Ups and Downs to Sangla Valley

We spent a few days mooching about Pulga running up waterfalls and getting lungfuls of the brilliant alpine air. Next stop - Sangla valley, a two day ride that nearly broke us. The first night, due to an unscheduled downpour, we were forced to stop in the ****hole town of Ranpur, the only hotel we could find was a truckers dive drinking hole. I saught refuge in our room all night sending Marty out for food and drink, paranoid that the local clientele might think I was a lady of the night and both Marty and I slept fully clothed using our backpacks for pillows, it wasn't really the place you wanted to slip between the sheets. The shining beacon of light throughout the night came in the form of a phonecall from Marty's Mum back home, Martyn had become an uncle, congratulations to Wid and Emma who are the very proud parents of a beautiful baby girl Jessica Clark.
Anyway early rise the next morning we saddled up and hit the road. We'd been warned that the 20Km or so before you hit Sangla Valley had been churned up by various hydro-electric plants. It was a monumental disaster zone, glacial streams had been diverted through mountains to harness their power, and whole rivers had been redirected and dams built.

























There was dust everywhere and for 2 hours we rode through mud, over rocks and unsealed roads. With the front suspension on my bike shot, I was suffering from a pretty painful stitch, which had me climbing all over my bike in every conceivable position trying to find a way to sit that didn't make my insides feel like they were about to burst. Sitting on the tank half standing up just about did the trick. While I was concentrating on my bike gymnsatics, Marty came to halt in front of me. I looked back and realised that there were in excess of 50 trucks and buses behind us and in front was this:




Road finished. A landslide had washed about 50 meters of road into the river running below at the bottom of the valley. We were told, incredibly optimistically in my opinion, the road would be open in a few hours. They'd already been going for over 12 hours and it didn't look like they were getting any closer. There was however another road we could take, over the mountain. Jeeps were fine and motorbikes might be able to make it. So, we gave it a go. The road up was Ok, narrow with a million hairpin bends, but beautiful. Coming down the other side was a slightly different matter, tarmac once again disappeared and we were left descending a steep gradient over boulders the size of me, 1000 meter drop to the left.

I don't quite know how to describe this, the photo doesn't really do it justice and was taken just after the worst part was over. We were ecstatic to get down the other side.

A couple of hours later and to Sangla Valley we did arrive:


(In the middle of this photo you can just see Marty winching himself over the river in a metal cage - nutter)

The horror of the last few hours was placated by this beautiful place. 60Km from the Tibetan border, snow peaked surrounds (of course) and grass meadows to roll around in and chase the shadows of birds of prey. It was amazing.