10th June 2018, Cycling to Spiti. Day 2, Rain and Landslides.

10th June 2018, 
Distance Ridden: 83 kilometres 

After dinner at around 11 at one of those Murthal Dhabas, I fell asleep and was woken up by the noise of raindrops hitting the window of the bus hard. It was 5 AM and I was about 20 Kilometers away from Shimla. It was pouring, I could see streams of water flowing across the roads and then along the slope.

Getting a panoramic view of the valley 

At 5:30AM The bus was at Victory Tunnel, the drop point for HPTDC buses. I got down last, hurriedly put up all the luggage, and covered it with rain covers and covered myself with a windcheater. It was the closest thing to waterproof on top of the bag, the old man insisted that I take a room in Shimla as it was pouring and leave the next day. I thought it was too early to do that, and moved towards the Lakkar Bazar bus stand, hoping to take a bus to Narkanda.

I locked the cycle to a railing and moved to a Dhaba which gave me a direct view of the bike. I had 3 chais and a couple of Paranthas over the next two hours. The owner of the Dhaba insisted that I take a bus to Narkanda as the weather was inclement. I felt it was too early to do that, after all, if I had to take a bus, I could take a night bus too.

As soon as the pouring reduced to drops, I started for Kufri, hoping to find accommodation there if the weather stayed bad. It took me 2 hours and 15 km of steep climbing to reach Kufri. By the time I reached Kufri, the sun was out and there was the mild wind blowing I dressed down in a T-shirt and shorts, and decided to push till Theog, 16 kilometres under 20 minutes were motivating. 10 more chais, 4 paranthas, a thali, and lots of love and questions later I reached Narkanda around 5:30.

I didn't like the feel of the place and figured that there was another village about 20 km downhill with much better accommodation. 40 minutes of the pure joy of downhill later, I am in Kumarsain, with dinner done at a family-run restaurant and sleep pending at a PWD rest house. I rode 20 Kilometers more than what was the target today, and this apparently is my longest ride in 3 years now. My back hurts though.

There are so many things I have to skip here as some of them make their own stories.