A ride that taught me to slow down before the road did it for me
The fall after Mudh
Stacy fell in a plume of dust just after Mudh.
One moment her Royal Enfield was upright on the loose gravel, rear wheel twitching but still obedient. The next, the bike slid sideways as if the road had pulled a sheet from under it. Dust rose, hung in the cold air, and for a second I saw nothing except the red of her tail light blurred through brown.
When it cleared, she was sitting beside the bike, laughing.
There was blood on her knee, not much, but enough to make the day honest. The fall was minor. The shock was not. We had already ridden from Delhi through Narkanda, Chitkul, Nako and Pin Valley by then. We had crossed narrow roads, slept in cold rooms, eaten what arrived, and congratulated ourselves silently for being more capable than we probably were. The road after Mudh corrected that.
This was September 2012. Stacy and I were on two standard Royal Enfields, no backup vehicle, no advance bookings, and a route that looked clearer on paper than it felt under the tyres: Delhi, Narkanda, Chitkul, Nako, Mudh and Pin Valley, Gue, Kaza, Hikkim, Langza, Key, Chandratal, Lahaul, Sissu, Tandi, Manali, and finally back to Delhi.
The article used to call this dust, fear and glory. I am keeping the title because that was the mood in which the memory first arrived. But the ride itself was not glorious in the way that word suggests. It was clumsy, cold, beautiful, frightening, funny and repeatedly practical. Glory, if it existed at all, was only in the small things: Stacy standing up after the fall, the bike starting again, a strip of cloth pressed to a bleeding knee, the two of us laughing because we needed to, and then riding more carefully than before.
We did not conquer Spiti. We learned how quickly confidence can lose traction.
Stacy At Kunzum
Delhi to the high valleys
We left Delhi before the city had properly woken.
The Royal Enfields sounded too loud in the lane. That is always how departure feels in a sleeping city: part escape, part apology. Stacy was already helmeted, calm in the way she became before difficult roads. I was pretending to be calm by checking things I had already checked. Chain. Fuel. Straps. Gloves. Tools. The strange little inventory of faith every rider makes before leaving home.
The first day to Narkanda still had traces of ordinary India in it: dhabas opening, trucks warming, fields beside the highway, the long patience of climbing towards Shimla. By the time we reached Narkanda, the air had cooled and the road had begun to fold into pine and mist. We stayed in a simple place with chipped mugs, a kettle, and enough cold in the room to make blankets feel like equipment.
The next day took us towards Sangla and Chitkul. We stopped at Sangla, ate, drank tea, and listened to local warnings with more attention than we usually gave to advice in the plains. The road to Chitkul narrowed and sharpened. The Baspa ran below with more force than decoration. There were no guardrails in places, no space for drama, only line choice, clutch, brake, breath.
Chitkul felt like an edge without needing to call itself one. Wooden houses, cold light, smoke, water moving under small bridges, children who looked at our bikes with shy curiosity. We stayed the night there. Stacy stood near the road and said, “End of the road.”
“Start of something else,” I said.
It sounds polished now, but it was how we spoke then — half joke, half attempt to make fear manageable.
From Chitkul we rode towards Nako. Near Rakcham, a rockslide had left just enough space for a narrow passage. Stacy went first, slowly, her rear tyre close to the rough edge. I followed with the kind of concentration that makes the body feel smaller inside the jacket. By Reckong Peo, the world returned briefly to fuel, phones, shops and noise. After that, the green reduced itself. The land became drier, more exposed, less forgiving.
Nako arrived with stone houses, a cold room, a lake that held the evening light, and the first real sense that we had entered a higher grammar of travel. We were not ill, but the body had begun to notice altitude. Movements slowed. Sleep came in pieces. The bikes cooled outside under a sky so clear it made every small worry feel visible.
Pin Valley, Gue and Kaza
Leaving Nako, we visited Tabo Monastery instead of merely passing it.
I remember the change in pace there: boots quieter, voices lower, the body still carrying the motorcycle but trying to behave like a visitor. I do not want to over-interpret it. Tabo was a stop, a pause, a room of old work and old faith that did not need my explanation.
From there, we rode towards Pin Valley and Mudh. The green came almost suddenly after the dry hardness of the road — poplars, fields, a softer wind, water moving through the valley with less anger. At Mudh, Dolma was real and may remain. She served butter tea and gave us the kind of hospitality that does not announce itself as hospitality. It simply places something warm before you and lets your hands remember they are tired.
The fall happened after that, on the descent back towards the Spiti road. Once Stacy’s knee was cleaned and the bike checked, we rode on with fewer jokes. There was some damage to inspect, nothing catastrophic, but enough to make us listen differently to the machine. The Royal Enfields had already begun their little complaints: cold starts, reluctant gears, chain slack, a lever that needed adjustment, the odd sputter that made me wonder whether fuel, altitude or my imagination was to blame.
Gue came next, dry and quiet. The mummy visit happened as remembered. We stood before the preserved body, uncertain how long was respectful and how much curiosity was too much. Gue, or Giu, is publicly known for a naturally preserved mummy often described as about 500 years old, but what I remember most is not the fact; it is the awkward stillness of standing there in motorcycle boots, suddenly aware of how noisy the living can be.
