Continued from - Call of the Wild Part 1

Leh, the capital with 25 thousand people, is the only town of any size in Ladakh. Still no traffic lights though!

Heading west from Leh on the road to Kashmir, we follow the Indus river. The Indus river, from where India gets its name, originates in Southern Tibet, from the slopes of the great and sacred Mount Kailash.

The snows of Mount Kailash give rise to 4 great rivers that traverse epic journeys of thousands of kilometres over the plateaus of Tibet, through the Himalayan mountains and the plains of the Indian subcontinent, sustaining the lives of a Billion people along the way.

The Indus flows north – known as Sengge Khabab to Tibetans (River originating from the Lion’s mouth)

The Satluj flows west – known as Langchen Khabab to Tibetans (River originating from the Elephant’s mouth)

The Karnali flows south – known as Mapcha Khabab to Tibetans (River originating from the Peacock’s mouth)

The Brahmaputra flows east – known as Tachok Khabab to Tibetans (River originating from the Horse’s mouth)

As we near Kargil, my thoughts turn to a less spiritual reality of these mountains. In 1999, India and Pakistan fought a bloody war on the mountains around Kargil resulting in thousands of soliders dying on both sides. After Pakistani incursions into Indian territory, the Indian army fought heroically to regain lost mountains. Many individual stories of courage and sacrifice emerged from the war and have inspired a new generation of patriots across the country. Jigmet told me about the role of the Ladakh Scouts, an Infantry regiment of the Indian Army specialising in mountain warfare. This regiment, consisting of Ladakhi and Tibetan Khampa warriors (the same people who fought the Chinese when they invaded Tibet), contributed greatly towards the Indian Army winning the Kargil War and has been much decorated in their short history. Local Ladakhi man, Colonel Sonam Wangchuk, who received one of the highest Military honours for his bravery during the Kargil war, has become a source of pride and inspiration for all Ladakhis and in every  village we visited, at least one person claimed to be related to Colonel Wangchuk.

It took us 3 days driving from Leh to get to Padum, the centre of Zanskar. Passing along the way, exotic scenery such as the Noon-Koon Mountain peaks (7800M) and the Drang Drung glacier, which is literally a river of ice.

On reaching Zanskar, we based ourselves in Karsha Gompa (Monastery). The team organised a nature orientation course for the local school kids while I roamed around aimlessly smiling at everyone and entertaining the kids. Then one day the director said "Action" and we headed for Bardan Gompa, which is where the road (for lack of a better word) ends. It’s all walking from here on. 

Strapping on our backpacks, 4 of us (Jigmet the leader, Angmo – a young, hardy Ladakhi girl, Sonam – a free spirited, squint-eyed young Ladakhi boy and myself) started walking up the Lungnak valley. The Lungnak valley goes up the Tsarap-Lingti river in a south easterly direction all the way to its source on the glaciers of the 5200M Shingo La Pass. 

The first day was hard. I’d done heaps of mountain trekking in the years gone by but years of sitting in an office, hunched over a computer had taken its toll so my 20KG backpack ate into my shoulders while the steep terrain strained my thighs till they wobbled. I walked, gasping in the thin air (our trek started at 3900M and went uphill till 5000M, climbing and descending over a thousand vertical metres in a day) and tried to not shame my ancestors in front of these hardy mountain people

But the first day is always the hardest on any expedition and soon my body got used to it, my confidence rose and I was keeping pace with my companions easily.

The scenery was spectacular as we gained height, crested gorges and forded rivers. On our 3rd day, we saw a few Bharal (wild Blue sheep) and where there is Bharal, there is the possibility of Snow Leopards! Though Jigmet had made it pretty clear that we were unlikely to see a Snow Leopard on this trip since it was only August yet and the leopards wouldn’t start descending from the heights till after the first snowfall in October (he was right of course, we never did end up seeing a snow leopard though that never took anything away from the experience). But being a tracker, Jigmet couldn’t help tracking the Bharal. His senses immediately heightened and he was like a wild animal tracking his prey. He looked under rock overhangs and pointed out scratches that a Snow Leopard had made to mark its territory, though they weren’t recent. Snow Leopards are incredibly territorial and since prey is hard to hunt in this steep and unforgiving terrain, a single Snow Leopard may patrol 500 square kilometres. Snow Leopards are also nomadic and don’t typically have a “home base”, which adds to the difficulty in reliably tracking them. An expert tracker will look for signs in the terrain to determine if a snow leopard may be in the vicinity.

