A test of patience, luck, and small kindnesses at every mechanic’s fire

Prologue   Chance, Maps, and the Smell of Petrol

“Some rides begin with a route; the good ones begin with a reunion.”

Late June, 2016. I was back in Leh making the sort of lists that don’t end spares, bungee cords, biscuits, tyre irons when the door chime of a tiny café above the main bazaar rang with something that wasn’t sound. Cecilia, Brazil in her vowels and dust on her boots, stepped in like a promise the day had been keeping. We’d met months earlier in Delhi while bartering for a June full of mountains me pretending to know something about carburetors, her actually knowing something about courage. We’d said we might meet again, but “might” is a soft word. Yet there she was, ordering black coffee as if it were a direction.

“Padum?” she said like a coin hitting wood.

“Padum,” I answered, like a map consenting to be folded.

The plan loosened itself quickly: ride from Kargyak down the Tsarap Chu past Purne, Ichar, Reru and pull into Padum with just enough light to find dal and a bed. We allocated two days because we were sensible. We packed for three because we weren’t.

Leh let us go with its usual benediction: a handshake from a mechanic who calls every engine beta, a woman in a sweater the color of winter grass who sold us dried apricots and refused our extra rupees, and a boy who chased our taillights down the lane as if speed were just a different shape of friendship.

 

Kargyak Morning: Fuel Arithmetic and River Grammar

“The mountain won’t read your plan; it will read your posture.”

Kargyak wakes like a honest stove slow flame, no fuss. Willows shoulder the wind. Barley squares pretend to be emeralds. We checked our fuel math with missionary seriousness: small tanks, tin jerrycans blackened by other people’s summers, and one shared vow to sip the throttle. We were both on single-cylinder stubbornness two old Enfields who believed in torque more than in speed.

I did the ritual that makes engines behave: tap the carb bowl, run a finger through chain grit, tighten what looks loose and bless what looks fine. Cecilia tightened her mirror with a hair band and a laugh.

“You always look like you’re composing a letter to the bike,” she teased.

“It has to answer,” I said, and she nodded like she understood which part of me was joking.

We rolled past the last houses of Kargyak in a breeze that wasn’t a breeze so much as a negotiation. A dog trotted alongside as if escorting dear friends to the border. At the mani wall we did the little left-hand dance and carried on, the Tsarap talking to itself in white sentences below.

Fuel arithmetic is also nerve arithmetic. Do you back off the throttle on climbs so the engine doesn’t drink out of boredom? Do you keep a higher gear and listen for that ping that means you’ve pushed economy into cruelty? We settled into a pace that let us hear our own thoughts and still outrun doubt.

A km past the chorten that claims a view better than most gods’ windows, Cecilia pointed to a goat path higher than the track. “If the river bites, we climb,” she said. I nodded and tucked the idea into my pocket next to the biscuits.

 

First Puncture: Luck Wears a Thorn

“A day can turn at the speed of a small nail.”

We were somewhere between Kargyak and Purne, right where the valley begins to open its fist, when the rear tyre sighed a story I already knew. Puncture. Not dramatic. Not kind. Just the slow exhale of plans. I felt the tail sigh first, that jelly-legged wobble. We stopped under a shard of shade that tried its best.

Tyre off, tube out, hands in the vocabulary I trust. Cecilia filtered glue fumes through a scarf and grinned. “Flat tyres are the Himalaya teaching patience with props,” she said. The thorn was small and smug. I flicked it away and it stuck to my glove like it wanted to be remembered.

A man appeared from the field above us, willow basket on his back, barley green on his palms. He squatted without hello, watched our hands, then pointed with his chin at the boiling sun. “Shadow will move. Your patch won’t if you don’t hurry,” he offered, then took out a matchbox as if to remind chemistry what century it was. He offered the flame to the patch like a priest. The vulcanizing kissed rubber and the smell took me back to every mechanic’s fire I’ve ever loved.

We paid with biscuits and smiles and the man accepted both as correct currency. The tube held. The tyre bit bead. The air pump sounded like survival.

We rode on, a little more gentle, a little more grateful, as if the thorn had signed us into the valley’s registry.

 

Purne Bend: Fuel, Faith, and a Tea That Changed the Day

“When there isn’t enough petrol, find enough kindness.”

By Purne, the sun had become an argument we were losing. The confluence glared like a mirror you can’t afford. Fuel math raised its eyebrows: we’d burned more than our table napkin calculus anticipated raw track, headwind, that time we idled too long comparing scars with another rider. We needed to stretch what remained. I switched to reserve not from necessity but from superstition: teach the bike that scarcity is here so it can think about it.

We parked at a tea shack cobbled from tin and tenacity. Inside, two students in sweaters thicker than their arms were sharing one notebook like a constitution. A woman with cheekbones that suggested the valley’s ridgelines poured salt tea with the certainty of a midwife. “Padum?” she asked. We confessed we might be overestimating ourselves.

