A story about cycling to Umling La, the highest motorable road in the world, and what riding through Ladakh teaches you about endurance, curiosity, and smallness.

This is not a guide. It’s a lived experience of long-distance cycling in Ladakh — through snowstorms, isolation, and the kind of moments that stay long after the ride ends.

There is a signboard somewhere on the loneliest road in Ladakh that reads —

“Every km will feel like a paradise”

I read it while riding through a valley flanked by mountains above 6,000 meters, no network, no people, no sound except wind and the quiet rotation of wheels on tarmac.

I believed it completely.

And whenever I think about that road now, tears form in my eyes — not from sadness, not from pride, but from something I still cannot name.

Maybe that’s the whole story.

Maybe that’s enough.

 

Dust: The Beginning of a Ladakh Cycling Journey

Every journey has an origin story. Mine started with a bad decision involving a 20 litre water bottle.

I picked it up wrong. Injured my wrist. Nothing dramatic — no sporting accident, no heroic moment. Just a man and a water bottle and a sprained wrist that refused to fully heal before the most physically demanding thing he’d ever attempted.

But before the wrist, before the water bottle, there was a moment in Leh in 2024 that quietly changed everything.

I was there for a half marathon — because I run and I cycle, and Ladakh felt like the right place to do both. A few days before the race, staying at my hostel, I met the owner — Dr. Tsering Wangchuk. A cyclist himself, quietly preparing for a full marathon. We got talking the way two people with similar mindsets get talking — easily, quickly, without needing much explanation.

When I mentioned I was thinking of renting a cycle — around ₹1,200 for a day — he smiled and told me he had an old Scott MTB sitting around.

Here. Take my bike.

Just like that. No long negotiation. No formal agreement. A stranger recognizing something in another stranger and handing over his cycle without hesitation.

I rode that borrowed Scott MTB to Khardung La — one of the highest motorable passes in the world, a road that carries a fearsome reputation among riders. Everyone said it would be brutal. Everyone said it would break me.

It felt easy. Not easy like I am exceptional. Easy like — oh, this is what I was built for.

I came back from that ride with one clear thought:

I will buy my own bike and come back.

So I did.

I built her myself — a road bike converted for gravel, new 37mm tyres, changed stem, designed for roads that barely exist. I named her Dust.

Not after power. Not after speed.

After disappearing.

Because that’s what I wanted — to ride into Ladakh until Dust and I dissolved into the landscape, into the clouds of dust rising from broken roads, into the silence between mountains.

I wanted to vanish for a while.

And I knew exactly where to go.

Umling La. 5,810 meters. The highest motorable road in the world.

Why? Someone will always ask why.

Honestly — I was just curious. I’d read about it everywhere. Seen bikers call it impossible. And something in me — the same something that found Khardung La easy when everyone said it would be hard — just wanted to know.

It wasn’t about challenge. It wasn’t about proving anything. It wasn’t a bucket list moment or a spiritual quest.

I just wanted to be alone with the road and the mountains and the sky.

That’s it. That’s the whole reason.

Maybe there’s something deeper. Something psychological buried underneath the curiosity. Maybe I haven’t figured that out yet.

Or maybe — and this feels closer to the truth —

The climbing is the excuse to keep not figuring it out.

You or me, none of us will ever know.

 

Stalin and Friends

No great journey has only one character.

Mine had three bikes and three humans and a WhatsApp group that nobody uses anymore because WhatsApp is mostly an Indian thing and my companions were distinctly not Indian.

Let me introduce them properly.

Stalin — a bike ridden by Martin, 35, from Slovakia. Martin has been bikepacking since his teenage years. He just came from cycling through Pakistan before arriving in India, rerouted through Abu Dhabi after the Pakistan-India border closed for six months. He thinks before he smiles. Then he smiles. Then he talks. He builds snowmen at 5,500 meters in blizzards. He is, without question, one of the most quietly extraordinary people I have ever met.

