Visiting the Polish and getting beaten up by children

After a serious shower and running around Valencia trying to get our van back after it got towed.... grrrrr (I didn't really have a better use for that 300 euros anyway), we drove up the coast back into France to see Lara's Polish relatives Antek, Joanna, Jas and Tosia.

They gave us the address of the camp site they were staying at. Upon arrival the campsite had a security gate, odd. The security guard came out and asked what we wanted; "to stay in the camp site". Obvious answer I would have thought.

He then replied with a response that had us both a little lost for words and options " you want to stay in the naturist campsite or normal". We wondered if there was something Joanna had not told us. We decided that we were both a little tired to go and be surrounded by fat German naked men carrying doughnuts hands free, so opted for the normal campsite and hoped that they were there as well.

Thankfully they were. We spent the next three days with them and their two young children
Now, Jas may look like a sweet young boy... however, he's not to be messed with in the pool!

Thank god I chose the shallow end as I would have drowned for sure!With the above manoeuvre I have now grown 3 inches. I should be a little grateful.

The evenings were spent having BBQs and talking with them and their friends they were holidaying with. An extremely pleasant way to pass three days.

To the Polish, thank you for letting us gatecrash your holiday and look forward to seeing you soon in Poland.

TOMATO FIGHT!!!!

Off we went to Spain to meet up with Tallie and Chester and to have a go at the famous Tomatina.

It took us two days to drive down there, we also knew that this was the last call for any more 'Chronicles of the wedding dress' and we still had some climbing to do in it. En route we found a suitable location and off the wife went up a rock. We worked out that actually climbing a route was not an option as the dress was just too bulky and big. So a bit of bouldering instead.With that done, we continued onto Valencia where we met up with the other two tomato throwers. After a few too many drinks that night, on Wednesday morning we got a train out of town for 40km to Bunol where the fight was to be. The town was full of fellow idiots who thought that throwing overripe tomatoes at each other was a great idea. There were literally thousands of idiots.

We made our way down into the town centre where all hell let loose. The streets are narrow and deep with lots of people hanging from their balconies cheering. The first instant I took my camera out of its dry bag, an elderly lady above threw a bucket of water over me and my camera. So I have no real fight pictures as my camera was soaked.Lara, I think got off quite lightly with the tomatoes. I think the dress is made from Teflon as most bounced or slid off. Once the fight was finished the stench of tomatoes was a little on the overwhelming side. My continual lust and need of pizza has now strangely disappeared, tomatoes will not be on the menu in our household for quite a while. Once the fight has finished, everyone was still throwing water over you or spraying you with hoses.

The town then turns into a huge street party. Brilliant!

Chester and Tallie still wearing their protective gear, this was a bi-functional piece of equipment as they then went on to demonstrate.Lara was now becoming a celebrity. She must have had 500 odd people ask for their picture to be taken with her, the Spanish all sang a marriage song to us, at one point there must have been a hundred people surrounding us singing.

We had a great time in bars and on the street until it was getting late and to be honest we were all having a little difficulty walking. Lara stank of tomatoes, beer and sangria (it apparently is a tradition in Spain to pour drink over the brides head for good luck). It was time to loose the dress. It had completed it's mission, and it smelt horrible.

Kind of sad to see the dress she look so incredibly beautiful in on our wedding day end up on the street floor, but we had one hell of a good time getting it to its final resting place. You never know there might be a beautifully dressed tramp in Bunol soon!

Back in Gap

So back to normality. Well kind of. A strong feeling of the honeymoon is fast coming to an end. I am starting to trawl the web for jobs, my CV is being sent far and wide. With a little bit of luck some one will take pity on me and offer me a job!

Lara and I are in a small panic as we are off to Spain tonight to go to Valencia for the 'Tomatina'. It is the conclusion of the Chronicles of the wedding dress. For anyone who does not know what it is, it is the huge tomato fight they have over there. This will right off the dress, it's final curtain call. So before we do this we have to complete the two other sections of the chronicle - Mtb'ing and climbing.

