December 21, 2011
Sonamarg is a cute little town that really begins and then ends abruptly. All of us decided to get some breakfast at a dhaba roadside so that we could watch the Raid competitors fly by on their last transfer stage. We were waiting specifically for Sunny to see if all was good. The Kashmir police were definitely hell-bent on throwing their weight around. After much discussion they finally allowed us to park our bike near the dhaba. Nick always tells people look at the bike but don’t touch! Especially don’t sit on it! Some people helped themselves to sitting down…Nick got pissed. It’s kinda like the bike is our baby. I mean don’t you know? Don’t touch a bikers ride unless you ask?! Well one of the policemen got overconfident and sat himself on the bike only to get ordered to get up by Nick. The poor guy was so ashamed and had no idea what to do since no one says “no” to the Kashmiri police. We also had to fend off the loads of Bengali tourists that seemed to have followed us from Rohtang! Everyone wanted pictures and to put their hands on the bike. In India we honestly need to start charging for pics of the bike—we could probably fund our first half of the tour on the commission!
Sunny eventually came riding up we gave him some water and sat him down to have a bit of food before he moved on. After that we moved out for Srinagar. Again, thoughts of 60’s Bollywood actors and actresses frolicking in gardens and romancing each other in the shikaras on Dal Lake came to mind. The lake is huge! We made it half-way around and got to the hotel. I had been feeling yucky like the flu, but hit my breaking point today and while Nick went to go party I had a quiet dinner and got ready to sleep…oh spoke too soon! Everyone came back to our room for drinks! And the party was on! The next day was the same but we had the official flag-in. We took part in that and later on in the day we went to the awards ceremony where Sunny won 5th overall in bikes and 5th overall in Raid. Not bad! We later went to the party thrown by the organizers, was okay…but the bikers were the last ones standing (stumbling?!)!
We decided to stay another day at the house boat of one of our friends(Zuzer Rangwala).There we met with Zuzer and the all girls team Shuchi and Shweta. If you visit Srinagar, the house boat is definitely the way to do it! We arrived in a shikara and found the girls looking at silver jewelry brought by a vendor on a shikara while sipping vodka. Now this was a welcome sight after hanging out with all boys! Later on we had kababs that were made by another guy on a shikara! These shikaras are like floating vendors, it was amazing!
Next day we headed out through crazy traffic to Chandigarh only we couldn’t make it and had to stop in Pathankot. Some dude on a scooter was so enamored by our bike that while staring he crashed head on into another scooter. No worries, he was okay, was just crazy!
