August 24, 2019, Riding Day #3:  Uletopko to Leh  1530M climbing, 1060M down, 75km, 3585M elev at end

Today was one of the best riding days every, and one of the hardest.  We had two long climbs, they were at a reasonable pitch but very long.  The downhills after both climbs were an absolute delight - although one had to be very observant, they don’t invest heavily in “slow to” or “sharp curve ahead” signs.  Heading into a hairpin curve at 65km with a 1,000M drop if you missed the turn was good to get the heart pumping - and they don’t invest in many guardrails.

We are in the western Himalayas, it is very dry around here, in fact it hardly ever rains.  A lot of the house construction involves mud roofs.  Recently due to climate change rain occasionally now happens which is not good with mud roofs, so heavy plastic and/or metal is now being added to roofs.

Again a very heavy military presence, lots of military trucks on the road, several large military camps.

Mike Hennessey, a good friend of many of us, was supposed to be riding with us, but unfortunately passed away very unexpectedly late last year.   So, we will be doing two tributes to Mike on this ride.  The first we did yesterday.  Mike had been very excited to see the confluence of the Indus and Zanskar rivers.  So we did a bit of a ceremony above the high lookout, building a small rock cairn and adding some of his ashes.  Very emotional to all of us.

Some pics from the tribute:

Confluence of Indus and Zanskar Rivers

Hike up to viewpoint

Caroline

Fred

Don

Dunnery

Henry

Frieder

Per

Ron

Ron adding some ashes

The cairn in the foreground, people leaving in the background

We are in Leh for two days to be back on the original schedule (for hotel bookings and such), a good thing as we are about to go into the hardest section of the ride.  We will be sleeping at over 4,000M (13,000ft) to a sleeping high of 4520M (14,800ft).  I’m nervous but excited!

Telus continues to be a serious problem, I can receive mail but cannot send,  This is now over a week - I think it is time to get an alternate email service, maybe Gmail.  I will be very remote over the next week, so probably not able to post.