MY HEAD is in the clouds, literally, as I replay a YouTube video of the Zanskar Valley in Ladakh, India, in my mind while I try my new riding gear in preparation for that ride.
A rough motorcycle journey on a dirt road flanked on one side by a glacier and by jagged peaks across a river on the other. Glacial melt flows like a creek across the road.
The young guy making the video gets off his motorcycle, removes his boots and pushes his 200kg Enfield motorcycle through the water. He then sits down on a boulder, dries his freezing feet, puts his boots back on and continues to ride.
I never imagined the armoured pants and jacket would be this heavy and unyielding. I struggled in the motorcycle shop to put everything on. My arms hurt at the end of nearly two hours of trying different styles.
I decided on the L pants, although I have a phobia of Ls... I could just zip them up. Just. But the thought of an XL is unbearable. I will lose weight between now and the time of the ride, I tell myself. I have six weeks to do it before this, my very first experience on a motorcycle.
I pull the pants up, suck my belly in, close the industrial strength zipper and look in the mirror. I try to crouch in the riding position. Pants are tight.
I try to swing a leg over the table replicating the motion of getting on a bike after the driver is in position. I bang my knee on the table – thank goodness for the knee armour.
This detail is no small one. Pillion riders can’t bend their body over the bike to help their leg clear the seat because the driver is already on. So it is more like clearing a hurdle with the upper body upright.
These pants are tight. XL is flashing in neon lights in front of me. I console myself by thinking manufacturers make riding gear with size 0 young things in mind.
“I need some more milk for my Weetbix, please,” says my four-year-old grandson Jack. “And a banana.”
I’m struggling to get off these pants that bind me. When I’m finally free I attend to his request.
“There is dog hair in the banana,” says Jack.
I know, the dog needs a good brush and a bath.
Fast forward six months...
It is grandparents’ day at Ivy’s kindy. She has taken a photo of me to school and when her turn comes, she says “My grandma is not here today because she is riding a motorcycle in the Indian Himalayas”. Her brother Jack beams with pride and complicity.
Now, back at home, the riding jacket hangs from a door in full view and I touch it every time I pass near it. It is dusty and the pink trimmings are a bit faded. The intense Himalayan sun and the blasting winds have softened its bulletproof fabric.
It hangs there as a reminder of happiness – of that “rocky mountain high” sense of wonder and awe I have come to experience on two separate, exhilarating, month-long trips with a veteran rider and photographer who delights in sharing his passion for this part of his India with me.
Imagine the elation of reaching remote villages perched precariously on high cliffs after zigzagging all the way up there.
When you ride you are part of the scene. Unlike travelling by car, where you see things framed – as if you were watching a movie – when you ride a motorcycle, you are starring in that movie. Landscapes unfold not only in front of you but all around you.
The Spiti Valley road in Himachal Pradesh is carved out of the mountainside, so you cruise through stretches with overhanging rock shelves above your head. These formations are so spectacular they resemble heavy theatre curtains ready to part slightly in the wind.
Roads are so narrow you can touch the mountainside if you stretch your arm out. On the other side, the ever-present drop of at least 2000 metres over the Spiti River reminds you of the fragility of life.
Here, so close to the Tibetan border, Buddhist monks live in monasteries clinging to high peaks; shepherds guide their flocks to safety away from where snow leopards roam; high altitude lakes sparkle in the sun; and the silence is so intense you can actually hear it.
Above the treeline the rockscape is sensational and, below it, picture perfect villages nestle among apple orchards.
Tabo Monastery is the oldest functioning Buddhist complex in the whole of the Himalayas. Key Monastery opens its doors to travellers offering spartan but suitable accommodation, and Dhankar village is so spectacularly poised on lonely crags it makes you wonder how a human settlement ever happened here in the first place.
I didn’t have to worry about the tight riding pants. By the end of a month riding from Leh in Ladakh to the end of the Zanskar Valley and back to Leh, I had lost five kilograms and two immune-system conditions that plagued me for years had gone into remission.
I returned to India within two months of the first ride to explore the Spiti valley and this time, another two kilograms dropped off – an excellent excuse to get a pair of new riding jeans (skinny and sexy) in preparation for the next high-altitude adventure.
With no previous experience riding motorcycles I have now fallen in love with them. Thankfully my mentor thinks I am the best pillion rider he’s ever had, brave and uncomplaining.
The riding jacket – with its well-earned Himalayan dust – still hangs in a prominent place as a reminder of the unbridled joy that descends on you when you DARE...AND WIN.
If you go...
FOR more information on organised motorcycle and 4x4 tours of the Indian Himalayas visit www.littlefrog.in or contact Vikas Panghal at panghal@hotmail.com Instagram @vikas panghal