She looked at our jerrycans and made a face that said numbers aren’t opinions. “Half-litre for each,” she said, taking down a Coke bottle reborn as fuel vessel. The liquid gleamed that particular petrol color that always looks like an idea before it becomes a mistake.

“How much?” I asked.

She shrugged. “Enough for tea next time,” she said. Faith has a funny way of settling books.

We left with faith in the tank and a plan to coast when we could. Cecilia had already begun to practice engine-off descents, a quiet art she learned from a shepherd in Spiti. “Listen to the mountain. It will tell you which gear it wants to be nothing in,” she said, and the line made far more sense than anything in my manual.

 

Phuktal Detour (Almost): The Monastery You Carry Forward

“Every road asks if your yes belongs here.”

Past Purne, the trail to Phuktal split up the rock like a long italic word. We killed our engines and let the idea rise. The monastery wasn’t on today’s plan, not in a tyre-and-fuel economy like ours, not with weather thinking about tricks. But Phuktal is a pilgrimage that lives in you once you’ve learned its pronunciation.

Cecilia took off her helmet, tied her hair with that same elastic she trusts more than gods, and looked up-valley. “Next time,” she said quietly, and the beauty of the sentence was that it contained both resignation and return.

A monk in sneakers came by, swinging a canvas bag evidently full of letters, salt, and cheer. He asked where we were going and how the track was, and gave us a dry apricot apiece with the parting blessing that passes for traffic advice here: “Ride soft. Stones are listening.”

We mounted again, lighter for having put down the weight of a maybe.

 

Ichar Climb: Heat, Height, and the Kindness of a Shadow

“When the road rises like a question, answer with breath, not bravado.”

The climb to Ichar is always steeper than your morning brag suggests. The trail lifts in switchbacks scraped from thought, the river below turns from white to memory, and light becomes the kind of flat that makes depth a rumor.

Halfway up, the bike coughed and missfired not starved, just hot. I pulled over. We stripped gloves, unzipped enough so lungs remembered they were welcomed, and did the one thing riders often forget they’re allowed: we sat down. A shepherd sharing shade with his goats offered a space the size of a sigh. We took it. He studied our boots the way music teachers study hands.

“Strong shoes, weak plan,” he said in a tone that sounded like my father and also like all mountains.

We drank slowly. We didn’t pretend to understand the clever line about “it’s the heat, not the hill.” It’s both. Always both.

Cecilia offered our helper a mango candy. He accepted as if it were a relic from a holy city he intends to visit one day. Then he nodded to the bikes, to the hill, to the cloud practicing being serious, and returned to his goats as if to a complicated paragraph he was nonetheless pleased to read.

We rode again, smaller, smarter.

 

Reru Flats: A Second Puncture and a Mechanic’s Fire

“Flat tyres are the universe tapping your shoulder, insisting on a conversation you were avoiding.”

The Reru flats are a giddy lie: you see that smooth, rolled sand and your right wrist goes optimistic. The universe hears this and arranges a staple-shaped thorn. The rear hissed again. I laughed. Cecilia laughed. It is better to laugh.

This time the culprit was a radial cut the kind patches don’t court easily. The lake shone absurdly blue to our right, and nothing in the view cared. Down the road, a fence of prayer flags suggested a village. We pushed, a comedy duo in a landscape that refuses applause.

Reru’s mechanic was a man in a watch cap, a boy on a stool, and a coffee can full of patches. He looked at the tube, then at us, then at the tube again. “Fire,” he said, perhaps to us, perhaps to the day. He lit a brick stove already confident from other resurrections, warmed the vulcanizing plate, and pressed rubber to rubber like a grandfather mending a bookbinding.

We drank chai and watched faith in the form of heat and pressure. Cecilia showed the boy how to say “football” with the softness and the length the word enjoys in Portuguese. He tried it and smiled as if the syllables tasted of sweet milk.

The patch took. Then failed. Then took again this time with the mechanic’s thumb holding more than physics in place. We paid in notes, biscuits, and photographs refused. He would not stand for a picture; you do work or you do pictures; you don’t mix.

Back on the flat, the bike rolled with that delicate just-fixed humility. I rolled with it.

 

Stongde Ridge: Fuel Turns into Prayer

“When the needle falls to a lie, trade anxiety for cadence.”

Somewhere after Reru, near the bend where a rock carries a saint’s profile only if you’re told it does, the fuel needle committed to truth. Reserve had already been flicked; the extra half-litre had become enthusiasm three hills ago. The engine began to ask questions at throttle. I know the sound lean, then angry, then tired.

We pulled over under a rock lip that didn’t shade much but shaded enough. I tilted the bike to slosh whatever molecules of fuel were hiding in a corner of the tank into a more democratic distribution. Cecilia laughed so hard she almost cried. “This is a samba,” she said, swaying the bike with me. I loved that she could turn anxiety into choreography.

A truck climbed toward us in first gear, that iron donkey sound that has become, for me, the sound of the Indian Himalaya’s patience. The driver stopped. Of course he did. He had a Coke bottle of fuel too, because fate has a sense of humor and consistent packaging preferences. “For your prayer,” he said, pouring maybe 300 ml with unshowy ceremony.

