Fear, focus, and the art of breathing at 17,000+ feet.
Breath on the climb
I first noticed the altitude in my breathing, not in the scenery.
The road above Leh had already turned rough by then. Gravel sat loose over broken tarmac. Slush collected in shaded bends. Wind pushed at the jacket and found every weak seam. The Royal Enfield Classic was still thumping steadily beneath me, but I had become less steady. My breath had shortened into a task. Inhale. Hold the line. Exhale. Watch the front wheel. Repeat.
This was August 2012, my second Ladakh trip, and I was riding solo to Khardung La and back. I was not going onward to Nubra that day. The plan was smaller and, in hindsight, wiser: leave Leh early, climb to the pass, spend a little time at the top, take photographs, have tea if the body allowed it, and return before the mountain weather or my own confidence became too clever.
In 2012, Khardung La still carried the old romance of the “highest motorable road” claim in signboards, rider talk and tea-stall mythology. I am not interested in turning this article into a height argument, but the claim needs care. Leh district’s official page currently lists Khardung La at 18,379 ft, while a later PIB release gives 17,582 ft and says BRO’s Umling La road became the world’s highest motorable road. Both facts can sit beside the memory without changing what mattered on the climb: the air was thin enough for my lungs to stop being background machinery.
That day, the number mattered less than the body’s arithmetic. One bend, one breath. One patch of slush, one correction. One truck passed safely, one small private relief. A high pass does not need to be the highest to make you honest.
The pass as seen from the mirror
Leh before the climb
Leh in 2012 sits in my memory with less polish than later years.
That may be nostalgia, so I will keep it modest. The town was already known to travellers, riders and photographers, but it had not yet become the version of itself that would later appear endlessly on screens. In the mornings, the bazaar still felt half-local before it became fully awake for visitors. Mechanics worked in dust and sun. Cafés opened slowly. Dogs owned the lanes with the calm of old residents. From rooftops, Shanti Stupa and the surrounding ridges held the evening light in a way that made conversation drop without anyone asking for silence.
I had spent enough time in Leh before the ride to know that acclimatisation was not an optional virtue. I walked slowly, drank water, climbed stairs with more caution than pride, and still woke with the faint pressure behind the eyes that Ladakh sometimes uses as a reminder. Breathing at that altitude was already slightly deliberate. Khardung La would only make it more public.
The Royal Enfield Classic was checked before the climb: chain, cables, plug, mirrors, tyres, the small rituals that make a rider feel responsible even when he knows the road has the final vote. A mechanic gave the usual advice in plain language: go slow, do not fight the bike, do not fight the road, and stop if the weather turns. I remember that more clearly than any grand encouragement. There is nothing noble in falling.
The permit and checkpost routine belonged to the ride, but I am keeping it general. This was 2012, and I do not want an old memory to masquerade as current travel advice. What matters is that I left Leh with paperwork in order, a motorcycle that sounded ready, and a confidence that still had some unnecessary decoration on it.
By the time the town began to fall away behind me, the climb had already begun correcting that.
South Pullu to the pass
South Pullu arrived as a practical pause.
Documents were checked. Vehicles waited. Dust, diesel and tea occupied the same small space. Men in uniform did their work with the efficiency of people used to watching travellers misjudge mountains. I had tea, not because I needed ceremony, but because stopping gave my hands time to become hands again instead of grips around a handlebar.
Beyond South Pullu, the road grew worse. The surface broke into sections: gravel, slush, old tarmac, fresh scars, meltwater and those shaded strips where ice keeps its own schedule. The Classic moved heavily but honestly. When I let it find its line, it behaved. When I tried to force it, it reminded me that fear makes bad riding technique worse.
The cold wind sharpened. The visor fogged with breath and cleared badly. I began using a simple count, not as a spiritual practice, but as a way to keep panic from becoming busy. Breathe in. Hold. Breathe out. The exact count mattered less than the rhythm. It gave the mind a job beyond inventing consequences.
