Part 2: Solo Ride To Atal Tunnel

By Ramneek

Day 5

So this was a good morning day from Kheerganga. Fully freezing temperature, it was about to snow there after 5 days but then this day I had to go back down so I visited Parvati Kund for a bath. It is basically a hot water natural pond – a hot spring in the hills above the temple of Kheerganga Shiv Mandir. It felt like real relief after a bath in the pond.

I paid my respects at the Kheerganga temple for my safe trek and safe ride. I had breakfast back in my camp and started trekking to go down 13 km. Even though going down isn’t much painful than climbing hills but it was slippery and hence had more risk of falling down. We stopped at the waterfalls on the way, took some pictures and had a good time with great music in Parvati valley. We reached Barshaini after 3 hours 30 minutes of trekking. From Barshaini Tosh is around 4 km we reached Tosh and I took my laptop bag from the hotel and now I was off to Kasol which is 20 km down from Tosh.

I reached Kasol in the evening, met three more friends and partied at a riverside café enjoying Parvati valley on my left side and then went back to my hotel and slept.

Day 6

The friends I met in Kasol were leaving for Delhi, so we had an amazing breakfast and I gave them some of my extra luggage to carry in the car. While they were off to Delhi, I had to ride to a new destination – Malana village, which is around 10 km down from Kasol – and is called the oldest democracy in the world. I reached Jari, then did a 20 km uphill riding – totally offroading – but with an amazing view.

My bike overheated in such high terrain as its fan was continuously working due to the heat. I was at a beautiful waterfall en route Malana with a rainbow. After a while, my bike was normal and I started riding again and reached the Malana gate. After parking my bike we again had to trek for 2 km to reach the Malana village.

We started trekking but it was so steep that we took 2 hours to reach the village. I took a camp at the end of the village with an amazing view at the gate of that hill from where wind enters in Malana. I was shivering in the camp even after taking 4 blankets and wearing my own jacket. Malana also proved to be the costliest place during my entire trip.

Day 7

With the sun coming up, it was a little relief from the extreme cold I suffered through the night. But I didn’t have time to sleep as I had to trek down to Malana gate and visit Gurudwara Manikaran Sahib. I left Malana at 10 in the morning and it hardly took half n hour to trek down. I started my bike and reached Manikaran Sahib, had a bath there in hot spring water and then worshipped for my safe ride back towards Delhi. I relished the Gurudwara langar and it was almost 2 pm when I started for Delhi.

On my way back to Delhi, I stopped twice as there was construction going on to make a highway on hills. And this ride was tiring too because all the roads are mostly in construction, last year the landslides were so heavy that some roads seized to exist and some were drained away in Biasi river. And guess what I reached KTM Mandi again at 5:30, I wanted to get my bike serviced but it was the time of closing the workshop but I got my engine oil finally changed.

It was getting dark around 6-6:30 and around 90 km of hills were still left. I was tired but continued riding and reached Zikarpur around 11:30 at night. When Karnal was around 30 km, we had to stop for coffee as my body was giving up. I had coffee and made a mistake – I had an aloo parantha too at Murthal and it made me want me to sleep. But I started my ride again at 2 and when I entered the highway my eyes started blinking in every 2 – 3 seconds.

I asked my friend to ride but he was also not in the condition to ride as he is not a rider. I stopped at a dhaba and lied there on a khat and asked my friend to wake me up at around 5 but due to the noise of trucks and traffic on the running highway, it was difficult to sleep. Also, the cold winds reminded me of the Malana trip.

After 2.5 hours, my friend woke me up, and I wore all my gears again and started again. I was riding slowly because there is a high risk of being sleepy on the bike. We reached Panipat and there was again construction on the highway leading to a lot of diversions. Now, I was more alert because diversions have more chances of accident and you have to have an eagle eye on the highway while riding. Now home was around 80 km away, I reached home very sleepy around 7 am in the morning and slid under my bed dreaming of my just-ended dreamy vacation.

The author is a 21-year-old biking enthusiast from Delhi, and winner of KTM ORANGE DAY races in DUKE 200 CC category each year from 2016 -19 which were held in Delhi and NCR.