Akhil Abroad

I looked up at a galaxy of stars, it was the closest I’ve ever stood to them. My breaths were short and sharp, they had to be. More than 3000 meters above sea level, the air in Ladakh is oxygen-scarce; it’s a place that figuratively and literally will take your breath away.

The Himalayas surrounded me. In school they taught us of this majestic range that protected India from bad weather and bad people, but what I saw was something else! Mountains rose out of mountains. You saw a peak in the distance, only to move to another angle and find that the actual mountain is thrice as high!

We met in Ladakh, four friends from noisy, crowded Mumbai and spent 2 days in the bustling capital of Leh before venturing out to Nubra Valley.

We took Royal Enfield Bullets; bikes are the best way to move around the land. A grand total of 0 hours of riding experience relegated me to the unenviable option of riding pillion for 122 km with one of my mates. He and I do not embrace when we meet nowadays, having clocked more than 16 hours of hugging on a bike, that summer. Up and down the other side of Khardung La, one of the world’s highest motorable passes, we negotiated sharp inclines, piercing winds, a landslide (!) and subsequently a monstrous machine built for the sole task of moving mountains!

The ride through Nubra Valley was our reward. This was no lush valley with winding rivers and vegetation, it was a desert in the sky. Through the gorge flowed a rushing river, formed of melted snow that wound its way through the secrets of each mountain before collecting thousands of meters below, flanked by sands of every color. The sky was a hundred hues of blue. It were as if I had stepped into my computer’s wallpaper.

Our route hugged the base of mountains, snaking up and down their vertical faces. Impudently, we sped along, at any moment susceptible to death by landslide if a mountain so much as shook the crumbs off its jacket. We drank from every stream, we watched every herd of wild horses or colorfully clothed yaks graze freely and we high-fived every kid we passed. We consumed copious amounts of Kahwa tea and bowls of noodle soup, thukpa, containing generous amounts of garlic, as do all things delicious. Garlic keeps the blood thin, great to deter altitude sickness. In Hundar we took a rare ride on double-humped camels in white sands, at Turtuk we stood as close to our neighbors in Pakistan as Indian civilians may.

We were four friends, we stood on the top of the world.