Over the High Passes

The first pass of only 3200m pushed us to our limits; and four higher passes, increasing to 5300m, threaten slow crucifixion. So we swallow our pride. For Rs 18,000 Himalayan Adventurers in Manali supply driver Rakesh (28) and a Toyota jeep to carry our gear and ten litres of water. With light bicycle and spirits we depart for Leh, nine days and 475 kilometres away.

The road ascends through forest and pasture to rocky slopes where castellated crags and cliffs fall to precipitous stream-beds. Every hour or so Rakesh is parked patiently, monitoring our progress. Above tree-line we zig-zag through immense boulder fields and glacial cirques, till a last slow zig and zag bring us to Marhi (3300m), where an Italian Pizza Hut dhaba stands beside a yellow-domed temple. Stalls display rental gumboots and fur coats for lowlanders visiting the snow, and evening cricketers hit their sixes down the mountain-side. Above, the road to Rohtang La winds faintly into the sky. For Rs50 a Tibetan shopkeeper vacates his dusty room, asking us to sleep with feet away from the Dalai Lama's photo and to make sure the cows stay outside.

After Marhi we shall not descend below 3000m for almost three weeks. Rested and fed, we pedal past clear streams tumbling down among wild-flowers, biscuit wrappers and plastic bottles. Marmots stand to attention, then dart off; dodging the gaze of vultures soaring with spread wing-tip feathers. After three hours of bottom-gear work, with Rakesh in close attendance, the mass of prayer flags on Rohtang La, 3955m, comes into view.

An Indian asks "What is all this decoration?"

"These are Buddhist prayer flags," I say, puzzled by his ignorance.

"I am from Kerala and I have come to see the snow. We have no Buddhists in Kerala."

We swoop into the Chandra Valley, which, with snow and glaciers above, leads right to the Kunzum La and Spiti, where we hope to go in a few weeks, and left towards Leh. Vertically below us are the roofs of vehicles negotiating the serpentine loops. Road gangs, their blackened faces wrapped against dust, tend smoky fires melting tar. The valley, beyond the northern limit of the monsoon, is almost bare of trees, and stone walls bound improbable cultivations on its dry slopes.

As we pitch our tent and cook among the poplars at Sissu, grimy children come from their stone and polythene homes to watch, asking "Happy are you?" Yes, we are happy, because we have crossed Rohtang La; but we wish they would go away.

An overnight shower is our last rain, for we are going north into desert. In the morning, neatly uniformed children walk to school on Sissu's only street, but there is no sign of our adherents of last night. Universal education to age 14 seems optimistic so far from Delhi.

We follow the Chandra down-valley, stoking Apollo's engines with biscuits and bananas and not visiting the historic seven-storey fort at Gondla, because we are trans-Himalayan cyclists on a mission to Leh. Under buttresses of layered rock rising from stunted conifers to lofty snow and fluted ice, runny-nosed kids watch the “double saikal” pass.

At Tandi (last fuel before Leh, 360km) the road leaves the Chandra and climbs to Keylong, administrative centre of Lahaul District. We load Rakesh's jeep with provisions and move on to Jispa's Hotel Ibex. “Here, on the path of the mountain goats with curved horns, 90km from the surreal Rohtang Pass, you can become a part of nature.” We pay outrageously. "You should give a low season discount" I tell the manager. "No, this is the peak of the season.” Apart from an American trekking party the place is empty, but the nearest competition is in Keylong.

“You should have come in June or July,” says the manager. “You are too late for the passes. It will be windy and dusty, I know because I have seen it. You should cross the Barilocha La and than get in your jeep and drive to Leh, and be there in time for the Festival which will finish in a few days.” At breakfast he plays music from the film Himalaya.

As the road climbs the straggly conifers disappear, leaving bare ground with a few wiry herbs and, incredibly, fields of peas, with families picking for the Delhi markets. At Patseo, rows of military huts (“Wet Mess,” “Officers' Mess,” “TV Room”) have paths marked by white-painted stones. As I raise my camera an officer calls “No!”

A desolate valley, under bare mountains with contorted rock-layers of red, green and grey, leads to Zin Zin Bar (4287m), a road workers' camp at the foot of the Baralacha La. We sleep in our tent on the concrete floor of an empty shed.

We set off with the valley in deep shadow. Then the light comes on the bare peaks and races down the slopes, and suddenly we are stripping off clothes, squinting against the glaring dust, dodging potholes and loose rocks, clinging to moth-eaten remnants of seal and trying not to wobble as the trucks pass. Decorated general carriers, orange tankers with fuel for the army in Jammu and Kashmir, blue road maintenance trucks and convoys of army trucks, roaring and bouncing towards the pass or coming down and inching past the uphill traffic with wheels climbing the foot of the inside banks or running along the frightful edge. Trucks parked up, with drivers underneath or with heads under bonnets. Trucks raising clouds of dust on terrifying downhill short-cuts. On the road to Leh trucks are a big part of life.

We glimpse an animal like a marmot but bigger, the size of a small rabbit with a bushy tail. Afterwards we ask Rakesh, who says “it is a mouse.” We do not always understand Rakesh, or he us; but he cares for us, and waits.

Baralacha La inches closer, by long zigzags through moraine and scree and thinning air. Our breathing becomes more urgent; and to avoid the suffocating exhausts we stop and wait for each truck to pass. The riding, on long gentle zig-zags, is easy, such as one might do any Saturday in the desert; except we cannot breathe. When Ann speaks I grunt back, or reply in words that come thickly. All I want is the top. And at last, past a mountain lake in a bare cirque, it comes, at 4880 metres. Some Dutch people stop their bus and take photographs, and tell us we are brave.

We do not feel brave among the cairns and the faded, fluttering flags. We feel short of breath.

We descend bumpily to a tent dhaba to rest and drink lemon tea. Then Apollo rolls down through black moraines and rust-red hills to an open valley with terraces worn in pinnacles and ochre bad-lands where the sun, low behind, makes the dry shadowed landscape stand in three arid dimensions. At the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Corporation's Sarchu (4250m) tent camp, Rakesh watches the evening cricket game and we talk with an Englishman riding an Enfield Bullet laden with petrol and water. It is gutless, he says. After this tour he is going to Kathmandu to marry his Nepali fiancée and start a business.

I have no appetite for dinner. I'm beginning to think that for the remaining 250 kilometres of this relentless road a gutless Enfield would be an improvement on any form of human propulsion. Tomorrow's ride will be easy for the first 25 kilometres; but then come the feared Gata Loops below Nakila La (4740m), followed by a soul-destroying loss of height to Whisky Nullah before climbing again to Lachlung La (5060m). It all seems too much.

I tell Rakesh, “Tomorrow we shall cycle at first, but later we shall need to ride with you in the jeep.” Ann gives me a Diamox pill.