Bike Trip to Nubra Valley

I have been lucky to get a chance to travel to Leh many times and being an explorer I have always been visiting new places. While I visited Manali earlier, I used to be curious to know how would things look after crossing Rohtang and this curiosity led to visiting Leh by crossing Rohtang. I got into similar state when I visited Leh and used to think how would things look after crossing Khardung La and the result of this was Nubra Valley.

I spent lot of time online trying to see things virtually and found two major things which helped me make my mind to visit Nubra. The first being below time-lapse of Diskit Monastery and second being the last Indian village named Turtuk which we took back from Pakistan in 1971. Per wikipedia It is the last major village where tourist activity is allowed before the Line of Control (LOC). This already sounds thrilling and thus the plan was made. The only challenge remaining was to convince by fellow hiking pals to add this to our schedule which they always agree to. 😛

Due to overwhelming tourism, it is no more difficult to find anything in Leh now-a-days and people are very supportive. Bike rentals are available everywhere however there are few Bike rental places which are well known. Also it is important to make a note that every bike rental place will quote a standard price per day but you can surely negotiate and bargain for better.

Why backpacking is life changing!

Right from the moment we are born, we go through various phases in our life. Our parents start enriching our brain with basic things like brushing the teeth, using the toilet properly, greeting other when you meet. These things become part of our daily life, initially it may sound exciting to do these things but our mind is a beast and it needs to be fed with new things every now and then else it becomes useless. when you wake up at night to take a pee, even though you are half asleep still you already know which direction to walk to reach the toilet and back to bed. That is something which your brain can do without troubling itself. You may find this example as very basic.

Lets take a bigger example. When you start going to school in first grade, you already know that if you pass, you will be promoted to second grade and if you fail you will remain where you are. What this means precisely is your mind does not want to go through the same teaching for another year and eventually forces you to move on to the next level of new things which you may learn as you reach next grade and this cycle continues. Not to neglect that you are learning new things and becoming smart but still this whole exercise is again a monotonous cycle which you go through and you already know what will happen if pass or fail. If you pass you will be gifted with a bicycle and if you fail you will be cursed and made to feel miserable.