Delhi to Shimla

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First day of riding. We catch an early train north to Chandigarh where we collect the bikes. Royal Enfield Bullet 500cc single motorcycles made to a British design of the early 1950s in India. We learn the "endearing" traits of this motorcycle including how to get it started. This point proved very important as we found how easily it stalled when holding the clutch in. Also learned that that I should not pack my hat in the support van as we stood in the Chandigarh railway station car park being instructed on our bikes for ages in the baking heat (high 30s centigrade) and I ended up with a sun-burned head.

So we made our way to the hills to the North through numerous little lowland villages. Early on one of the guys, Phil, took a spill after hitting a large pot hole in the road. Later he was dubbed "Phil the Spill" as this was to be one of several offs. After his return to Aussie he discovered that he'd actually broken a bone in his shoulder so we had to forgive him some of his grumbling and be suitably impressed by the fact he'd ridden the Rhotang effectively one armed (his words).

It really was too hot to be in all that gear on the lowlands but fortunately at Parwanoo we began the climb into the foothills of the Himalayas and things cooled down a little. We stopped in the gorge above Parwanoo to allow the bikes to regroup at the cable car terminal for the resort we'd be staying in on our last day before Delhi when we returned from the North.

Our destination was Shimla at an altitude of 2200m. This was the Summer capital of the British who would come here to escape the heat on the plains. For the last 30 or 40km, we were riding in quite heavy rain and I discovered that my waterproofs, weren't. Unfortunately I, like many others, had my passport in my jacket pocket as we were advised to keep it to hand by the tour guide. It got very soggy so I spent some time in the bathroom with the hairdryer trying to make sure the pages wouldn't stick together as it dried.

As we rode into Shimla, we got a first taste of the corner person system of making sure the bikes all went the right way going wrong. For some reason, one of the guys decided to turn left into a tunnel even though there was no corner marker there and therefore we should have gone straight ahead. He said he thought he saw one of the group go that way but it was presumably a local on the same sort of bike. I was one of the fools who went with him as I was thinking he must have seen a corner marker that I'd missed. I had my suspicions though so when I caught up with him, I quizzed him and realised he'd made a mistake. I told him that we should all go back to where he'd turned left and carry on as if we had gone straight ahead. About 8 other bikes had followed us. Unfortunately, he either didn't pass that message on or wasn't forceful enough as none of the others followed my lead. Sure enough, I was right and found the hotel shortly afterwards. The others were several hours late after they decided to carry on down the wrong road they'd turned onto.

We didn't see much of the town on our arrival as the rain meant that there was low cloud obscuring the view.

That evening we heard the bad news about the flooding at Leh. The roads had washed out but there was news the army would fly in and make repairs so the plan was to continue in that direction and hope the roads were passable by the time we arrived.

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