Delhi - Auli Bike Tour.

It had been 3 months gap since we did our last tour; we missed our planned HKD trek and a bike tour in december '07, So we were eagerly looking for next oppurtunity to hit road. Finally the we decided on dates and the destination of our next tour, and thankfully everybody in team had time!

Destination: Auli (~3000 meters above sea)

Dates : 5th - 8th jan 2008
Team : Same old good 3 bikers. Sripurna (On P150),
Jay (On CBZ exterme), and me (On P180)

Route : Gaziabad - Merrut - Roorkee - Haridwar - Rishikesh - Rudraprayg - chamoli -

joshimath - Auli.

Round Trip : 1060 km.

Highways : Only NH58. Caught NH58 from gaziabad and left it at joshimath.

DAY - 1

As Always we started early in the morning around 4 am from Noida and within few minutes we were on NH58, and started crusing towards merrut. NH58 being a familiar higway allowed us to run fast till merrut after which we had to ride more carefully because of the bullock carts and tractors carrying sugarcane, at these guys remain invisible until they are just few feets away from you!
Apart from these slow moving carts, NH58 is a no problem highway. We reached rishikesh in about 6 hours and then headed towards badrinath. We were at Rudrapryag at about 7pm; we did not want to ride at night in hills, so we called the day off and halted at rudraprayag.

DAY - 2

Day 2 begun at 10:00 am in morning, and its gonna be a short ride of about 120km till joshimath. This road is smooooooth for most of this strech; except for about 30km before karnprayag, after karnprayag again smooth curves.

When we touched johimath at about 4 in the evening it was coloudy there and was raining a little bit, this was both good and bad situation for us. Bad because we could not capture sunset glow on snow covered peaks because of clouds and Good because rain means possible snow fall at auli :)

Just clicked few macros in joshimath and headed towards Auli (a brave decision!!!).

Auli is just 16km from, our excitement had no limit because in few minutes there will be snow everywhere :)

Shortly we saw small patches of snow.. wow!!! that is what we were waiting for. I had never seen snow before this, so just pulled
my bike off the road, took my gloves off and grabbed handful of snow... to get a feel of it.... So far so good; everything was going according to the plan. Purna and jay were ahead of me by a kilometer to two so without wasting much time i started the engine again and started moving.

As i moved along, the amount of snow on road started growing so was my excitement. As i applied brakes to take a shot, the bike skidded but fortunately by small amount, so this is called black ice! good good..first encounter with black ice also. After moving for just 100-200 meters more the real fun started, there was a chocolate colored mixture of mud and snow ahead on whole road.

I tried crossing this section slowly but no luck this time, now the bike was skiding crazily even wihtout applying brakes. It was moving right, left and even back but it was'nt moving ahead :( Some people who were njoying their booze and snow fight saw me struggling, and pushed my bike out of that mess! hmm now i could see jay and purna just 50 meters ahead and they were also struggling :)

Purna was the first one to fall down on road, next was my turn, and finally jay also touched down. Bikes were barely moving forward, so finally we made a wise decision to go back to johismath and come back to auli next day by ropeway.

DAY3

Woke up around 6am in the morning, sky was clear no clouds, Picked up my cam and went out to capture sunrise glow on peaks. good luck this time, i was able to capture some beautiful sunrise shots.

Auli Ropeway is 4km long (The longest in India) and it accends

600m. First ropeway car leaves johimath at 9:45 in morning, and obviously we were in the first car :)

Picture on left side gives a nice bird's eye view of the road on which we strugguled previous day, Looking at amount of snow on road now we know that we made really a wise decision yesterday to return back.

In about 15 minutes we were at auli, hired show boots for 50 buks, filled our bellies with maggi and now our feet were in 1.5 feet snow!! welcome to auli.... nothing but snow everywhere....

It was a clear sunny day, pleasent weather... and loads of snow. We got a clear view of NandaDevi and many other peaks from here... Auli is a ski resort so how can we go without skiing, again this was my first time with skiing But nothing wrong in trying it.. The instructor taught me how to skii, i tried few times.. hmm it seems its not a tough job, soon the instructor gave me green flag to skii on slope :) I started off well i was more than happy, before i could think anything else i banged in people njoying their tea, skiing is not easy i learnt :)

We stayed at auli till 3pm and then took the ropeway car back to johimath. We started our return journey at 5pm from johimath and reached rudraprayag around 11 at night. End of day 3.

DAY4

Nothing much, ride back from rudraprayag to Noida.

Delhi to gangotri on bike

Destination : Gangotri.
Round trip : 1100 km.
Max altitude touched : 11,000 ft.
Duration : 5 days (21nd sep - 25 sep 2007 )
The team : sripurna, jay, and me.
The machines : pulsar 150, pulsar 180, CBZ xtreme

21st sepetember 2007 we packed our bags, got our speed machines ready and set off for another adventure tour. Gangotri is Is at about 550 km from delhi and it is at about 9,980 ft above sea level. These numbers are good enough to show that this ride is gonna be exiting and challenging. Gangotri is one of the "chaar-dham" hindu pilgrimage, Also its a pilgimage for trekkers and nature lovers, it is the base for some of the most exiting treks in this region.


So our beasts started roaring pretty early in morning, we were on NH58 at about 4:00 am. This highway is not new now (given the number of rides that we did in Uttaranchal). NH58 is in good condition except for about 30km which is under construction, once this construction is complete riding this 250 km to rishikesh will be a cake walk. Our Average speed on this highway came out to be 40kmph, bad but it is reality, 40kmph is a realistic figure on this highway no matter how fast you go momentarily.


