Around the next bend

The motorcycle looks rather small beside those mountains. At home, planning a journey can feel like an act of control: choose the places, join them with a road, decide how much time each deserves. Across Manali, Nubra and Srinagar, the road became the interesting part. I had set out wanting some uncertainty. There was a good deal of country in which to find it.

I am drawn to the next bend before I know what is beyond it. That can be a useful quality on a journey and a mildly inconvenient one when making a sensible plan. Here, curiosity had somewhere to go. Rock, cloud and a strip of road kept changing their arrangement. The bike carried the luggage; the mountains did very little to acknowledge either of us. For once, being a small part of the scene felt rather good.

And then, among all that grand terrain, a blue table. Plates, sunglasses, riding gloves. I like that this belongs to the journey as much as the mountain road. A person can be full of enthusiasm for remote landscapes and still be very interested in lunch. The gloves come off, something ordinary occupies the middle of the day, and eventually the journey resumes. This is how an expedition becomes a day you have actually lived.

The engineer in me notices connections: how a road finds a way through difficult ground, how a few practical arrangements make movement possible. The traveller has a slightly different interest. Where does this go? What changes around the corner? I enjoy having both questions along. One wants to understand the arrangement; the other is already looking farther down the road.

What stays with me from 2016 is that appetite for continuing. Manali, Nubra and Srinagar are distinct places, with lives and histories of their own; joining their names does not make them one experience. But the road gave the journey a thread. Looking back, I find myself wanting to pick it up again: gloves on, luggage secured, and a reasonable interest in wherever lunch might be next.