We went out last night to the DH track behind our house to take the pictures, we scoped out the good places for pictures and thought it would be a picture fest having many attempts to get it right.

Neither of us were quite prepared for how difficult it is to ride a DH bike in a massive meringue (not that i was the one wearing the dress). The dam thing managed to wrap and jam itself in every part possible, the wheels, the disc brakes, around the cranks. It was a nightmare and Lara deemed it impossible.

I was not giving up that easily, every time she set of the bike woudl come to a holt in 2ms due to the dress jamming in the bike. I spent 5 minutes trying to tidy the dress so not to snag. We had one go at it to take the picture as this was trashing the dress.

Thankfully it came out. So tonight we are off to Spain. We have to find a spot to take the climbing pictures in the dress before Wednesday as after that the dress will be in a wheelie bin.

We will be back in a week, till then - pass the word around there is a brilliant planner looking for work! ;)

Quick head for Europe and Sanity.

So very early start in the morning saw us at Leh airport to catch our flight to Delhi

I decided it was best to sleep on the floor and just be woken up by some one demanding to see my ticket when the time was running out to board.

We arrived in Delhi, this time a little more prepared and rested than last time. Lara had booked us into a hotel and had got a car from the hotel to meet us and take us there, so as we walked out of departures there was a man there with a board with our names on it. he took our bags and loaded up the car. Lara had prewarned them that we have three bikes with us. Not sure they took this into account. Three of them spent 20 minutes playing tetris with the bike sin the car. We just sat back and smiled.

Once at the hotel we had just under two days till our flights home, we had no intention in leaving the grounds. we just relaxed, watched movies, surfed the internet and slept. Bliss, and all in air conditioning.

The days passed quickly and it was soon time to get our flight back to Munich. All went with no hassles, the only problem we had was the Van, remember I said it was the world's biggest car park, well I was not joking. It took us an hour and a half to find the van!

After a speeding ticket free drive home, we walked through the front door in our home in Gap, dropped our bags, walked up stairs and slumped into our soft, familiar beds and fell asleep instantly, think we all thought the same thing " what a trip".

We could not help it, needed to get on the bikes.

After 3 days just bumming around Leh, Scott and I got bored, and decided it was time to try and get one last day biking. We wanted to ride up the Khardung La Pass which is the highest cycleable pass in the world, but you need another permit to go up it and it was Indian Independence day the day before so the permit office was closed. So with a sigh under our breaths we decided we would hire a jeep to drive us up to another local pass called Wuri La. So we were so happy to be driven to the top and not have to huff and puff our way up there.

It was freezing at the top, but we were happy as we had no panniers and just a long way down.
There were 4 French guys who joined us, they were not real bikers and Scott and I decided there was no way they were going to beat us.
Ready for the off, we decided that the road was the the slow option down and decided to cut in between the road. As true mountain bikers we ripped it up.

It was great, went from sand to rocks to dessert. We had a great time on the sand , skidding and sliding. It was great fun after having to pedal up everything for the last 2 weeks, and was great just to fly down with no agenda to have to get food or find some where to sleep.

We got back and had our final meal with everyone packed up and got ready for our taxi in the morning. We were all ready to leave and secretly happy to be leaving.

time to kill in Leh

So now in Leh, we had 4 days to kill as we had some contingency that we did no use up (come on, I am a planner after all!). After seeing most of the people we knew in Manali pass us on motor bikes, I was keen to give it a go. I cornered Maurice the Peruvian to give me a lesson. So we drove out of town to find a quite road on his old Enfield.

He warned me that the gears and rear brake was on a different side to normal bikes, this made no difference to me as I had never ridden a motor bike before, after a little bit working out the gears I was loving it and roaring up and down the road.
Motor bikes are fun, I am sure I will do a trip somewhere on one at some point in my life. After that we drove back with my camera out.
It was a great way to get pictures easily, better than having to stop on my push bike, open the front bag, click , but it back in the bag and strain to get back to cruising speed.
The only real hazard to road users in India are the cows.