I asked the caretaker why the body had not turned to dust.
“Faith is a preservative,” he said.
I wrote it down because it sounded like something I would not have believed if I had invented it.
By the time we reached Kaza, the wind had become cruel. Sand struck our cheeks where the scarves failed. The town felt almost too loud after the dry stretches: buildings, food smells, stupas, children, wires, shops, the sudden comfort of a bed. We stayed there, drank lemon ginger tea with both hands around the mugs, and said very little for a while.
That silence was not spiritual. We were tired.
Postcards, fossils and Chandratal
The day out of Kaza began late because the cold had made the bikes stubborn.
We rode first to Hikkim. I did mail a postcard there. The post office is widely described as the world’s highest, and Guinness World Records also lists Hikkim as the location of the highest post office; in the article, I would use the claim confidently only after checking the final source you prefer for publication.
The act itself was smaller than the claim. A card, a pen, cold fingers, a red box, a message to a future version of myself who might or might not remember the dust. Stacy saluted when the postcard went in. I bowed because the altitude had made me slightly theatrical.
At Langza, the fossil boy was real. He handed me a fossil stone and said, “It was a sea.” I do not remember whether I understood the geology properly then. I remember his certainty, the small hand, the stone’s weight, and the absurd feeling of standing among mountains while being handed evidence of water older than any road we had ridden.
Key Monastery came after that. The official district source describes Kye/Key as the largest monastery in the valley, overlooking Kaza from around 13,500 ft, but again, that fact belongs in the background. What belongs in the article is what happened: we entered, sat inside for about half an hour, watched butter lamps, listened to low voices, and let our riding bodies become still. Stacy, who could usually fill any silence with comment, sat with her eyes closed. I did not ask what she was thinking. That would have ruined it.
Then came the hard day: Kaza to Chandratal.
Past Losar, the road became less forgiving. We ate noodles, watched the sky lower itself, and rode towards Kunzum La with more caution than pride. At the pass, we stopped briefly, turned the prayer wheels partly out of respect and partly out of superstition, and then continued towards Chandratal.
The road to the lake was the roughest stretch of the ride. Water crossings cut the track. Snow-fed streams ran cold and fast enough to fill boots and empty confidence. By the third crossing, my socks were wet, my spine had begun to resent every stone, and Stacy’s thumb had become our main language: up meant okay, sideways meant wait, stillness meant this is not funny anymore.
We rode as close as the track allowed and walked the final stretch to the lake.
Chandratal did not need our reaction. The district describes it as a natural lake near Kunzum at around 14,000 ft, but no figure explains the quiet of arriving there tired and damp, with the bikes behind us and the wind moving over the water. We did not take many photographs at first. We were too tired to perform wonder.
We camped there. There were no other campers that night, as I remember it. Dinner was peanuts and silence, which sounds poetic only if you were not hungry. The sky cleared with almost aggressive beauty. Somewhere in the dark, a yak coughed. Frost came by morning. Our boots were stiff, helmets cold, fingers reluctant.
Stacy whispered in the tent, “If I die tonight, bury me here.”
“We already have,” I said.
It was a ridiculous line and a tired one. It also belonged to that night.
Lahaul, Manali, Delhi
The plan had been Chandratal to Manali.
The road had other arrangements, though I am trying not to say that as a philosophy. Near Chhota Dara, a shepherd told us Rohtang was jammed, possibly blocked by a landslide, and that we could lose hours waiting. The closure and delay were real. We turned towards Lahaul, Sissu and Tandi instead of forcing the Manali line immediately.
After Spiti’s dryness, Lahaul felt softer. Greener, yes, but also easier on the eyes. The Chandra River moved beside us, not gentle exactly, but less severe than the wind-scoured stretches behind. At Sissu, we stopped for pakoras and tea. Two women were shelling peas nearby. Stacy had dust on her face, a bandage on her knee, and that expression riders get when they are too tired to narrate but too awake to stop noticing.
We camped again by choice, somewhere along that softer line of the valley. By then the ride had done what hard travel often does: reduced us to maintenance. Eat. Warm hands. Check chain. Tighten strap. Dry sock if possible. Laugh only when the body can afford it.
The next day, Manali felt loud, wet, green and almost indecently comfortable. The Spiti ride, in the strict sense, ended there. But the journey did not end for me until we returned to Delhi.
The final stretch back to the city was less dramatic and somehow harder to absorb. Highways after mountain roads feel both easy and untrustworthy. Speed returns too quickly. Horns become normal again. Heat rises. The body, trained for cliffs and crossings, has to relearn traffic lights.
When we reached Delhi, the city did not pause for us. It never does. We rolled in with dust dried into the bikes, wet boots turned stiff, chains that needed cleaning, and a tiredness that no photograph could carry. I parked, killed the engine, and for a few seconds the silence after the thump felt larger than the whole ride.
Stacy took off her helmet. The scrape on her knee had darkened. My gloves smelled of petrol, cold, sweat and metal. We looked at the bikes the way people look at animals that have brought them home.
“Eight days,” she said.
I nodded.
Dust, fear and glory. The title still fit, but only if glory meant this: two standard Enfields cooling in a Delhi lane, two riders too tired to boast, and the road still lodged somewhere in the hands.