We touched rishikesh at about 12:30pm. From here we headed the two wheels on NH94 highway. Now this is point onwards you have to be careful while riding because next 250km ride will be on the snake like hilly roads, you'll hit places where no roads will be there :) , landslides will be waiting for you. Having said all bad about these roads, i must say riding on hills is a heavenly experience. And because of these challenges we call these tours adventure tour :).

If you are riding in this region you should be prepared to face any challenge, sometime landslides take away whole road, when they do so you are obiously stuck. but we were lucky to have some road so that we could pass through.

We cruised till chamba where we took a wrong way towards tehri which lead us to a place where there was barely any road, actually there used to be road here but few years back it got sunk in tehri reservior. So we were on a road which was under construction, i would say in very early stages of constuction :)

Because of this strech we took a long time. and Sun went down when we were about 68 km from uttarkashi. Riding on hills at night is not safe so we halted for night at a small place called "kandi saur". Cheked-in in a small hotel, enjoyed India-Austrailia 20-20 semifinal at night and in the morning we headed towards uttarkashi.


Uttarkash-gangotri route makes you feel that all your hardwork to reach this place has started paying now.

Here your ride through beautiful valleys, you ride through apple orchards, you ride by small watter falls.

In valleys roads and the river ganga run side by side, and when you gain hight you get some breathtaking views of ganga flowing through the deep valleys. Picture on right is one of those breathtaking views, i had seen such pictures only on discovery channel before this trip :)

Now enough of good views and good roads :(, time to get lil careful because almost 30km of road now on (its in uttarkashi- gangotri strech) is in pretty bad shape.

Rain take a significant portion of these roads with it every year. Hats off to BRO (Border Road organization) which keeps gangotri linked with uttarkashi in these conditions also. Few Hydro power projects are also in progress in this region which is another reason why these roads are in bad condition.

you have to be very careful while crossing these 30km, because mistakes on this road may be fatal. Slowly we progressed, took a long time but safely we reached harsil a small village which is about 40 km before gangotri. After a tea break we were on road again, and reached gangotri at about 5:30 in the evening.


By this time we were tired. Booked a room in a small hotel. hotels here are really cheap. you easily get a room for Rs. 150 - 200. But do not expect a luxury suite :)


As per our intial plans the trip was half complete, we were at our destination, The gangotri temple.

We were already late on as per our plan, initially we had planned that we'll return to delhi in 3 days, but we took 2 days to reach gangotri forget about returning in 3days, simply our time lines were not realistic and now they were messed up :).

Since we are already late so we decided to pull in one more day (that will make our trip a five day trip) , and go on gangotri-gomukh trail to capture as many beautiful views in our cameras as we can in one day.



So now time to do some treking, not really treking just walking :) though because there is a well marked trail from gangotri to gomukh. Real trekking starts after gomukh when you have to cross glaciers.



We started walking on gangotri-gomukh trail at 7:30 in the morning. Gomukh glacier is the staring point of river ganga and is at a distance of about 18km from gangotri .

We knew that we could not do 18km and come back in same day. So we decided to walk towards gomukh for 3hrs and then return back. While walking on this trail you find beautiful valleys, white peaks and ridges in front of you. I kept clicking, then realised that now its time to turn back. Reached gangotri at about 3:30pm, had lunch and then went for a long sleep. Next morning head back to delhi.

This time because of less time we could not go to gomukh, but next time we'll definitely go till tapovan (6km from gomukh, ~12500 ft from sea level).

So this is it here are some tips:

1. Make sure that your tyers are in good condition.
2. Do carry a puncture kit with you.
3. Do such long trips in groups only, avoid going alone.
4. Plan your trip time based on this rule : Average speed in planes 40kmph, in hills 15kmph.
5. Carry first aid box.
6. Do not go on this trip if this is the first time you are riding in hills. You must have some experience of riding in hills before attempting 250km in hills.

Delhi to Nainital on bike.

This (10th aug 2007) weekend i, some of my frnds and my plusar 180 decided to hit the road again, destination this time was nainital, its about 320Km from Noida (sector 50 to be exact, this is where i reseted my trip meter:)).

Orignal plan was to take 2 days off and go fr a 5 day trip but since getting 2 days off is not easy, so we had to cut it short, only 2 days. We thought that 650Km in 2 days is doable so on friday night we decided on this trip and left for it at 4:00am on sat.


We took NH24 from gaziabad, cruised on it till Rampur then took NH87 for haldwani. NH24 is bad in small patches, it has 2 amazing toll roads covering about 60Km, you can fly on these roads:). But worse part starts after rampur, NH87 between rampur and rudrapur is in worst possible condition, your average speed drops to 10Km/ph on this road, its full of pothholes of all sizes. We took really long time covering this 50Km of NH87.

On the way to rudrapur we encountered this strange place called "bhoot Thana", i am just wondering why it is called so, may be because these cops police the ghosts or may be ghosts are cops! god knows!!!



After Rudrapur, road is in a good condtion, you can easily got at 80 km/ph. We touched kathgodam at 5:30pm (yes it took that long, because the road and heavy rain). Once you reach here you'll foget everything about those bad roads!. Riding on these curved hilly roads was really a refreshing exp after that NH87 ride.

These pictures can tell rest of the story:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=17xxsl9h.6njcrstp&x=0&y=cp8p4h


Next day we started early, then came the rain with thick fog.... these conditions were test of your riding skills and patience (because of those trucks which do only 20kmph on hills:) ) but again it was amazing experience. We tried going to bheemtal, but we had to turn back because we were running out of time.

After nainital back to that NH87 in same bad condition which were made worse by rain:( sun went down when delhi was still 100km away, so we had to ride at night with the long convoys of trucks.
Finally we reached back noida at 10:30pm. So that was an exiting trip. We covered 666Km in two days time. That was the short description of the trip.