They just randomly wander across the road, they have never read the highway code and I honestly think they have no regard for their own lives.
Driving back into Leh, there were more cows to be aware of. The rest of the time we just relaxed in the hotel, watch films on the tv when possible. Leh suffered from power cuts, the whole town would go dead, usually at the most exciting parts of the film, I swear they knew which channel you were watching and did it for fun!

One day Scott's flip flops that he bought for a quid in Thailand 10 years ago got a hole in them. Being the true Scots man he is, he did not want to splash out any money on new ones, so we found a shoe repairer.Haggled the price down to half what they wanted
Added a liberal coating of impact adhesive to them

and then added with stitching an old truck inner tube to it. Scott was pleased and reckons he will get another ten years out of them. Typical Scotsman.Most of the time we would go eat and wander the streets buying a few presents for family at home and harassing the local moo cows, this was the cleanest one we found, he was a cute little fella and followed us around, I strictly forbid Scott to feed him a bourbon biscuit in fear of him following us around for days!

Strangely, we all sprung out of our sleeping bags in the morning. I had my first continuous night's sleep with my breathing function back to normal, we were at 3200m that night, the first time below 4000m for over a week and it felt great to be able to breath almost properly again. We decided that we did not need to carry any of the fuel for the stove any more and it would save weight. So we burnt it.Scott trying to act as nothing is happening behind him. He even whistled. Once we had packed up I unlock all the bikes as normal and turned them the right way up, when I turned Lara's over, it made a funny noise. So after closer inspection I found that a bolt from her pannier rack had gone missing, must have shaken out on the massive decent yesterday. Never mind, she has two dedicated bike fiddlers with her.
After a few seconds we had botched together a fix using a spare spoke and cable ties that would get her to the final destination no worries.

Whilst we did this, Lara made a 'uh oh' noise. when we asked her what was wrong, she sheepishly produced the chain lube from her saddle bag.
Scott and I had turned our bags upside down in Keylong as she swore blind she had not got it, it would have saved our chains from going like thisNever mind, the engine oil had got us this far, no one is dead or pregnant, so all was good. It was our last day, nothing could get us down! So we put everything together and set off.

Even the trucks did not bother Lara this day. She smiled and even waved at them.
We passed through Karu, a huge military base, with some funny rules, Scott and Lara the law breakers, you can never say we are not rock and roll living life on the edge.

And some even funnier ways of empowering women, the sign on the left is not that clear in the photo, is says, ironing, knitting, weaving etc. oh to be a powerful women in India. As we went further down hill the temperature got hotter again, a dry heat that I think we where all getting used to and was pleasant to cycle in.The next 20kms was temple central. It was templeafter templeafter Buddhist monumentafter temple afterTemple. I have another 13 pictures of temples taken down that road, but I am sure you are getting the message.

From here we trundled into Leh, I had been planning the hero arrival picture for 2 days now. But on arrival we were just so happy to arrive we just went straight past all the signs and headed for the hotels to complete our journey. We found a clean hotel no worries as Leh is a hell of a lot more touristy than anywhere we had been and was quite a large town.

Triumphant we got off our bikes wheeled them into our hotel rooms, and had our first shower for over 2 weeks. I thought Lara had someone with her in the shower the noises she was making enjoying cleaning herself so much.

That night we went off and met all our friends from Manali and found beer. The Spanish, two other English girls who we met on the way who were also cycling, Maurice and Ags, the three Germans, 2 Israeli girls, 3 additional spanish who we met cycling and Stevie.Happy, tired and slightly smug that we had ridden there from Manali.