We walked every day through incredible mountain scenery and stopped at night, usually in a village where someone would offer us a bed to sleep. The best nights were the ones we spent sleeping under the stars on rooftops or in the wild. The night sky was so clear, it felt like you could touch the milky way. And because the air is so dry, there is no dew to worry about in the morning. Jigmet knew someone in every village along the way and sometimes I wondered if he might be more well-known than Colonel Sonam Wangchuk, the war hero. Some evenings we would get the village together and hold a consultation session to understand their views and concerns regarding the Snow Leopard. 

These were invariably polite and pleasant discussions and usually ended with the drinking of “Chhang”, home-made barley beer. It is an acquired taste and reeks horribly but it does the job and you even get used to it after a couple of weeks. Even their tea is unusual and consists of dollops of salted yak butter mixed in with the tea. It’s all designed to keep them warm and hydrated in the cold and dry climate but it takes a bit of getting used to. I was a bit of a novelty for most villagers as few outsiders ever visit this remote area, and most just walk through without stopping in the villages. I thoroughly enjoyed my interactions with these simple people and wished I knew more of the language to have richer conversations. But smiles, sign language and my spartan Tibetan got me through most of it. There was the odd hilarious moment like when an elderly lady pointed at me and motioned for me to take my clothes off. I thought, fuck, the oldest profession in the world is well and truly alive even in this remote corner of the world! But seeing my shocked expression, Jigmet quickly interpreted the lady’s innocent question about whether I wanted to wear the traditional Ladakhi robe (called Goncha. The Tibetan version, which is very similar, is called Chuba).

One morning Jigmet informed me that today’s going to be a very special day. I asked him why but he just smiled and said “You’ll see”. Mid-afternoon I turned a corner in the trail and I saw. And my jaw dropped.

Phugtal is a remote monastery, carved into a cliff, tucked away in the folds of Zanskar. From far it looks like you’ve stumbled onto the BatCave! As you get closer, you start to see the scale of human construction, which is dwarfed by the size of the mountains surrounding it. It is a vast complex yet so in tune with nature’s contours. We visited the incredible monastery and met a few monks, who retreat to Phugtal for periods of isolation and meditation. It was a serious place but there were pockets of mischief. Or maybe I was the pocket of mischief.

We camped in the village of Yugar across the river from Phugtal. The village was 4 houses packed tightly together surrounded by green fields of nascent Barley. There was a particularly cheeky little girl who came around in the morning to harass us. She stealthily followed me as I went to the fields to take a shit and laughed all the way back to the village when she saw me take my pants off!

I had a great time playing hide and seek with her and the other kids. A little pixie she was. A little pixie with great spirit. I wonder how she’s doing and what became of her. 

From here the trail forks, one goes east towards Tibet and the other goes south towards Shingo La pass and onto the rest of India. We went south towards the pass, gaining height till we reached the isolated and spectacularly located settlement of Kargyakh. After spending the night here, we turned around and headed back down the valley, retracting our steps. 

In another week we were back in Padum, meeting with bureaucracy, trying to secure government funding for our projects. I was really starting to feel like part of the SLC team and had gained their trust and respect. It was a great honour and hugely satisfying. 

After recuperating at basecamp for a few days, we headed down the Zanskar river to Zangla, the historical capital of Zanskar. It’s now just a village with a hundred people but its location, at the entrance to the fearsome Zanskar gorge, betrays it as a seat of power. An evening walk to the ruined Zangla fort on a mountain top above the village was one of the highlights of my entire stay in Ladakh. The setting sun set ablaze mountain tops with deep, rich hues while the valleys cast eerie shadows, the wind carried the call of howling wolves and giant Golden Eagles went shopping for dinner in nature’s supermarket in the skies. The 4 of us played hide n seek amongst the ruins and then raced each other slipping and sliding down the mountain.

