Tarmac, thou art a true friend

• 10th of September
• Gulabgarh - Kishtwar - Thatri - Batote - Udhampur - Samba - Madhopur
• 250km

Like I mentioned earlier, the "hotel" in Gulabgarh didn’t possess a loo… but that’s just a matter of perspective. The whole world was our loo, so to speak. In boolean algebra, "NOT hotel = loo". So in the morning, we used the "loo", and hit the road again. About 30km from Gulabgarh was Kishtwar, a larger city which possesed metalled roads. On the way to Kishtwar, we were stopped at a CRPF checkpost.

As we were signing his register, a CRPF officer who was from Karnataka invited us into their outpost for a cup of tea, and gave us breakfast instead. Awesome chapathis and chana. Was a very welcome break. The whole camp stopped to see the boys from the south, who’ve come where even the locals fear to tread.

Kishtwar, and back on tarmac. I’d nearly forgotten how smooth riding could be. Except, the bike wasn’t quite doing as well. It was leaking so much exhaust, it sounded closer to a Bajaj Chetak than a RD350. We stayed on the road, and at about two in the afternoon, we hit Batote, and more importantly, NH-1A. This was the same road we’d gone thruogh on the way to Srinagar.

We stopped for lunch at Batote. My joints were aching so much that I could barely sit. I took off my knee-pads to stretch my legs… something I’d never done before. After lunch, I forgot to put the pads on, and worse, left them at the hotel. I didn’t notice until we were 20km from Batote, and going back was not an option. For the first time in this ride, I rode without knee-pads.

Prashi and I sent the thunderbirds ahead, and had our own ripping session. We were blasting past trucks, convoys, buses, ambulances, and gun-mounted patrol vehicles. We would have kept it up, except the silencer bend-pipe just totally gave up. At one point, the bend-pipe just fell off onto the road. We stopped every few km to tie it up, and each time, we would have to wait for it to cool. Progress was mighty slow.

Adding a bit of spice to the situation was the weather. It suddenly started pouring. I mean, really POURING. Roads were flooded, bridges submerged, and endless traffic jams. Trucks weren’t confident that a bridge would take their weight, and would just stop, blocking all traffic behind them. Prashi’s Voyager started acting up in the rain too. The engine would just keep stalling, and we suspect water had clogged the air filter. Between my bend-pipe and his air-filter, we had to stop nearly every 5km for a recovery session.

About 11km before Udhampur, while I was taking a nice smooth turn, I was concentrating more on the bend-pipe than on the turn, and was thrown off across the road at 60kmph. Nothing happened, though. Atleast, nothing that was apparent immediately. Picked myself up, picked the bike, and rode on to Udhampur. It was only later that I noticed the chest pains.

At Udhampur, we found a gas-welding shop and got the bend-pipe welded to the neck. For the first time in a week, since Pang, by bike sounded like an RD350, and not a scooter with bronchitis. The chest pains were mighty bad now, and breathing was getting tough. Quick call to my doctor brother in Bombay, and was telephonically diagnosed as broken rib(s). "No treatment", he said. "If it hurts too much, take a painkiller", he said. "It’ll heal in about a month", he said. I say, "Try riding 2000km with that."

It was still early evening… about 6 or so. We had to get to Pathankot for the night. Prashi put in a word to Ranga to step on it, and we were at Samba, 45km of ghat roads away, within an hour. At Samba, we were back on NH-1. The grand trunk road. 6 lanes. Ranga led brilliantly, and in less than an hour, we were at Madhopur. There are about 3 Volvo bus drivers in Punjab who’ve sworn to have revenge on Ranga for overtaking them. Ranga, stay the hell away from Paratha-land.

Painkiller shmainkiller. I had a nice stiff drink, and then it was like "What ribs ?". We slept briefly that night.