Cycling Manali - Leh

Would like to share, with you all, my trip from Manali-Leh that we did on bicycle's July'08. We completed the total 485kms from Manali to Leh in 6 Days. I had no bike of my own so I decided to rent a bike from manali, but since one of the member who was coming with us was unable to come so he gave his bike to me. But there are good bikes available with Raju in Manali. We were a group of 6. Out of which 5 were cycling. We had the vehicle support with us (a Tata Sumo). As I and one other guy were late and could not reach Manali in time, we suggested others to start the tour and we will join them at Rohtang (also i personally did not wanted to have a tough beginning ).

Route Detail :

Source: Sentient-Entity

Here is how we went ahead each day :

Day 1: My first day on bike was from Rohtang-Koksar-Sissu. Mostly downhill and little level, but road after Koksar is very rough. We stayed in Triveni resthouse in Sissu and had dal, sabji and roti in dinner.

Day 2: In morning we had bread slice and tea, and we started early around 7am. Places coming in between were Gorpur(or something similar .... sorry :P ),tandi and finally we reached Keylong. I was feeling like the bike is getting heavy. After a check we found that a bolt was missing from the front disk and there was a sort of brake applied to front wheel all the time. So i had to stop back at keylong to get it fixed rest of the crew went ahead. After my bike was fixed i was already about 3-4hrs behind so i decided to put the bike on the support vehicle and moved on to look for others. Road after keylong is very bad, dust and stones. We found one rider just before the decent to Jispa. In the decent we found another rider, but he was in bad condition as he had a small accident. Actually his front wheel had come off while riding ( really lucky he did not get any major injury ), the rim of the wheel was also twisted, don't know what went wrong. So then we reached Darcha, had lunch there and headed to the steep climb and finally reached Patseo. But wait there was Suraj Tal before that..... lovely crystal blue lake, though very small, we did paddle boating there. InPatseo we stayed in a rest house of Avalance Study Center.

Day3: Was tough, and i was not that prepaired so i took a rest that day , but the view of beautiful himalayas starts from Patseo only.... It was straight road it Zing Zing Bar, then steep climb to "Peace restorant", where we got some good road. Then steep climb to suraj tal, finally reaching Baralacha la. Then i had enough sitting in vehicle so i took my bike and paddled to the Sarchu planes..... really awsome view at sarchu... long plains.... easy to cycle.... beautiful skies....

Day4: WE stated from sarchu early morning, beautiful 35kms flat road before reaching Gatta Loops, we(2) covered about 15 of them then were tired so again put the bike on the rescue vehicle, rest of the team was high in spirit and covered Nakella, Lachungla and finally we reached Pang.

Day5: WE started from pang, crossed Moray plains, very dusty, very hot and head winds...... made straight road also very tough.Them came the mighty Tang-Lang-La, there were high head winds and very very tough to even move a little in that condition. We could feel the thinness of air even while walking.... I gave up 14-kms before. So again bike on top of the support vehicle, from Tang-lang-la its all downhill till rumse so back on two wheels :) , we saw many Gompas along the way..... you can feel the peace there..... so quite..... Reached rusme..had the night stay there.

Day 6: Straight drive all the way till Leh.... very hot weather compared to the days before... as we moved from 1750mts to 1400mts and even less.

Wish to complete the tour without support vehicle some time in future....I did not had days left to explore leh (short of holidays).... but i was too much fulfilled with the journey only.... Leh has too much to offer which cannot be covered in a week....

And finally the people of Leh .... you can find all typed of people..... Buddhist, Muslims, Hindu's, Tourists..... local people are very friendly and cheerfull .....

Few pictures from the trip: