Mountain Roads

Sarchu

Lucky I asked about future petrol stations before I left Keylong. There are none. They sent me back 7km to Tandi where the bedraggled sign reads "Next Fuel Stop 365km"!

I half filled both jerries just to be sure.

That 7km each way (plus waiting for the other bikes to fill up) was a 45min diversion but there were only 115km to Sarchu. It took six hours.

Once again there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with the Delhi Royal Enfield Club's Himalayan Odyssey including a couple of river crossings where everyone gathered round to watch (and rescue). I'm no fan of the Royal Enfield but I have the utmost regard for these guys who can manage to haul their bikes up this road.

Sarchu itself, almost doesn't exist. I passed the tented camping hanging about in the valley up to about 6km before the town and went to find the main town and all I found was a "Thanks for Visiting" gantry. I went back and booked into the first of the half dozen facilities.

It wasn't a bad setup, in the luxury tent style, but I don't think that acclimatising is best done by jumping from 3100m to 4300m (you should be doing it in 300m steps). However, given Sarchu is on the map and it doesn't exist you don't get much choice.

My real problem was that although it was pleasantly warm during the day (upper teens) it dropped like a stone overnight, down to 3C, and I spent most of the night shivering myself awake despite wearing a t-shirt inside the liner inside my sleeping bag under a duvet with a blanket thrown on top. And then the beggars with the Royal Enfields decided to start them up at 5am. OK I was going to get up at 5:20 but I was shattered. And cold.

I was also massively dehydrated. I think that's something that you don't quite expect. The advice in the dining tent to drink 4-5 ltrs of water per day seemed a bit excessive.

Leh

It was going to be a long run up to Leh (hence the, arguably, ill-advised, stop at Sarchu), some 250km. It could be a ten hour day. I couldn't eat any breakfast though I think this was as much a combination of dehydration, getting up too early and a bit of sun-stroke (through the clouds).

Actually moving about seemed to make things a bit better. First "stop" was Pang some 80km up the road with a couple of approx. 5000m passes. Going up to the passes seemed to be OK but coming down I was finding myself really quite drowsy. Classic lack of sleep.

At Pang, I stopped for some chai and they were most accommodating as it was all I could do to keep my eyes open. I didn't get a chance to sleep immediately, though, as the woman insisted I drank my tea before passing out. She did bring me a pillow too!

I had an hour's kip before various of the parties from the Sarchu camp turned up and said hello.

I set off having tranferred the petrol in the jerries into the tank and was blessed with crossing the More Plateau which could do with something like a road for those 40km. A lot of it was sand, which I just can't handle and at one point I decided to run down the gravelly middle (between two lanes of sand) and caught some rocks and nearly had a wipe-out at 4700m. By way of reference, Mont Blanc is a mere 4815m. Again I had to fight the drowsyness when coming down after the third highest motorable pass, the (forgets name) at about 5300m. I did take a photo but I have to say that a lot of the journey seemed to be in a bit of a dream.

The final third was on pretty good roads up to Leh, though the place is dominated by the military.

Leh itself is heaving with Westerners. Hopefully, I will get the necessary permit tomorrow morning to travel up to Khardung La tomorrow afternoon.