When two strangers are obliged to share a room things can be a little fraught. When me and Joe came together in the same room in Ladakh in India we both quickly and happily agreed that single rooms might be a good option soon, considering we had three weeks together. The first night we spent most of the night swopping stories and giggling like school girls. He had me laughing about stuff he’d seen and done in the police and I had him chuckling over things I’d experienced in the marines. Consequently we arrived at the conclusion that there was now no reason for the extra expense of single rooms and spent the next three weeks together in hotels all over northern India, and we got on better and better as each day passed.
But in the early days I talked about hiring a classic Lee Enflield bullet and trying to ride it over the highest pass in the world, in the Himalayas (Kardung La Pass - 17,582ft high). I worked on Joe for days to come with me but he’d never ridden a motorbike and wasn’t that keen on disappearing into the unknown. But one day I came back to the hotel to find a Suzuki moped parked in the yard. “I’m coming with you” he said. Why didn’t you hire a motorbike I asked. The response: “Because I don’t want to have to worry about gears when death is coming at me from all directions!”
We had a couple of training days around the Indus valley tackling rough tracks, chaotic high speed roundabouts, horrendous hairpin bends, suicidal sacred cows, river crossings, and a polo festival. Then we were off.
Neither me or Joe are lightweights and we had already named ourselves the ‘Fat Lads in Ladakh’, so both bike and scooter struggled in the low ogygen near the top of the high pass. Me and Joe struggled too, both of us recovering from recent illnesses. But we made it and then went down the other side into the ginormous Nubra Valley. We tackled alsorts of obstacles: glacial meltwater rivers, sand dunes, rocks, fuel worries and people who lied about having the internet (Joe was still trying to run his business). We stayed in some fantastic little places, ate amazing food, visited some incredible monasteries and laughed about almost everything. I took care of the navigation and survival whilst Joe was our chief negotiator, a task at which he is truly an expert.
Joe only fell off once, on shifting sand, in deep ruts, after a long day in the saddle. Neither Joe or the bike were damaged. He tackled some amazing obstacles on his little scooter, and in better style on one occasion, at a rocky river crossing, than two lads on 500cc motorbikes who fell off.
After a week of adventures we made our way back to our base camp hotel in Leh, tired, bronzed, and proud of what we had done.
We wanted to do more together but life, upon return, as usual, got in the way.
Meeting and spending time with Joe were very positive things in my life and it was a privilege to have been able to share an adventure, and a friendship, with him.