Feedback from the top of the world.

[mukund]

Hey guys,

bike has done many rides and is doing great.

after 300km in and out of the city, did a running in ride to waynad with boys from the blr rd350 club and this time rdd style after some hair splitting moments for Ron where i had kept the bike below 4k rpm

that ride of total 600km done, time to get the bike to the himalaya

300km to madras then by train lugged the bike to jammu. Riding from then to udhampur to srinagr to kargil to the zozilla pass at 13000ft to leh to khardungla to nubra valley to khardungla some 18000ft to leh again.

since i'm mechanically challenged it has been a scary thing to open the carbs and drop the needle

after khardungla up and down twice, i knew i had to drop it as the bike was running very rich. Thanks to Mr. Nair who has experience in this, got the needle dropped 2notches.

today the bike ran a lot better and did the chang-la pass the third highest pass with ease

thanks ron and rdd for all the help. Hope this post gets thru

[SunMysore]

Fantastic Stuff. ALl the best mukund saar!

[crazydiablo]

Ron, this is a first for RDD! We should have a party to celebrate when muks is back.

[chinoy]

LOL we both know this is not a first for RDD but sure we will have a party when muks gets back.

[crazydiablo]

Yeah i know its been RDD guys have been to Leh and back probably 10 years ago. Well Muks taking it to Leh is another thing altogether.

[Prd]

Now Leh is officially the 'highest' road in the world! lol!!
Seems like this is the year for a lot RDD boys and girls to be climbing up to Leh. There're a couple of husband/wife contingents also landing up soon, I suppose. Eh, CrazyD!?

We absolutely have to throw ole Muks' and Captain a really big party once they're back safe and sound. Three cheers to the boys!

[mukund]

Hey Guys,

we are finally done with riding around the high mountain passes. Our two Rds have been thru the khardungla, the tanglanla, the changla and many other passes above 15000ft. There is another pass called the marasmik-la which is at 19000+ and is the actual highest motorable road and this road is yet to be managed by the efficient border roads (bro) folks. Besides it is sine 60+kms of dirt road with lots of stones etc so that one is for the next ride around here

the route we have done so far ... Jammu - udampur - Srinagar -kargil - Leh - khardungla - nubra valley - khardungla - leh - changla - leh - tanglangla - moray plains - pang - sarchu - baralachala - darcha - zingzing bar - patsio - jispa - keylong - rohtang - kullu

the bike is doing great and si far necessity is teaching me to go up and down the needles on carbs as the altitute changes. But even with the carb set for rich in blr, ran up the khardungla and back. That shows how much the rdd cdi did for me in the ride. Only cause mileage came ti around 11, i decided to meddle with the carbs as there are stretches of 350km without bunks and carrying gas is the only way around. Otherwise the cdi would have handled it anyways.

[chinoy]

Your driving in places without roads, most of your ride is done in 1st and 2nd gear at these elevations. Your at 15000+ ft and your complaining about a mileage off 11.
Under these circumstances if you got it to give you 15 by changing the needle slot that is indeed amazing.

[mukund]

Hey Ron, thanks to the cdi and blessings only the bike made it all the way... I got mileage of 18 riding full throttle from udampur to srinagar. Only after the altitude cross 11k did the mileage start dropping as the bike was running rich.

now i'm very happy the bike and all the blessings , after i have gone down one clip and the altitude has dropped, the mileage has come to around 15. Thanks for all the time you spent supervising the bike at various stages before this ride. Not for you and rdd i bet this ride would never have happened for me

cheers

[chinoy]

Not bad for a budget build. On old fixed up liners.
Now forget all that and come home soon baba. We miss you.

[mukund]

Hi Guys,

Nearly 4000kms of riding has now finally ended in Bandra bombay for me. After the himalayas, rode to Chandigarh, bypassed Delhi, rode Jaipur, Udaipur, Ahemedabad.

The bike did great and ran better than ever before... hope to do many more such long rides. The bike was tested from sea level to the highest motorable roads and did very well. The made the bike that much better and in it's absence, I would have hardly enjoyed this. Thanks RDD for this fantastic magic box.

Captain my friend wanted ride back all the way to Bangalore and he is on his way. He has this desire to ride back all the way to town from the himalayas and i hope he makes it

Cheers

[ajithk]

Mukund anna, get ready to be harassed for the travelogue. Hope you have it ready

[rahulsharma_7]

So you bypassed Delhi, hmmm...

