KARSTEN MIRANDA
MARGAO: Somewhere above 19,000 feet, where the air thins to little more than half of what the lungs are used to and the road itself turns to gravel and switchbacks clinging to bare rock, two riders from Goa pushed their motorcycles to the roof of the motorable world.
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Nolan Fernandes and Venson Da Silva of Team Wild Riders, Goa, have returned from a 1,500-km-plus circuit through Ladakh, threading their Royal Enfield Himalayan 450s through a landscape that alternates between stark, lunar desolation and impossible bursts of colour.
The route unspooled like a greatest-hits tour of the Himalaya’s extremes: out of Leh and up to Khardung La, down into the pale golden dunes of Nubra Valley, on to the remote, Balti-speaking hamlet of Turtuk near the Line of Control, over the desolate heights of Wari La and Chang La, along the impossible turquoise sprawl of Pangong Tso, through the high desert flats of Loma, up to the thin, cold air of Umling La, past the windswept plateau of Hanle, and back, at last, to Leh.
Four passes stood between the riders and the finish — each one a test in its own right. Khardung La, at 17,982 feet, long mythologised as one of the highest motorable roads anywhere. Wari La, at 17,428 feet, a lonelier, rougher climb far from the tourist trail. Chang La, at 17,590 feet, its slopes often streaked with ice even in summer. And finally Umling La, at 19,024 feet — the undisputed crown of the journey, where the atmosphere is so thin that even standing still takes effort, let alone riding.
Between the climbs lay landscapes built for wonder rather than speed: the wind-sculpted dunes of Nubra, the hush of Turtuk’s terraced apricot orchards, and Pangong Tso’s waters shifting through shades of blue and green as the light moved across them.
Through gravel, scree, hairpins and altitude that punishes engines as much as riders, the Himalayan 450s never faltered — proving themselves steady, unglamorous workhorses built for exactly this kind of punishment. Yet for all the postcard scenery, the ride’s true test came not at Umling La but on the approach to Wari La, when the weather turned without warning. “The most difficult part of the ride came when the weather suddenly turned against us,” Fernandes and Da Silva recall. Rain began to fall as they climbed, and as they neared the summit, it turned to snow. By the time they reached the top, conditions had turned brutally cold — “we were simply not prepared for weather like this,” they admit.
The cold soon stopped being just uncomfortable and started being dangerous. Fingers went painfully numb, with early signs of frostbite setting in, and even talking to each other became difficult. Caught between wind, snow and thinning oxygen, the two found themselves struggling to communicate while trying to keep both the motorcycles running and their own bodies warm. “At that altitude, with the wind, snow and lack of oxygen, every minute felt like a challenge,” they say — and there was no real time to stop and recover. They simply had to keep moving.
Then came Chang La, already blanketed in snow as they approached. After what they had just endured on Wari La, the sight of more snow was, in their words, mentally exhausting. “I was done,” they recall of that stretch — easily the lowest point of the entire ride, with the body worn down and the cold taking its toll, a stark reminder of how quickly the mountains can turn.
Looking back, it is those hours — not the summit of Umling La — that the riders count as the real measure of the journey. Reaching the world’s highest motorable pass was an achievement, but surviving Wari La and Chang La, they say, meant far more, teaching them that in the Himalayas, preparation, patience and respect for the mountains matter just as much as determination. It was not always about conquering the mountain; sometimes it was simply about getting through it safely — and that, in the end, is what made this ride special.
By the time the odometer clicked past 1,500 km and Leh came back into view, the pair had closed out a route that belongs less on a bucket list and more in the realm of endurance sport. As they put it, summing up a wish years in the making: it was one exceptional trip, a dream finally accomplished.