Murphy — a bike ridden by Isabel, 26, American. Named after Dervla Murphy, the Irish woman who cycled alone from Ireland to India in the 1960s — a journey so audacious it barely seems real. Izzy was finishing a year-long cycling journey the day she joined us — Japan, through Southeast Asia, across to Europe, and finally India. She arrived in Ladakh already carrying twelve months of roads in her legs, and then altitude sickness hit her from day one and never really let go.

Dust — my bike. You already know this story.

I met Martin at a transit bus stop in Delhi’s Terminal 3 — him wrestling a barely functional cardboard bike box held together with tape and optimism. We got talking. He was heading to Leh. I mentioned a Czech cyclist named Tomas I’d met the previous year — a man who had ridden all the way from Turkmenistan through the Pakistan-India border.

Martin burst out laughing.

He knew Tomas personally.

Of course he did.

We took a selfie and sent it to Tomas immediately. The world is strange and small and mostly good.

I met Izzy a few days later in Leh market, standing next to Martin, because Leh Market is the kind of place where everyone ends up eventually. She'd connected with Martin online through an international cycling group. They'd both been inspired by a bikepacking article about Zanskar. And somehow — over dinner, through a conversation with Adam, a man who had been living in Leh since 1998, and Nithyam (a trail buddy of mine who is also a mountain guide) — they both ended up crashing into my plan to ride to Umling La instead.

That’s how Stalin and Friends was born.

Three cyclists. Three countries. Three completely different reasons for being on the same road.

No team jerseys. No formal agreement. No motivational speeches — then or ever, for the entire journey.

Everyone knew their assignment.

 

The Rain That Wasn’t Supposed to Happen

Ladakh is a high altitude desert. It doesn’t really rain here.

Except that it did. Constantly. For days.

I had no rain jacket. No fleece. No shoe covers. Martin and Izzy had everything — layers, waterproofs, the full kit. I showed up to one of the most extreme landscapes on earth with a single merino wool t-shirt.

I was, without question, the most underprepared/stupid person on the road.

The rain started on Day 1 — thirty kilometers into our journey on the Leh-Manali highway. It didn’t stop for days. My fingers went numb. A passing car splashed a wall of water over me at full speed. Izzy, genuinely worried, mentioned the word hypothermia.

We reached a small homestay in Trido soaking wet, spread every piece of clothing across every available surface, and drank hot tea in silence.

Day one. Already wondering how I’d survive two more weeks.

On Day 2, a rockfall happened right in front of me — a boulder detaching from a cliff face, bouncing off the road, disappearing into the river below. I sprinted the next hundred meters without thinking and didn’t stop until I reached a military café.

Inside that café — attached to a small utility shop — was the greatest discovery of the entire journey.

Jackets. Fleece layers. Raincoats.

I bought a fleece and a raincoat with the enthusiasm of a man who has just been handed a second life. When I walked back into the café fully layered, Martin and Izzy stared at me and then burst into smiles.

I was going to survive after all.

That night we slept in a monastery dining hall — the lama wasn’t home, a worker let us in, Izzy found a corner and collapsed into her sleeping bag, Martin and I went looking for food in the dark. Bread omelette and chai from a roadside stall.

It was already one of the best trips of my life.

 

The Loneliest Road on Earth

There is a section of road between Loma Bridge and Hanle where civilization simply stops.

No villages. No network. No sound. Just tarmac cutting through a valley so vast and ancient it makes every human concern feel immediately, completely irrelevant.

6,000 meter mountains on both sides.

Herds of kyang — wild Tibetan asses — grazing in the distance. Occasionally a solitary kyang sitting apart from the herd. An outcast, Martin suggested. Or perhaps one with different political leanings.

And then that signboard —

“Every km will feel like a paradise”

I read it and felt something shift inside me.

I think about that road often. When I do, tears form in my eyes. Not sadness. Not nostalgia exactly.

Something closer to — grief that it ended.

Because on that road, something happened that I cannot fully explain and won’t insult by trying to over-explain.

My problems disappeared. Not solved — disappeared. Made irrelevant by scale. By silence. By the simple, humbling fact of being a small human on a bicycle between mountains that were ancient before the concept of human problems existed.