Traffic made the climb more complicated. Trucks descended slowly, carrying weight and patience. Other bikes appeared, some careful, some too excited. SUVs crawled across broken patches with tyres searching for grip. On roads like this, overtaking is less a manoeuvre than a request. You wait until the driver has seen you, the surface has allowed you, and your own ego has quietened enough to pass without making a point.
On one icy-slushy bend, the rear moved sideways just enough to empty the chest. It was not a crash, not even close, but it was enough to make the body understand how quickly a small mistake can become a large event. My arms stiffened first. Then I remembered to loosen them. The bike corrected, the rear settled, and the road continued as if nothing had happened.
I stopped once before the top. The engine ticked in the cold. Wind moved dust and prayer-flag sound from somewhere above. My breathing was heavy but manageable. No nausea, no dizziness, no heroic suffering only the simple fact that the body was working harder than my pride had planned.
That was the real climb. Not the summit board. Not the photograph. The stretch where the mind wants to dramatise and the body asks for method.
Thirty minutes at Khardung La
I stayed at Khardung La for about thirty minutes.
That was enough. The pass was cold, windy and busy in the way high-road summits often are: prayer flags, signboard, parked motorcycles, riders looking relieved, families taking photographs, soldiers and workers moving through the same space with less fuss than the visitors. The altitude did not reward lingering. It made even standing still feel slightly active.
I had tea at the top. The cup was hot enough to be useful and ordinary enough to be perfect. I took photographs too: the expected ones and a few smaller frames that mattered more later. Flags snapping in the wind. The bike resting after the climb. People trying to smile with cracked lips and cold fingers. The summit had the strange mood of places where everyone wants evidence of arrival but few people want to admit how tired they are.
The old signboard claim was part of that theatre. Riders had come for it. I had come partly for it too, even if I told myself otherwise. But standing there in the wind, breathing heavily and holding tea, the boast felt less important than the correction. I had not conquered anything. I had arrived, briefly, with the help of a machine, a road, workers who kept it open, people who checked the route, and enough luck to make the climb uneventful.
That realisation did not come as a grand lesson. It came as a physical instruction: do not stay too long; do not let the summit become the story; descend while the body is still sensible.
Back down to Leh
The descent was quieter, but it was not easier.
Downhill riding asks a different kind of attention. Gravity becomes helpful only if you do not let it become impatient. I used engine braking, kept my hands light, and treated every wet or slushy patch as if it had a private plan. The same bad road looked different from above. Bends that had felt like effort on the climb now felt like negotiation.
I did not go into Nubra that day. I turned back towards Leh, letting the pass remain a ride in itself rather than a gateway to a longer journey. That decision may not sound dramatic, but it was one of the better ones. In Ladakh, restraint often looks boring from the outside and intelligent from inside the helmet.
The traffic thinned and thickened by turns. Trucks moved with their own heavy logic. I let faster vehicles pass when they wanted to. I stopped trying to ride like someone watching himself from a distance. By then, the fear had changed shape. It was still there, but quieter. Less enemy, more instrument. It told me where to slow down. It reminded me to breathe. It kept my eyes where they belonged.
Leh appeared gradually: roofs, dust, more movement, the familiar sense of a town receiving riders back into ordinary scale. The descent into town softened the body before the mind caught up. Only when the road widened and the houses returned did I realise how tightly I had been holding the day.
I turned off the bike in Leh and the sudden silence felt almost comic. After hours of engine, wind and breath, the Classic cooled with little metallic ticks, as if giving its own account of the ride. I took off my gloves. My fingers were stiff. My shoulders ached. My lungs were still working as if the pass had followed me down.
I ordered chai.
The cup came too hot to hold comfortably, and that was exactly right. Steam rose into my face. Sugar returned some softness to the edges of the afternoon. Around me, Leh continued with its ordinary evening: a dog turning in a circle before sleep, a radio somewhere, footsteps in the lane, another rider arriving with dust on his trousers and relief hidden badly behind a grin.
When someone asked how Khardung La had been, I did not say highest. I did not say conquered. I said it was cold, rough, windy and kind enough to let me come back.
That was more accurate.
In other words:
Ride like you mean to come back.
Not just to the pass, but to yourself.
