Chapter 1: The Prelude....

The Prelude…

My mind was tiring faster than normal in line with what my Facebook status (Excited, anxious (keeping fingers crossed for a good weather)..... experiencing multitude of emotions on getting LEHed in 24 hrs.. All set for a 9000 KM Himalayan Odyssey on SWIFT DEZIRE :) ) might say, I was counting down the days to the drive. No night has passed without a scary dream of adventure on the Himalayan terrain. This does make the wait seem a lot longer especially when you consider, that the actual bit of adventure (a 20 day drive is far too short compared to the wait itself). Adventure is out there and u need to find it, the chance that it will come looking for you at your office desk is highly unlikely. You can be a couch potato all your life and watch the world go by on your 50" LED TV programmed to Discovery HD  (like ONE CAR TOO FAR / Ice Road Truckers - India )but trust me it doesn't really cut it.

The very thought of Ladakh came to our minds in various points in time. 2 colleagues (Prashanth Kumar M and Pavaman M) in 3 trips had already filled the mind with blue skies. But their trip was on their bikes and I was very clear that I needed to go by car and not by bike.

The final kindle came in from our very own Avinash Madan, who did this circuit in 2011. The moment I saw the pics collection from Satish Bandi sometime during September 2011, we both decided to do this circuit in 2012. I had planned my long leave immediately and had communicated to my manager about my non availability for 3 weeks during Aug / Sept 2012 way back in Oct 2011. The thought was still in hibernation until June 2012. One fine day Satish told me that Avinash has planned a LADAKH trip this Aug, my immediate response was “I’m IN“. Thus the first affirmative action had yielded the multitude of thoughts for next actions. How to convince the family? How to travel? Which vehicle? What budget? And a very subtle question… Are we capable?

The first task of convincing people at home was a daunting one to begin with. We had to use the pictures from Avinash’s previous trip was a good tool to convince that the adventure was within our capability limits and we are not taking up any undue adventure and risking our lives. The same was a similar concern at office too. As my daughter would miss the class, my wife was not in a mood to spoil her classes and join us. However, she was magnanimous to wish us a happy journey with a small sponsorship too.

 Bandi started off with a search for a right lens. Though landed up with 10 -22 Lens for his NIKON D3100, he was looking out for options of whether to lend or buy. As the results were tempting, he just decided to pick one and he requested his friend to get a lightning shipment from AMAZON. The lens made it to Bangalore right at the time when we had to start for the trip.

 DJ had an immediate approval from his family. Many were thrilled too as he was taking leave from Office !!! In the last 12 years of his working… he had never gone on such a long leave, and he planning for leave itself made history in his office. He was pretty excited and started preparing for KT at his office for his colleagues to handle his responsibilities in his absence.

 Most of the time since me and Satish travel by the same bus, we kept on discussing all possibilities for our trip and one fine day we met Avinash, to get a rough map, schedule and preparation tips for this trip. It was one hell of a meeting where we almost bounced with a lot of information that could not be remembered. Some jotted down notes was the only source of memory for that meeting. Avinash had also promised us to share his copies of the maps that he referred during his last trip. In fact each turn on the circuit was etched in his mind as we realized later during the trip.

Trying to locate the route on Google maps seems to be as futile an attempt as looking for intelligent life on another planet, though I'm sure their silence on the matter is evidence enough of their intelligence. Coming back to the point, I guess we're just going to be fully using all our gadgets (Courtesy Bandi and DJ) it as it comes and hopefully document the ride a lot better. Which would involve tracking the route on GPS (iPHONE ?), photo/video documentations  (CANON , NIKON , PENTAX) and each crew member’s photo and video log at the end of a day’s ride?  We also prepared ourselves with a portable voice recorder to record our memoirs by voice as we very well knew we would not have energy to pen / key down the travelogue. This should be fun and I can hardly wait.