And then my mind went — not to myself — but to the people who live there.

The old women running homestays. The monastery workers. The shepherd settlements. The BRO migrant laborers working in conditions I couldn’t survive for a week.

They live in my paradise.

They wake up every day in the place I came to find peace — and they deal with flash floods, rockfalls, broken roads, extreme cold, and the slow erasure of a way of life.

Struggling. But still moving. Still happy.

The same words I would later use to describe Izzy.

Maybe that’s what Ladakh teaches you if you stay long enough and go slow enough.

Suffering and happiness are not opposites. They ride together. Like cyclists on a mountain road.

 

The Snowstorm at 5,500 Meters

I won’t pretend Day 4 was beautiful while it was happening.

It was terrifying.

We were climbing Photi La — 5,500 meters, fully paved, our chosen acclimatization pass before attempting Umling La — when a camper stopped us.

“There’s a foot of snow ahead. Everyone is turning back. Don’t go up.”

We looked at each other.

We went up.

The hairpin roads ahead were completely white. Visibility was dropping. A snowstorm had begun. My shoes were not waterproof. My feet went cold. Then numb. I couldn’t feel my toes. Only two fingers on each hand were responding.

We couldn’t ride anymore. We pushed. Push, pause, breathe. Push, pause, breathe.

At 5,500 meters, breathing is a conscious act. Every step is a negotiation with your own body.

Izzy was still managing AMS. She had considered stopping at this pass — turning back, calling it enough. A year of riding had brought her here and altitude sickness had greeted her from day one and never left.

She didn’t stop.

She pushed her bike through the snowstorm without a word.

Everyone knew their assignment.

A Polish biker got stuck in the snow on a lower curve and eventually turned back. We kept going. After three hours of pushing, we crested the pass.

We made it.

And Martin — cold, exhausted, at 5,500 meters in a snowstorm — immediately began building a snowman.

Izzy and I looked at each other.

That specific look that needs no words. The one that says — of course he is, and we are not stopping him, and we are also not standing here in the snow waiting forever.

We let him do his thing — his side quest, his ritual, his version of celebrating a summit. We started moving slowly, assuming he would finish and catch up.

He did not finish quickly.

Martin wanted finishing touches.

It was getting dark. We still had 40 kilometers to go. Izzy and I exchanged another look, started moving, and trusted that somewhere behind us, a Slovakian man was perfecting a snowman at 5,500 meters and would eventually rejoin us.

He did.

We rode through the dark — exhausted, cold, hungry — until we found a small unlocked roadside shelter. No running water. No electricity. No owner in sight.

We put our bikes inside, laid out our sleeping bags, and looked at each other.

This is home tonight.

We named it Stalin’s Palace.

It earned the name.

 

Cycling to Umling La (5,810m)

I won’t stretch this out.

Some moments don’t need architecture. They just need honesty.

5,810 meters.

We left Stalin’s Palace early, dropped our extra bags at a nearby café, had breakfast, and started the climb. No warm up. Just straight into the ascent.

Another snowstorm. Another push. Another few hours of numb fingers and thin air and one foot in front of the other.

The cyclists with vehicle support who had left an hour before us turned back without reaching the pass.

We didn’t.

When I finally stood at the top — the highest motorable road in the world buried under fresh snow, more snow falling — a group of bikers who had hiked up surrounded me.

Clapping. Hugging.

One of them walked over and hugged me tight.

“You are invincible.”

I was in tears.

Everyone at the pass clapped.

I want to be honest here — I am not invincible. I was cold and exhausted and my toes were numb and I had no idea if I could feel my feet properly. But in that moment, being called invincible by a stranger at 5,810 meters in a snowstorm felt like the kindest thing anyone had ever said to me.

I waited for Izzy and Martin.

When they arrived — pushing their bikes through the snowstorm at 5,800 meters, a year of riding in Izzy’s legs and altitude sickness in her lungs — we hugged each other without words.

Izzy had quiet tears.

Not dramatic. Not performative.

Just — tears.

The kind that come when something you almost didn’t do turns out to be exactly what you needed.

