Ladakh Ride Day 17 – Banihal to Pathankot

Weather in Banihal was quite pleasant in the morning. We decided to start a little late and at best, we would stretch till Jalandhar on day 17 of our Ladakh Ride. It was clear surroundings, sitting next to the beautiful garden and swiping all pictures from the last few days, felt quite relaxing.

Around 9:30 AM we started from Banihal, moderate traffic congestion was there and within a few kilometers, it became more. It was a stop and go kind of situation. Although we were gazing the beauty around. Few patches had slush due to rain happened last night. Very soon, we bored with the traffic, it was so dense in places. As usual like the last day, we started to ride in the opposite lane, although most of the time, it did not work and we ended up waiting in queue for long. Definitely, it was frustrating, on top of that we started to feel warm. At Morning, it was cold so we thought, it would be moderate throughout the day but after Ramban, we had to stop aside to remove all thermal wears, luckily we had an extra pair of bungee cords, so we tied everything with saddlebags.

Traffic condition was the same till Chenani National Tunnel and again this tunnel made us happy like water in between desert. This time we crossed it slowly to notice sounds echoing inside, it was a smooth ride. After crossing the tunnel, we saw a few food stations, so we stopped and had our lunch.

Our plan was to take Jammu National Highway instead of shortcut state highway towards Samba directly (more 45 Kilometer). So, we handled the last 20+ Kilometer of bad stretch with the happiness of getting a good highway back again. But after reaching Udhampur, we saw some bad patches on the highway, so we decided to take U-turn and take the known SH route towards Samba. In these bad patches with some good views and lots of pain in the body, we finally reached Samba.

For the first couple of Kilometers, we speeded like 90-95 KMPH, after that we settled down on steady 70-80 KMPH because of drowsiness. Our body was aching like hell and wanted a good amount of rest, so we decided to reach Pathankot by the sunset.

We were checking on Goibibo, MakeMyTrip apps to get some good deals. We reached Hotel Abhi International, found on (Goibibo) checked the rooms. Finally, I made the payment for booking on the app with a good discount. It was our first time to book a room through the app. And we got a shock by the hotel manager that there is no confirmation for our booking. Somehow, the guy felt our tiredness and allowed us to check-in first.

We called the customer care and within 15 minutes, the manager got the booking confirmation email, I must admit the quality support Goibibo had provided otherwise we had to pay again. We ordered some snacks and tea, freshened up, and went outside to try local panipuri (Gol Gappa), one of the best panipuris we had ever.

I came back to the hotel room, packed everything properly in bags, put everything on the charge, switched on the AC, and crashed in Bed.