We had a party that night in a friend’s house. Much Chhang was drunk and I stunned a few people with my wild Bollywood dancing moves. I’m told my pelvic thrusts were the talk of the valley for days after.

Soon after this, our time in Zanskar came to an end. We offered our thanks and prayers in Bardan Gompa and headed north, towards the Pakistani border.

We were heading to Jigmet’s village, Skyurbuchan, along the Indus river. Along the way, we diverted through an area called Dah-Hanu, where the inhabitants claim to be of pure Aryan ancestry descendent from the time of Alexander the Great, when he invaded India over 2 thousand years ago.

Whether that is true or not who knows but the people certainly look Germanic, many have blue eyes and apparently there’s blondes around too. They also have unique dresses, customs and religious beliefs that are distinct from the Buddhists of Ladakh. Very few people are allowed to visit here as its a politically and culturally sensitive area and you need a special permit but we sailed through all the check points since Jigmet’s village, Skyurbuchan, is in this area.

At Jigmet’s village, we finally relaxed in the comfort of home. His mother plied us with food while his dad brewed vast vats of Chhang! It wasn’t all fun and games though, I got involved in the village life and pulled my weight and sometimes pulled more than that!

We walked around the mountains every day and visited the “upper village”. Typically, in Ladakh, there is a main village in the valley and a collection of huts further up the mountains, which is used in summers as a base for grazing animals. Sheep, Yak and Dzo (cross between a cow and a yak) are left to roam the mountains and counted and collected every few days.

After an idyllic few days in Skyurbuchan, we returned to Leh and set about writing our reports and planning the implementation of the project. I spent my days in the little office writing a report and strategy paper on the Homestay project and whiled away my evenings roaming the bazaars and drinking beer in the rooftop restaurants with backpackers and old mates. One day I borrowed a Royal Enfield from a mate and did a quick run up to the highest mountain road in the world (at the time), Khardung La (5600M). Just because it was there. The bike wheezed and puffed in the thin air but got me up and back down the mountain without missing a beat.

One of my old mates, Nyima, is a ladakhi river rafting adventure guide who runs white water rafting and kayaking trips all over Ladakh. With his help I took my whole SLC team out rafting on the Zanskar river. The Zanskar is a wild and unforgiving river with water temperature just above freezing, many class 4 rapids and no habitation or support in case of accidents. None of the SLC folks had ever done white water rafting before and none of them knew how to swim. For once I enjoyed seeing them out of their comfort zone while I was totally at home! We only rafted a small section of the river but the 10 day Zanskar River run is one of the greatest river adventures to be had on the planet.

It was now late autumn and getting seriously cold. Soon it was time for me to head to Delhi and pull the curtain down on this most amazing adventure.

I saw lots of wildlife; Marmots, Wolves, Blue Sheep, Ibex, Eagles but we never did see a Snow Leopard in all this time wandering the mountains of Ladakh. We saw shit. No really, we saw leopard shit, we saw leopard tracks, we saw leopard markings, we even saw the carcass of a Blue sheep killed by a Snow Leopard. But to be honest, I almost felt relieved that we didn’t see one. The Snow Leopard is a mythical beast for me, a symbol of wild earth and all that is still primeval in this world. And I am happy in the knowledge that there are still secrets out there. There are still things and places hidden from Google and till the last Snow Leopard is photographed, tracked, trapped, radio collared and neutered, there is hope for the wild things amongst us.

In 2008 I quit my well-paying corporate job and moved to a remote Himalayan region called Ladakh to search for Snow Leopards. My wife, my beautiful, big-hearted, deeply understanding but long suffering wife. She was not impressed of course, but to her eternal credit, she understood my need to do this.

This was 2008, when the big GFC hit and everyone was puckering their arseholes at work so the chair they were sitting on couldn’t be snatched from under them. But the number of fucks I gave about keeping my job could be counted on a blind man’s hands (so anywhere between 0 and 2, depending on how many hands the blind man had). The call of the wild was irresistible and I was answering it.