[mukund]

Hi Guys,

Now I'm finally back at office and can post easily. Couple of times on the ride, I hoped to post feedback and made a long post from the mobile phone and lost the entire content due to internet connections in mountains being fragile.

This was a dream ride for me. The bike did fantastic with blessings from Ron Baba. It sounds funny to get a bike blessed but hey consider the facts. I have zero ability to fix the bike by myself. The bike goes all over the country and comes back with zero punctures, breakdowns of any sort and back in namma Bengaluru after crossing the supposedly highest motorable road, the second highest and the third highest and many many more passes and water crossings on tops of the mountains and reduced oxygen and what nots.

This bike is on a sleeved bore and Art pistons 0.5 (thanks Aravind) and a rehone and 1100 km runn-in which i f%#ked up. After that it is set for "rich" in blr and we ride down to madras. Put the bikes on the railways for some 2500kms and 58 hours later the bikes are out of Jammu station, started as soon as gasoline was poured in. After that the bike goes thru so many difficult roads and places, I can hardly remember the number of times i thanked RDD for this trip being so cool.

The strange part was, we meeting a few other friends from Bangalore up there on 2 BMW bikes, one Norton twin and one Bullet. For a short stretch, the 2 RDs rode with these bikes. These folks found my mechanical abilities astoundingly poor and were giving me suggestions on how to prepare a bike for the himalayas etc. They felt that i needed to learn more on how to prepare a bike for the mountains. The norton was the first to pack up followed by the 2 BMWs and the Bullet. These 4 bikes headed back to blr on truck from Leh itself. I know they meant well and they wanted me to improve on the preparation. I was quite amazed that people who knew a lot more on how to prepare the bikes for the mountains too were hardly as lucky as I have been.

The joke was me getting my carbs cleaned at Chandigarh. This is the only maintainance i got done on the bike in addition to tightening the chain. The man who I was recommended, did a great job on the carbs and then wants to take the bike out for a test ride. He has already told me that points are the best thing on the bike. I have told him that i'm very happy for over 5 years with the CDI and would like to stick to it. He takes the bike out on 1st gear, shifts to second and whacks the throttle open :-) ... you can imagine what happened next. Bike wheelies and our good man struggles to get back control of the bike. He had never imagined that a CDI bike can be so good.

Besides this, the number of people who come up to ride on these mountains on their motorbikes is amazing. 100s of bullets, many many karizmas, pulsars, cbzs and all sorts of bikes from all over the world. There were other crazies like the few cyclists who peddalled it from Kanyakumari to Khardung-La in 111 days. There were others who rode from Madras on the KTM some others rode from Blr, Bombay, Pune and you name the town in India and there were bikes from there But we saw zero RDs on this entire mountain ride :-)

Thus this brings me to the "Blessings" bit which is very true for me. I know Ron blessed the bike and it did all this.

Cheers

[vinaykumar]

Great feedback, Mukund.
It mustve been fantastic to hear the sound of the bike bouncing off the rock faces.
Awaiting a more detailed trip log, along with photos.
I'm from Ahmedabad and I'm sure you mustve noticed the quality of the roads as soon as you enter Gujarat.

[mukund]

Hi Folks,

Here are some pictures. https://picasaweb.google.com/procastinateru/Himalyaz

Yet to write up a travelogue or a blog or anything like that. Hope to do that sometime.

@ Vinaykumar, we did ride thru Gujarat on the highway 8 and got badly stuck in the Ahemedabad evening traffic. Phew, i had heard about the Ahd traffic and this was my first experience with it. This highway was quite poor compared to what we experienced in Rajasthan. The last stretch of this highway in Rajasthan is undergoing widening and was very nice from Udaipur. The roads were decent after Baroda heading towards Bombay. Seems to me that Rajasthan built this road in the past few years and the Gujarat road being much broader, older need some basic maintenance like filling of potholes etc

Cheers

[ajithk]

dai, no "sometime". We want it yesterday!!

[satish]

OMG...awesome, something everyone should do in a lifetime

[mukund]

Hi Folks,

Captain is back in town. He rode all the way to Bangalore from the himalayas. Added more snaps from his camera to the same album.. please check them out

Cheers