MOTORCYCLE TRAVEL IN India

Riding the Manali-Leh Highway by motorcycle is, for any international rider, the trip that defines India: 428 km between Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh that climb above 3,900 meters four separate times.

Construction began in 1964, and only in 1989 did it open as the second land route into Ladakh. Today it crosses the Rohtang La (3,980 m), the Baralacha La (4,850 m), the Lachulung La (5,065 m) and finishes at the Tanglang La, at 5,328 masl, the highest point of the entire route.

Most of the meltwater streams have no bridge: you cross them straight through icy water over a bed of loose stones that shifts every season. It is why almost everyone who rides this highway describes it as the rite of passage for motorcyclists in the Himalayas.

Riding the Srinagar-Leh Highway by motorcycle means following a trade corridor once used by porter caravans carrying pashmina wool in the 17th and 18th centuries, later improved by Dogra rule in the 19th century for pony caravans.

The route climbs Zoji La (3,528 m) and Fotu La (4,108 m, the highest point on the entire highway), and passes through Dras, the second-coldest permanently inhabited place on Earth, with lows of down to -45 degrees Celsius.

The modern road was only built after the 1962 Sino-Indian war and opened to civilian traffic in 1974; today the Border Roads Organisation clears it of snow and landslides every spring before the season starts.

Crossing Khardung La by motorcycle means climbing a strategic road built in 1976 by the Border Roads Organisation to connect Leh with the Nubra Valley. Local signs still claim an altitude of 5,602 meters and the title of third-highest motorable pass in the world, though GPS measurements place the real summit closer to 5,359 masl — either way, it remains one of the highest roads on the planet.

On the other side waits Nubra: a valley averaging over 3,000 meters in altitude, with 7 km of sand dunes between Hundar and Diskit where two-humped Bactrian camels still graze among seabuckthorn shrubs.

In Diskit, a 14th-century monastery watches over the valley from above, crowned by a 32-meter Maitreya Buddha statue. Nubra was for centuries a Silk Road corridor toward Yarkand and Baltistan, closed since 1947 and 1950 respectively.

Reaching Pangong Tso by motorcycle means riding the final kilometers to a lake that stretches 134 km at 4,300 masl, of which barely a third lies on the Indian side: the rest belongs to Chinese-administered territory.

The water changes character depending on the shore: the eastern end has low salinity (0.68 g/L of dissolved solids), while the west is far saltier (11.02 g/L) — and yet the entire lake freezes solid in winter.

Pangong Tso was a near-unknown destination outside Ladakh until the closing scene of the Bollywood film "3 Idiots" (2009) turned it into a global tourist magnet overnight, with a rise in visitors that now demands more infrastructure than the area can comfortably support.

Crossing Spiti Valley by motorcycle means entering the "middle land" — that is what Spiti means — between Tibet and India, a cold desert running from 2,950 to 4,100 meters in altitude.

The area sits in the rain shadow of the main Himalayan range: it gets just 50 mm of rain a year, with extremes ranging from -25 degrees in winter to 15 degrees in summer. Kunzum La, at 4,590 masl, is the gateway connecting Spiti to Lahaul.

In Tabo, the Buddhist monastery was founded in the year 996, making it one of the oldest continuously functioning monasteries in the entire Himalayas — comparable, some historians say, to the Ajanta caves in artistic and historical value.

Climbing to Umling La by motorcycle means reaching 5,799 meters on the Chisumle-Umling La-Demchok road, built in 2017 by the Border Roads Organisation on the remote Changthang plateau, near Demchok, close to the border with China.

Since 2017, Umling La has held the Guinness World Record for the highest motorable road, a title that turned it almost overnight into a bucket-list goal for motorcycle travelers worldwide.

The air up here holds a fraction of the oxygen found at sea level: in 2022, two teams set the world record for highest-altitude auto-rickshaw driving right at this pass, proof of just how far the obsession with it goes.

Climbing the Ooty Ghat Road by motorcycle means gaining 2,240 meters of altitude on a road with consecutively numbered hairpin bends, the most repeated postcard image of motorcycling in South India.

The same hillside is climbed by the Nilgiri Mountain Railway, a 46 km rack railway opened in 1908, with a maximum gradient of 1 in 12 — the steepest in Asia — and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005 as an extension of the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway.

Ooty began as a British sanitarium in the early 19th century and was made a municipality in 1866: the same colonial officials fleeing the heat of the plains unknowingly laid out one of the most celebrated mountain roads in Indian motorcycling.

Riding the coast from Goa to Gokarna by motorcycle along NH66 means following the corridor that only in the 1960s and 1970s replaced the ships and steamers that had until then been the sole means of transport along India's entire west coast.

The route runs through Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu hugging the Arabian Sea, past coconut palms, paddy fields and arecanut plantations, with narrow, uneven stretches that, far from scaring riders off, are part of the appeal.

The Goa-Gokarna stretch links Goa's touristy northern beaches with Gokarna, a Hindu temple town with much quieter beaches like Om Beach and Kudle Beach, and it is one of the favorite circuits for backpackers riding the west coast without a fixed schedule.

Reaching Chopta and Tungnath by motorcycle means riding up to an alpine meadow popularly known as the Mini Switzerland of India, then walking the final 5 km to a temple that, according to legend, was built by the Pandavas after the Kurukshetra war and is believed to be around 1,000 years old.

At 3,680 masl, Tungnath is one of the highest Shiva temples in the world and the highest of the five Panch Kedar temples. Two kilometers further up, at the summit of Chandrashila, at the same elevation, one of the best views in the Himalayas opens up: the peaks of Nanda Devi, Panch Chuli, Bandarpoonch, Kedarnath, Chaukhamba and Neelkanth, all visible at once.

In March, the Chopta meadow fills with blooming rhododendrons, from crimson to pink, over forests that climb straight up to the tree line.

Riding through Shillong, Cherrapunji and Dawki by motorcycle means crossing the wettest region on the planet: Cherrapunji (also called Sohra) holds the Guinness World Records for both highest monthly rainfall, 9,300 mm in July 1861, and highest annual rainfall, 26,461 mm between August 1860 and July 1861.

Along the way, the Khasi people grow living bridges by training the roots of the rubber fig tree (Ficus elastica) across rivers for 10 to 15 years: the oldest one still in use is over 500 years old.

The ride ends in Dawki, on the border with Bangladesh, famous for the exceptional clarity of the Umngot River's waters, often described as one of the cleanest rivers in all of Asia.