Ladakh is the northernmost tip of India, bordering Kashmir (both Indian and Pakistani) to the west, Tibet to the east and Chinese Turkistan (Xinkiang) to the north. It is geographically, ethnically, culturally, religiously, linguistically and historically Tibetan. It’s also an integral part of India. If you have lived or travelled through India, you will understand this. However, if you’re one of those people who think of India as one big, hot, crowded plain teeming with fanatic Hindus who man phones all day, play cricket in their lunch breaks and dance Bollywood at night, you should get out more. And watch less TV.

The name Ladakh literally means “Land of high passes”. And they’re not kidding. In a place the size of England, there is no bit of land that is below 3,500M. The highest peak is close to 8,000M. 4 of the 5 highest motorable roads in the world are in Ladakh, including the highest, over Marsimik Pass, at over 5700M. Located north of the main Himalayan range, Ladakh falls in a rain shadow and is deprived of the monsoonal rains that fall over most of the Himalayas. As a result, Ladakh is a high altitude desert. Due to its altitude, latitude and unique geography, Ladakh has extreme temperatures ranging from -30 to +40 degrees and is one of the coldest inhabited places on earth. It is also culturally fascinating, being at the cross roads of the Ancient Silk route, while the inhabitants have historically been traders and nomads.

I’ve been fascinated with Tibet ever since I saw a picture of a lama on a barren mountain with snow peaks in the background. I was about 18, impressionable and full of a romantic optimism about the world. I devoured any literature I could lay my hands on about the history, culture and geography of Tibet. There were plenty of Tibetan refugees settled in Delhi at the time and I accosted many a random Tibetan and Ladakhi in the street, bought them a lassi (coffee wasn’t cool then) and talked about Tibet. Tibetan girls were uber-exotic to me and when I finally bullshitted an exceptionally pretty one into hooking up with me, I felt like I’d won the lottery. She taught me many things about Tibet, including the language. Then, in the Y2K, I went to Ladakh for the first time, alone, with a rucksack on my back and it blew me away. 

It took me 3 days of non-stop travelling on rattly buses to get there but I didn’t even notice the discomfort of the journey, I was so excited to finally be going to the promised land. 

I spent a couple of weeks wandering about, camping, climbing mountains and just taking it all in. Ladakh was spectacular beyond my expectations. It has the rare capacity to slow time down to a standstill. I wanted to sell everything I owned, become a lama and settle down in a monastery right there and then. 

Except, I didn’t own anything I could sell and the world was relying on my software coding skills to save it from collapsing on itself because of the Y2K bug.

So no, I didn’t become a buddhist monk but I did go again to visit a few years later. Then I immigrated to Australia and along came 2008. While most of the world was preoccupied with stock and property prices, I was sneakily dreaming of snow leopards.

Snow Leopards are one of the rarest and most elusive animals in the world. To spot one, it takes days of planning, investigating, walking, hiding and waiting in very steep, high altitude terrain. And even with the best guides in the world, you have to be extremely lucky to see one. If you truly appreciate what a freak of nature a Snow Leopard is though, it will all be worth it. The “Shan”, as the Snow Leopard is called in Ladakh, is an animal with almost supernatural strength and cunning. It only weighs about 40-50KG but can leap upto 10M in a single stride, kill and carry prey three times its size in its jaws, jump up steep rock faces and disappear at will.

I have been fascinated with Snow Leopards almost as long as I’ve been fascinated with Tibet. 

Bored with the futility of my corporate job, I turned to the internet for salvation. After much distraction and noise, I did indeed find my Salvation. The “Snow Leopard Conservancy” (SLC), a multi-national NGO dedicated to, surprisingly, conserving snow leopards. The Snow Leopards are now found only in certain areas in the Himalayas (including Ladakh) and central asia. Once I'd made contact with the SLC, it didn’t take long for me to pack it all in in Oz and soon I found myself driving up over the mountains to Ladakh, with some old mates. Memories came flooding back as we crested the many passes en route to the land of high passes. 

