go in circular path.

So with that we ended our supposed to be 6 days 240 Kms biking expedition in 3 days 122 KMs and reached back Leh on 4th Day, ofcourse with little adventure by taking truck, bus and Tata mobile van.