Martin built another snowman. This one was genuinely impressive. We took a selfie with it.

Stalin and Friends. At the top of the world.

Then we started down.

 

The Officer at the Checkpoint

After Umling La, we decided to take the Dungti-Koyul route — a road that runs very close to the Chinese border and is marked as restricted on every map we had.

Our attitude going in was simple — let’s see what happens.

For a while, nothing happened. Beautiful roads. Army settlements everywhere. Migrant workers building roads in conditions most people couldn’t imagine. The quiet, strange beauty of a landscape that exists entirely on the edge of two nations.

And then — a checkpoint.

The officer stopped us. Looked at our group. Looked at Martin and Izzy.

The road ahead, he said, was restricted. For everyone. Go back.

And then — more pointedly — the road we had just come from was restricted for foreign tourists. He looked at Martin and Izzy with the specific expression of a man calculating consequences.

He threatened to jail them.

I looked at Martin and Izzy.

Martin — who had cycled through Pakistan alone. Who builds snowmen at 5,500 meters. Who had crossed more borders than most people visit countries.

Izzy — who had ridden from Japan through Southeast Asia across Europe to India over an entire year. Who had pushed her bike through a snowstorm with altitude sickness in her lungs without a single complaint.

Both of them — completely silent. Wide eyed. Radiating pure helplessness.

The two most experienced cyclists I had ever met, reduced to giving off absolutely zero confidence in front of one Indian army officer.

It was left entirely to me.

I showed our permits. I explained our route. I apologized. I pleaded. I explained that going back on that road was dangerous for cyclists. I said everything I could think of.

The officer considered.

Then — whether it was the pleading, or the apologies, or simply the fact that there was a woman in our group — he let us through.

All three of us.

With a warning — no breaks, no photos, move fast.

We moved fast.

None of us spoke for a while after the checkpoint. We just rode — quietly, quickly, grateful — through one of the most beautiful and restricted roads in India, with China sitting just on the other side of the mountain.

Some doors open because you knock.

Some open for reasons you’ll never fully understand.

Either way — you ride through.

 

The Rat

There are many ways to end a day in Ladakh.

Pangong Tso was still ahead of us. But first — Tsaga. A small settlement, a homestay, two rooms between three cyclists. They promised hot water. Our room didn’t get any. We waited. We gave up. We had dinner and went to sleep.

Around 4 am, I felt something on my head.

Half asleep, I brushed it away.

It happened again.

I woke up.

A rat was eating my hair.

I am not exaggerating. A rat. Eating. My hair.

I shooed it away. It ran directly over Martin, waking him up instantly. And so began the most undignified two hours of the entire journey — two grown men, fresh from the world’s highest motorable road, trying to catch one rat in a dark room in Tsaga.

We put nuts on the floor as bait. We waited. We tried to hit it. The rat was faster, smarter, and significantly less tired than either of us.

We failed completely.

We did not sleep.

By sunrise, we gave up, packed our bags, and got back on our bikes.

The mountains were waiting. The rat had won. We moved on.

 

Pangong Tso

And then — the lake.

There are things that photographs cannot prepare you for. Pangong Tso is one of them.

We had ridden through rain and snow and restricted roads and army checkpoints and a rat. And then we turned a corner and there it was — impossibly blue, impossibly vast, ringed by mountains that dropped straight into the water.

I kept stopping to take pictures. I couldn’t help it. I genuinely wished I had an action camera — the kind that captures movement and speed and the feeling of riding beside something this beautiful. The views were spectacular in a way that felt almost unfair.

Izzy and I took a gravel road close to the lake — bumpy, unpredictable, the kind of road Dust was built for. Somewhere along the way I realized my phone had fallen out of my pocket. We retraced our steps. Thirty minutes of searching. We found it.

Of course we found it. The lake was watching.

At lunch, we stopped at a restaurant right on the water. A rainbow appeared over Pangong Tso while we were eating.

It couldn’t have been more perfect.

Martin and Izzy had their very first butter chicken — right there, beside one of the most beautiful lakes in the world. They were quiet for a moment after the first bite.

