Enfield Part 2

After the first part of my trip I headed back to Rishikesh to regroup and get a few issues worked out with the bike. Of course dealing with stuff in India takes time, so I got a bit of a late start on the day I left. Rode until about 4pm, when I saw large black clouds forming ahead of me. Oh shit, find shelter! Found a scuzzy looking hotel just in time before the skies opened up. This would have hurt:

The next day I made it up to Gangotri, the headwaters of the Ganga. Here's a shot looking down the valley during the drive up:

What a stunningly beautiful place! Huge peaks all around, but a much narrower valley than at Badrinath, so you only get occasional glimpses of them. Without knowing, I made it just in time, as the whole town closed down just a few days after I was there. I spent two nights, and the day in between I hiked as far as I could manage up a side-valley. Rugged hiking at over 3000m when I've gotten used to sea level.

From Gangotri, I needed to backtrack all the way to where I spent the first night, then from there I could head northwest along mountain roads towards the Ton river and eventually on to Bilaspur, for my friend Vipin's wedding. I needed to hurry so I'd have time to see as much as possible, but I was really tempted to stay a night in this place, just 20km down the valley from Gangotri:

After many kilometers on some amazing mountain roads, and some awful mountain roads as well; and after a memorably horrible hotel in a shithole called Rohru, I decided to scrap a part of my planned route and go to Shimla. Shimla is an old British hill station, and it's a tourist trap, but it's probably the cleanest town I've been to in India, and it was a good rest after too much time on the bike. From there it was a quick hop to Bilaspur for the wedding. If you've been to an Indian wedding you'll know that there is a lot of drinking involved. Me+alcohol+camera=bad news, so I don't have any pictures of the wedding, but I had a great time, met some awesome people, and learned more about the culture of Himachal Pradesh...and I got drunk. After two days of Arvind telling me to have "just one more", I was finally able to escape the madness and headed to Manali, where I met this guy:

Manali sits high in the Beas river valley, at the foot of the famous Rohtang Pass. It's another touristy place, but it's really a gorgeous setting and I was lucky enough to be too late for the main tourist season; meaning I got a nice room for cheap and didn't have to put up with too many dreadlocks and baba pants. The weather wasn't great my first day there, and I needed to sort out a broken shock on the bike, so I waited until my second day to ride up the pass. I really lucked out as the weather was perfect, and I'm pretty sure the pass shut down for the season a couple days after I was there as a big storm came in. Here's a shot from the way up the pass, you can see the road switchbacking up on the upper-left:

Made it to the top! Around 4000m:

Went a few switchbacks down the backside just to get a better view. It's stunning scenery, and it convinced me that I have to come back and do the whole ride over to Ladakh. Until this point I was planning on selling the bike when I left, but this made me decide to keep it so I can come back next year and do that ride.

On the way back to Manali I saw a sign for a ski area and had to check it out. The terrain looked quite boring, but evidently they ski on something other than snow...