We offered money and he refused even to be offended by the offer. He took an orange for his boy and drove on, his truck tilting into the next sentence of the day.

The engine sang again. Not full-throated, but sincere.

 

Stongde to Padum: The Last Ten Kilometers Are the Longest

“Every arrival is a practice in not celebrating too soon.”

Stongde monastery sat to our left like a boss we hoped to impress. The last stretch is always more rattle than road a confusion of gravel, ancient asphalt raised in bubbles like old paint, and corrugations that turn bones to tuning forks. We stood on the pegs when we could, sat when the wind insisted, and counted kilometers that the signboards alleged were shrinking.

It was full late afternoon, the light that makes dust look like a decision you’re proud of. Padum always appears at once and slowly. First the fields not green yet, just intention. Then the first shop with biscuits and a boy asleep on a sack of them. Then the lane with dogs who own it, the stupa white enough to scold the sun, and finally the guesthouse that you always hope hasn’t discovered itself enough to raise its rates.

We parked the bikes by a wall where a bougainvillea pretended it was anywhere else. The owner handed us a bucket of hot water with a solemnity the occasion deserved. We washed salt off our skin and road off our hair. Dinner was dal and rice that tasted like membership. We said it softly, like people tested and not interested in overexplaining: “We made it.”

After the plates had become memory and the generator had agreed to be quiet, we walked into the Padum night and sat near a wall that had kept out more winters than our passports had stamps. Cecilia took out a tiny bottle of something clear and cheerful, and we each allowed a thimbleful. We toasted not to roads or passes but to punctures that teach, fuel that appears, and hands that help without asking for photographs.

 

The Day After: Wrenches, Children, and the Geometry of Rest

“Rest is maintenance by another name.”

The morning after a day like that must be ordinary or you will become unbearable to yourself. We took the bikes to a yard where a man with a cap on backward and a girl with chalk on her hands adjusted what we had pretended not to hear rattling. He tightened a spoke with a touch you see in surgeons and mothers. He listened to the tappet with his ear and his patience. He shook his head at my rear brake and made it behave.

We bought apricots from a boy who put each one down as if it were a fragile animal. We watched school empty and the road fill with running in all meanings of the word. We watched a monk buy washing powder because robes must still be robes. We ate momos that burned dignity into our mouths and laughed like people who have decided not to tell the difficult bits with theatrics.

Cecilia and I took stock the way you do after a skirmish with weather: what broke, what bent, what thrived, what surprised. We agreed that our luck had been edited by people we would never learn the full names of the patch man at Reru, the truck driver with the Coke bottle of salvation, the woman at Purne whose accounting system considers return tea legal tender.

“If the ride was easy, we would have learned nothing.” Cecilia said it without sermon, the way you say you’ll have another cup of tea. I nodded, suddenly embarrassed by how often in my life I’ve wished for easier.

 

Leaving Padum: A New Puncture, A New Prayer

“The road does not owe you a theme; you bring your own.”

We could have stayed. But staying is for winters; June asks for movement. We set off toward Rangdum, which is another story with another glossary of grits and graces. Before the bridge, my rear tyre did the flirt again. A slow. We smiled, coasted to the first chai in the next village, and took our place in the queue of needs. A sledge of cement, a sack of salt, our tube all waiting for attention measured out over a fire that believes in second chances.

The mechanic looked up and nodded as if to say see, we’re friends now. The boy from last time had learned the word football properly and demonstrated with a sentence about Neymar that made Cecilia clap. The patch took first try. We had become regulars in the economy of flat tyres and faith.

We left lighter. Again.

 

What the Road Fixed That Wasn’t Broken

“In the ledger of long rides, kindness is always the highest-octane fuel.”

When I think of that late June from Kargyak to Padum, I don’t immediately see the view from the Ichar climb or the blue of Reru or the lane in Padum where the dogs arrange themselves like punctuation. I hear a pump handle working air into a future. I smell patch glue becoming bond over a brick fire. I see a Coke bottle of petrol held up like a prayer answered with both hands. I hear Cecilia laughing at the necessity of tilting a motorcycle to gather courage from the corners of a tank.

In my notebook, the ride draws itself as a chain of small mercies the kind you cannot schedule and cannot repay. I arrived in Padum with less tread, less fuel, less certainty about the next day’s road; I arrived with more belief in a valley’s quiet arithmetic: you may falter and then someone will help; you may help and then you will falter; both are part of the price of passage.

If you go and I hope you do carry spare tubes, sure, and tools properly chosen. Carry fuel not just in liters but in manners: ask, offer, wait, wave, pay fairly, decline the photograph, accept the tea. And when the tyre sighs (it will), when the fuel needle flirts with empty (it will), when your plan gets rewritten by a river or a nail or a laugh, remember the only prayer that matters on roads like these:

Ride soft. Make room. Say thank you with your hands.