"Longest MotorBike Trip till now." State of Himachal Pradesh by prakashkamani

This himachal trip was my best trip till now. We were 2 guys from bangalore who just wanted to explore Himachal Pradesh(most beautiful state in India).

We started off from bangalore thinking that we shall go by bus or train or taxi all the way but at the back of our mind, we had a plan that if we can get motorbikes for rent from Delhi(capitol of India), we will explore this option. Had we informed our parents at all of this trip then we would not have made this successful one so we just kept my brother at bangalore informed about our plans.

As soon as we reached Delhi at 11 AM on 16th September 2001, i spoke to one of my friend there and asked him about the area where second hand vehicles are sold. At bangalore, we have read somewhere that foriegners take motorbikes on rent from this place so we had strong feeling that we will also get it and explore the beauty of himachal.

We reached to Karolbagh by 2:30 PM and asked couple of shop owners for renting out the vehicle to us. All of them said that we dont rent except one so we understood that it will be difficult for them to rent us.

Then we started all over again for same shops but with a difference that we will buy the vehicle. This time everybody took interest in us. But we made a deal that if we come back with the vehicle then they shall take back the vehicle and charge us as per rent rates. Before doing the payment, both of us just asked each other that shall we do it or not. My good friend(Anil Bisht) said that if i say YES then we shall give a shot. Just after listening to his words, i said yes and finally our soul was ready to take up this adventure. All this worked well and by evening 8 PM , we got the vehicle in our hand with lots of effort(As it was sunday, there was no person available to complete the ownership transfer formality and stamp the paper with government seal so we asked shop owner to do something and by hook and crook , he got this done).

Now, we have to get the helmets and the number plate painted properly as it was completely wiped of. After driving for a km from there, we somehow caught hold of a person who painted the number plate and then we bought the helmets also. We were all set by now to start off early morning next day for our trip.

Roads carved out from hills

This picture show the tough terrains in this route. Almost 70% of the route were made like this. These roads are at the border so they were not maintained by State Government rather , it was maintained by BRO(Border Road Organisation).

The other side of the road was steep fall to Satluj river which was coming all the way from glacier further at higher elevations.

I was just trying to control my bike at the corner of the road so that no lorry comes over from other end (a steep turn is there) and crush me to paper. In the meantime, my friend was trying out his photography skills playing with his Canon SLR camera.

One of the many Landslide on the way

As this was hilly terrain, we have to waste our time at lots of places to get the landslides being cleared out.

This was another reason for BRO to come in place as these roads are very dangerous and need immediate attention in such cases.

We used to utilize this time by gathering information about the next places from the drivers who drive on this road every other day. We had map of this route which we grabbed from Himachal Tourism Hotel at one of the place on the way and at such breaks, we used our map reading skills to understand about forthcoming routes,diversions, petrol bunks to keep our fuel tank ready for all the tough terrain.