monastery and had lunch . I bought some Buddhist prayer flags to tie on my bike , after all , I needed all the help I could get .
We arrived at our little guest house for the night and the mechanics set to work re-fuelling the bikes and checking them over . The bikes all took a huge punishment on these very rough boulder roads , and I was impressed with the sturdiness and resilience of these Indian built Bullets .
The next day , we rode back to Leh over a back road . I was getting used to the dirt tracks and gaining confidence but one of our party slid off on a gravelly hairpin . Unfortunately , the rider got such a fright ( came to rest over a 20-metre drop ) that the rest of the holiday was spent in the back up truck .
After a lovely vegetarian curry evening meal , we collapsed into bed to prepare for our next day ’ s arduous ride .
We set off east from Leh through a
relatively flat valley on good tarmac . My anticipation skills were being honed by the minute but even so , I wasn ’ t prepared for Ravi suddenly veering to the right off the road onto a boulder strewn scree field . He had decided to take us on a short cut .
I could hear Sandy whooping and laughing in my intercom , but I was hanging onto the handlebars for dear life . We were all up on the pegs and desperately trying to miss the rocks . Target fixation is a real phenomenon , believe me .
One by one we shot over the berm , re-joined the proper road , and turned upwards on the mountain . Unfortunately , another bike didn ’ t make it over the berm and both rider and pillion took a tumble . No injuries or damage were sustained so we all continued .
The road rose higher and higher , the hairpins got more frequent and steeper and the road surface deteriorated as we climbed . The mountains are on the move the whole time and I found it fascinating how quickly Mother Nature could swallow the road with an avalanche or sweep the road away with a landslip . Loose gravel and boulders were continually falling , and glacial rivers had carved out paths over and through the road .
The air became thinner and colder yet still we climbed . Finally , we reached Chang La , the second highest road in the world at 5,391 metres . The bikes were stuttering and coughing , and we could only ride in second gear . Ravi only allowed us 15 minutes at the top of the pass , just long enough to take some photos then to prevent altitude sickness he started to hurry us on our way .
Coming down from the pass , we ran through the first of many rivers . Cold glacial run-offs with gushing waters sluiced across the road and sometimes we even rode up the riverbed where the road had been washed away . I was very curious , why had there been no rivers on the
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