In August 2014, a friend and I rode our motorcycles to Marsimik La, the highest motorable road on the planet standing tall in the Himalayas at 18,953 feet. This weekend, I finally found the time to piece together a short 8 minute video from the footage captured by my helmet mounted GoPro camera.



You can find more information and pictures about this ride on my blog - The Marsimik La Adventure

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Deelip Menezes
www.deelipmenezes.com

How was breathing? Or are you already in high elevations so are used to it?

Nicely done! Good music too!

Was your riding partner riding a new KTM? Which model was it?
I think you were riding an Enfield, yes? 350 or 500?

My friend and I live on the west coast of India at sea level. So the severe change in altitude messed us up pretty bad. The rule of high altitude riding is to ride high and sleep low. But all that got messed up when our bikes showed up in bad state in Chandigarh and we spent two days fixing them.

By the time we reached the Tso Kar lake, we were properly messed up as we didn't get enough time to acclimatize. We woke up in the morning moving slow and talking funny. I remember we used to pant after speaking a sentence. Thankfully, we managed to packed our motorcycles and head out reaching Leh without incident.

At Marsimik La the situation was even worse. At 18,953 feet there wasn't enough oxygen for my motorcycle, let alone myself. I was a riding a old school carburetor Royal Enfield 350 and my friend had a year old KTM Duke 390 with all the electronics. His ECM thought that the air filter was blocked or something and made the necessary adjustments. He barely felt the drop in power and was riding normally. But my Enfield just couldn't cope with the lack of oxygen. The drop in power was significant and I had to keep the accelerator twisted to keep the engine alive. The sound from the motorcycle was very very weird. Seemed like the engine would give up any moment.

I have no idea how I managed to get the Enfield to haul my ass up to 19,953 feet. The roads were utter crap as well. Just sharp pieces of rock laid out on a path of least resistance. I cut my boots and tyres negotiating the rocks. They say its a "motorable" road and technically they may be right because the huge Army trucks rumble over these roads. But for people riding motorcycles, the work "motorable" takes a whole new meaning at Marsimik La. But I've never put my Enfield to so much abuse in one day. It was quite an experience.

I don't have GoPro footage of that section because the Army folks asked us to deposit all our cameras at the last ITBP post in Phobrang. Marsimik La is a stone throw's away from the disputed and volatile border with China and we constantly have problems in this region. I did manage to smuggle my digital camera though and I used it to click the pictures at Marsimik La. I took care not to take pictures of any Army posts and publish them on my blog, Facebook, etc.

IMHO, you need a proper Enduro motorcycle to conquer Marsimik La easily. The terrain in unforgiving and the oxygen levels wreck havoc with motorcycles with carburetors, let alone your own body. This is not an easy ride.

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Deelip Menezes
www.deelipmenezes.com

Fantastic. thanks for sharing!

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'07 DL1000 '08 DR650

Sounds like hard work! Funny thing is, I wasn't even thinking of your bikes being able to breathe, just you guys!! When it was easy and cheap for tourists to flock to China, buy a $1k USD enduro, and go touring without a license just a few short years ago, people reported not as many issues because of the way the bikes' carbs were tuned as well as jetted. Of course, they were 'only' riding to about 12,000 feet or so, but it did kind of explain why most people who bought cheap Chinese bikes worldwide seemed to have issues with them being too lean or too rich from the factory--as if they were set up for high elevations. Lifan even bragged about their Nepalese importer getting one of their enduros to astronomical elevations (not as high up as you guys I don't think, if I remember the ads).

Anyway--for you to go from sea level living to just under 19k feet is incredible! I am actually not surprised your Enfield kept running. I guess, the next adventurers should learn from you--take oxygen and fuel-injected bikes (or cheap Chinese enduros )

I should add; I bet your Lake Tahoe ride was like a lazy Sunday ride compared to this one!

LOL! Indeed, this was the most difficult thing I did on two wheels.... yet!

BTW, if you are interested to see the elevation plot of the ride you can see my Garmin adventure at My Marsimik La Garmin Adventure | DeelipMenezes.com

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Deelip Menezes
www.deelipmenezes.com

Outstanding

Thanks deelip for sharing this video. I like a lot