Blast From The Past

Blast from the past. This was my first ride to the Himalayas on my Royal Enfield Thunderbird back in 2014 with Gurudatta Munishwar. I’ve come a long way since then in terms of motorcycle luggage.

But before you start laughing at the way the motorcycle is loaded, I would like to clarify that we had arranged a jeep in Manali and dumped all our stuff in it. From there on we rode our motorcycles with just a tank bag. But since we had shipped our motorcycles from Goa to Chandigarh we had to transport all our stuff to Manali on our bikes.

Just because we had the luxury of a jeep we ended up carrying all kinds of stuff. To give you an idea, the tank bag is filled with a kerosene stove that I bought from the Mapusa market. The plan was not just to ride to Marsimik La near the China border, but to also cook a meal there. Which we did. Crazy times.

BTW, that front fender didn’t survive the ride. That metal eagle at its tip looked great in pictures. But its weight was way too much for the bad roads of Ladakh. The fender rattled violently until the metal bracket holding it snapped. I got it welded back near Leh but it snapped again at Pangong Tso.

Now I look at this picture as ask myself, “What the heck was I thinking?”