All pictures here.

June 25th 2009:

Took a cheap Air India flight (HKD 4,100) to Delhi. They were playing some movie from like 50 years back but luckily I had my Bloomberg magazine for in-flight entertainment. The flight attendants were pretty much old ladies and guys on the fringe of retiring.

Reached New Delhi at 10PM and transferred to the domestic terminal at 1AM.

June 26th 2009:
The flight we were supposed to take to Kulu was called MDLR Airlines. Completely unheard of! I was preparing myself for the strong possibility that the flight may never take off! But, much to my surprise, it took off at 7.10AM (more or less on time) and the economy seats were fantastic! The flight attendants looked as pretty as some Bollywood actresses and they even served a quick in-flight snack! The snack was tasty. At the end, they handed out some leaflet promoting MDLR’s new casino in Goa and a free admission to it! (not for me, I don’t like contributing to casino revenues).

We reached Kulu airport at 10AM and decided to avoid a INR1000 bucker taxi ride to Manali, instead choosing what we thought would be a quick 30-minute bus ride to Manali. The weather was hot (30 degrees) and the bus-stop turned out to be more than 10 minutes away. We eventually boarded a bus that started out empty but soon passengers were packed inside like sardines. I could smell sweaty armpits and a frequent and generous fart every now and then from a passenger with apparent bowel problems. Two grueling hours later, we reached Manali.

Lunch was at Swamiji South Indian restaurant and our bike hunting mission began soon after. Hardev motors, Anu Autoworks and the other bike shops did not have any bikes. Disappointed, we decided to come up with a Plan B and headed over to a juice bar. As we casually asked the “bartender” if he knew a bike shop, he immediately directed us to a buddy and our mission caught traction. We were soon acquainted with a dude called Dev who owned Bajaj Autoworks 50/50 with the mechanic called Ashok. The deal was this:

2 Pulsars @ INR 700 a day
2 Yamahas @ INR 500 a day (1 for a mechanic who was to accompany us all the way. The bike shop guy highly advised this in case we ended up with mechanical faults on the way. Roads are said to be in a very, very bad shape with some snowfall somewhere along the way).
700 a day salary for the mechanic.

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Tags: Kargil, Ladhakh, Leh, Manali, Nubra, Pang, Pangong Tso, Sarchu, Vacation

Great men! A business legend and a careful climber!

great interviews.

Amateur video taken on Cameron Road, TST, HK. The dude on the upper floor is dropping bamboo sticks used for scaffolding to the dude at the bottom! Traffic is flowing as usual and people are walking on the road!

Eventually they got busted by the two policemen who were equally astonished at the act as several of the onlookers!

Must-see pictures here

So, the skies were black and the amber storm warning was in place. Streets looked desolated and the time was 0700hrs in the morning. All this can only mean one thing, HIKE TO SHARP PEAK!!!

And so, we set off the usual way, 29R from Sai Kung to the start of the hike – Sai Wan to Chek Kung to Sharp peak. I was armed with a poncho (10 bucks 7/11) and an umbrella.

There was not another soul (I mean human soul, there were buffaloes and cows) on the trail to Sharp peak. A British lady who appeared out of nowhere was surprised to learn that we were hiking up sharp peak. “In this weather?” she questioned as though we were insane! She gave us directions and umpteen warnings and we were well on our way. The view was good fro Sharp peak – the winds blew the clouds away allowing an unparalleled view of the majestic mountians.

We were on our way to Pak Tam Au at 12.30PM (three hours – we started climbing Sharp peak at 9.30AM). After a long time, I actually saw a lot of water in the reservoir.

For some reason, there were two toilets near this point!!

My Tax Money Being Used For This????????
(AFCD boys, please don’t use my money for this, I beg ya!)

We were on stage 3 by 1PM and we finished that trail by 3.30PM.

I’ve seen snakes on HK trails but I saw a crab for the first time. The crab’s lucky that I am veggie and therefore the only danger from me was the flash of my camera.

I took two videos on this hike. One shows you how beautiful the view was and the other will show you how windy it was. Both are around 1.5Megs each in size. For you HK visitors, it should take less than 1 minute to load.

Watch Video Sharp peak 1

Watch Video Sharp Peak 2

Happy hiking! Love nature!

Tags: Sai Kung, Sharp peak