The big one

So up with the sun once again, pack our stuff up and off we went for the Tanglang La. We had 18kms and 800m of climbing
This pass was slightly different from the others, as in you could see the top from the bottom, this had its pros and cons. Pros you knew where to aim for, cons it never seemed to get any closer. We soon came across a traffic jam of two buses that were having difficulties getting past each other.Brilliant, clear roads. The road went on and on, half way up we stopped to eat some food. Two more of our friends who we had met in Manali caught up with us, Maurice and Ags. Again, this was a bit boost for us. was great to see them, we chatted for half an hour and then we all set off.

As we got closer to the top the going got really hard, not the road, just our breathing. We were now cycling above 5000m for the first time and you could really feel it. Lara had to stop a few times as she felt dizzy and had to sit down until the dizzy spells stopped. Finally after just under 4 hours of riding uphill we arrived at the Tanglang La Pass.

It is 5328m, and is famed as the worlds second highest motorable pass (although there are a few other claims to this wondrous height of fame for a road in Bolivia and in Nepal).

It was a fantastic feeling to have got here, as from here it was virtually all down hill to the final destination of Leh. The views were stunning, we could see all the way North to the Karakorums and K2.

There were of course the obligatory prayer flags that we now love as they always signify the end of the climbs.

This was the highest any of us had been ever. It certainly made us all think twice about wanting to try anything higher. The sheer effort of pedalling was made so hard just through the air being thin, standing up made you slightly out off breath.

The hero photo of Lara just cresting the top of the pass with a small dust tornado that were a real nuisance.Same one of Scott. After sitting at the top for a good half an hour, talking to other tourists who had driven up there "oh my God, you are mad" etc etc was all they said.So after soaking up everything it was time to do the down hill, it was 62km to get to our place to camp that night, and it was all downhill!!!!!Off we went, the road turned from dust, to rocky to brilliant tarmac, it was amazing to just coast down the hill at 40kph and lean into the tight hair pin corners and accelerate out of them by just letting go of the brakes. The warm wind cooling you off was such a welcome break from the intense heat of the past few days.After 30kms or so, we decided it was time to stop for lunch in a small town called Rumtse. We sat down and a load of Indian men who were sitting near us start asking questions. The normal "did you buy your bikes here?", " where you from?", " do you like India?" etc. they had a large quantity of wine on the table and kept offering us some. We had to refuse as we still had a way to go and to be honest I was not in the mood to drink wine. As they left they just gave us a bottle, the guy who gave it to us said it was from his vineyard. Another gesture showing how kind the Indians really are. So we stashed the bottle in our panniers for later on.The further down the valley we got the more Buddhist monuments and temples there were. We were in the Chhaba Nala valley. It was stunningly pretty.The further we got into the valley the deeper and more gorge like it became. We flew down it at more than 50kph having way too much fun to try and stop to take pictures. Scott stopped to take a picture of a rock - freak.We finally got down to the bottom to a town called Upshi. Here we sat and had some dinner, waited for the Spanish to catch up and sat and had a drink with them. Suddenly Scott's face did this:-I thought he was just about to do his now normal sprint for cover with toilet roll. After asking him what was wrong, he said it was the surprise of a fart that didn't cause him to shit himself. He was definitely getting better.Lara and I in front of a prayer Barrel that went rang a bell every 30 or so seconds. We had chosen bad seats. The Spanish were staying in a hotel tonight, but we had a few more kms to go to try and find a flat spot to camp. As the norm, we left too late and had a rush / panic trying to find some where before it got dark. You would have thought we would have learnt by now.It was brilliant setting up the camp, we knew that we were almost there. Just a 50km day the day after mainly downhill or on the flat. We thought we definitely deserved the bottle of wine that night.The wine was great, after we drank it we all agreed it was not enough and another 3 or 4 bottles would be better! We were in the middle of nowhere and the stars were so bright. Lara and Scott sat there and pointed out all the different star constellations to me, I kind of glazed over. Lara started squealing when she saw a shooting star as it was the first one she had ever seen. We sat there for a further half and hour and saw a further 6. Off to bed we went with excitement of getting to our destination the next day.