Ride to the Skies

It started getting increasingly colder and soon the water on the road was starting to freeze over and that made the descend even more treacherous. At places I had to stop and stamp a path out through the thin layer of ice. Using the brakes was out of the option because the roads were slick. We were controlling the speed of our descend using the gears and finally were off the mountains. We had a few more kilometres to ride before we could shut down for the day. Akash was now in the lead and I was following close behind him, not more than ten feet away. We reached the last turn that would take us off the mountain and as I was making the turn the unstable bag took the opportunity to take a bow and took me down along with it. Everything was happening in slow motion, I could feel the centre of gravity shifting and knew I was going down and instinctively lifted my leg and stepped away from the motorcycle and watched as it leaned on to its side. Akash did not see or hear a thing and kept riding on. I figured he would at least notice my headlight fading away, considering that everything else around us was shrouded in complete darkness. The saddle bags that hung over each side and the custom fitted rear crash guard prevented the motorcycle from actually making any contact with the ground. The engine shut off and I was standing surrounded by deathly silence, it was a very unsettling feeling. The only thing that prevented me from screaming like a little girl was the bright white light from my motorcycles’ headlamp piercing the darkness straight ahead of me. I looked around me and could see nothing. I could not hear a bird or any other sound that a city dweller is so accustomed to hearing. I did not wait for another second; I quickly picked up the motorcycle, started it and took off from there as fast as I safely dared too, not even bothering to re adjust the bag that had caused the whole debacle. I could see the headlight from Akashs’ motorcycle bobbing up and down far away in the distance.. There is no other motorcycle we trust more than a Royal Enfield to do the job that we have set out to do. Our trust was placed well, because at the end of it all, other than the two punctures, we did not have any mechanical troubles. If any of you plan to ride these roads, be prepared, because if you do not respect these roads, they will bite back and take you down. Many of people asked us if we would do it again. Definitely yes! I’m sure I will not be out of line, when I say that there will be things that we will do differently from how we did it this time. I am not at all surprised that there are people who make this trip every single year. There is a time to be born and a time to die, life follows death, just as death follows life, so it really does not matter where you end, as it all works out to the same thing, there were occasions when life hung by a thread, but for all these I feel amply rewarded to have been able to conquer some of India’s toughest roads and ride wild and free in the beautiful country of India. We had ridden to the skies and come back safely. Ride safely, live well!