A fairly ok ride through the river bed and sides of the mountains, we even got to go across a steel suspension bridge at Jomson which was fun.
I nearly bought it once coming out of a stream but luckily my short legs and help from Ravi stopped me dropping the bike, a save for Britain, However, Mr KTM did manage to hit a rock while turning and promptly could not hold it and off he was, 6-0 to us Brits.
We rose up to 3100mtrs (10,000ft +) and were surrounded by some of the highest peaks in the world ( the 8000mtr+ club). Strangely at this point, there was perfect asphalt road which lead us into Jharkot at 3500 metres. A quick rest at our “lodgings” for the night before we set off for the highest part of the journey at 3700mtrs a town called Muktinath.
A short 100mtr walk up to visit the Mukti Kshetra, a temple that is sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists and considered to be one of the holiest places of pilgrimages for both religions, this was clear by the amount of Helicopters coming in ferrying old people.
However finally my favourite brown trousers have worn out, I was sitting in the Bob Marley Hotel Bar when I noticed a rather cool breeze, yes there was a 6 inch split in the undercarriage department. Sadly these trousers will have to be left behind.
So last nights accommodation was a bit rank, esp the bathroom, well this bathroom was something out of Midnight Express (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Express_(film)). Cold water pipe coming straight out of the wall and a hole in a platform, for the bodily functions.
No sockets in the rooms so everyone which was 13 of us as well as three Italians, a French couple and some randoms had to use two wall sockets to charge our phones and then at 6 pm just as it was getting dark a power outage for an hour. This was like going back into the Ted Heath government of the early 70’s.
For hot water and cooking, they used a satellite dish! with a cast iron pot located where the receiver would normally be..
I took this chance to give the drone another fly out which the locals loved ..
An uneventful meal and everyone trying to bag a socket was the evening. Bed at 9 pm because as expected the itinerary has changed. Tomorrow we are going to do two days riding in one, basically, what we have done over the last two days we are going to do again, but back down the valley! This is going to be hard work and I expect some people to come off. Around 8 hours to do 100km, this shows you how challenging the roads are. Actually, they are not roads they are mountain tracks as the video to date have shown. I have never in my life ridden on such terrain and I can totally see why they classify this as advance riding and no pillion passengers allowed. So it’s a 6 am breakfast for a 7 am off, meaning that we should hit Tatopani around 4-5 pm, allowing for the “black tea” break and lunch and the odd landslide!
We Brits had now decided it was unfair to penalise for bike failures and so the score would firmly be based on coming off the bike, which brings the score to France 4 Great
France 4 ( Deadly Dom 2, Photo Phil, Mr KTM) v Great Britain 0 ( its a bit like the score in the Eurovision Song Contest … Great Britain Nil point !)