Then Martin smiled — first he thought, then he smiled, then he spoke — and said it was good.

High praise from a man of few words.

We stayed longer than we should have. The lake has that effect on people. It makes leaving feel like a small loss.

 

The Final Climb: Chang La Pass

Chang La.

The final climb. The last obstacle between us and Leh.

We had been warned it was steep. The warning was accurate. Traffic was heavy — motorbikes, SUVs, tourists — all making their way up a road that seemed to get steeper with every hairpin.

Somewhere near the top, I ran into friends — Nishmitha and Varun — traveling by vehicle to Pangong Tso. Familiar faces at 5,000 meters. We spoke briefly, smiled at the absurdity of meeting here, and continued.

We reached the pass.

A little snow. A signboard. A view.

And then — the descent.

One of the best downhills of my life. We were flying. After days of pushing bikes through snowstorms and grinding up passes in the rain, the descent from Chang La felt like a reward for everything that had come before. The road opened up below us and we just went — fast, free, weightless.

In no time we were at the bottom.

We stopped at a hotel, ate, visited a beautiful monastery near sunset, and then continued to the Leh-Manali highway.

We found a highway hotel for the night. Had dinner together.

That was the last random hotel stay of the journey.

We all knew it without saying it.

 

What I Was Feeling Was Nothing

I came back to Leh on Day 11.

Fifty kilometers of monasteries and lake views and one final climb and then — the noise and color and chaos of Leh market.

I arrived around noon to find runners crossing the finish line of the Silk Route Ultra and the Khardung La Challenge.

And that’s when I remembered.

I have a marathon to run tomorrow.

I ran it.

Cramps hit at the 30 kilometer mark like something with a grudge. The final stretch was a climb — of course it was. I walked. Then ran a little. Then walked again. My legs had already given everything they had to 800+ kilometers of Ladakhi roads and three snowstorms and the world’s highest motorable pass.

I finished in 4 hours and 25 minutes.

Standing at the finish line — cramping, exhausted, emotional — I looked around at Leh.

This place has been fighting for the Sixth Schedule for years. Fighting for constitutional protections, for autonomy, for the right to protect its land and its culture and its identity.

The Tibetan people have been fighting for their freedom for centuries.

And I was standing there feeling proud of myself for finishing a marathon on tired legs.

What I was feeling was nothing.

Not nothing like it didn’t matter.

Nothing like — perspective.

Nothing like — you are very small, Rajath, and that is a gift, not an insult.

 

None of Us Will Ever Know

Martin is back in Slovakia, probably already planning the next border crossing.

Izzy is dreaming of Scotland, wherever she is.

Stalin and Friends have a WhatsApp group that nobody really uses — because WhatsApp is mostly an Indian thing, and my companions were distinctly not Indian.

The mountains don’t know we were there.

Dust is home, accumulating the dust of Ladakh in places I haven’t cleaned yet. I’m not sure I want to.

Someone will ask me why I did it.

I’ll say — curiosity. I wanted to be alone with the mountains.

They’ll want more than that.

They’ll want a transformation arc. A lesson learned. A fear conquered. A self discovered.

And I’ll have to tell them honestly —

I went to the highest road in the world and came back smaller.

Not lesser. Smaller.

Small like a human being standing between 6,000 meter mountains on the loneliest road on earth.

Small like a man pushing a bike called Dust through a snowstorm at 5,800 meters, not knowing why he climbs, not needing to know, just going up because going up is what he does.

Maybe I’m climbing to figure something out.

Maybe the climbing is just the excuse to keep not figuring it out.

You or me — none of us will ever know.

And somewhere on a road in Ladakh, a signboard says every kilometer will feel like a paradise.

I believe it.

I will always believe it.

 

Rajath is a runner and cyclist based in India. Dust is currently resting. Stalin and Murphy are somewhere in the world, still moving.

 

 

Total distance: ~800 km Highest point: 5,810 m — Umling La Rain days: Too many Snowmen built: 2 Things figured out: 0 Things that needed figuring out: Also 0