I met Jigmet Dadul for the first time in the small, cramped 1 room office of the Snow Leopard Conservancy in Leh, the capital of Ladakh. A small, friendly and unassuming Ladakhi man, he is now known as one of the foremost snow leopard trackers in the world. I spent the next 2 months travelling around Ladakh with Jigmet and his team tracking snow leopards and collecting data. The SLC was also involved in helping villagers setup a HomeStay program for tourists that would provide much needed extra income for villagers. How does this help the survival of the Snow Leopard you ask? Well, it’s pretty clever. In the winter, when prey is scarce, Snow Leopards sometimes descend near villages, enter livestock accommodation and cause chaos. The leopard only needs to kill one sheep or goat to keep itself fed for a week but it’s so powerful and the sheep so panicked that there is a lot of collateral damage. 

Such attacks are a huge financial setback to villagers, who sometimes kill Snow Leopards in retaliation. The homestay program is designed to provide villagers with an alternate source of income so they are not totally reliant on livestock. The tourism potential of the Snow Leopard will also encourage demand for Homestays, which will provide incentive to protect Snow Leopards instead of attacking them. The SLC is pioneering many such innovative community-based protection schemes as they realize that the only way to save the Snow Leopard in the long-term is to make it a friend of the humans that it lives close to.

Anyway, we set off from Leh in an old jeep one fine afternoon, headed for Zanskar. The name Zanskar was like magic to me. The most hardcore of hardcore places, Zanskar is one of the remotest places on earth. If Ladakh is Australia, Zanskar is the remote Kimberleys. Hemmed in by snow covered mountains on all sides and no airport, Zanskar is cut off from the rest of the world for 8 months of the year during its severe winter. Until recently the only way to get in and out of Zanskar in summer was walking 14 days over multiple 5000M high passes. In the winter, the only way out was walking 10 days through the terrific Zanskar river gorge, mostly on the icy surface of the frozen river itself! Around June, when the snow finally melts on the Pentse La Pass, the only road coming into and out of Zanskar becomes operational for a few short months until impassable snow builds up again by October. I felt like an explorer heading into the unknown as we bumped our way towards Zanskar.

              Continue to Part 2

There’s a village called Putty you know, it’s not just a road. You’ve seen the sign haven’t you? A thousand times, out of the corner of your eye, as you zoom past the turn-off, the little sign that says “Putty, 4KM”. But you’re focussed on the smooth left hander coming up aren’t you? You’re probably on your motard lining up that MV F4 that just went past you at 200KMPH and then braked hard to gingerly walk around that last corner. You’ve had to brake so hard behind him that you almost iMicked him. Oh, you probably don’t know what iMicking someone means do you? Well, that’s a story for another time. Anyway, you’re lining up that MV, grinning at the thought of putting your 50HP engine in front of his 200HP one. Putting your dirty, spoked, supermoto wheel ahead of his pristine, gold, lightweight forged aluminium Marchesini sportsbike wheel. But just as you’re ready to take him on the brakes on the outside, you spy the turn-off to your left out the corner of your eye. The turn-off you’ve ridden 3 hours to reach. “Ah Fuck It!” you shout audibly into your helmet. Lemme get this guy, I’ll turn around and come back. So you smash some sportsbikes on the twisties and before they can catch you in the straights, you head down a mysterious trail into the bush, the jungle closes behind you and you disappear. Its how you roll. Is SuperMoto. Fucken.

The Putty Road between Wilberforce and Milbrodale, a distance of 150KM, is mostly wilderness. A true and vast wilderness. Some call it boring but I have always found it fascinating. It is astounding that 80 kilometres, as the drone flies (probably a hundred as the drone drives), from the heart of one of the mega cities of the world, you come upon a jungle so thick and a silence so deep that it would frighten most adults to stand still in there alone. A jungle so encompassing that if you clamber up a ridge and look around, all you see is an ocean of green in every direction. Ever since I first hit the Putty road 10 years ago, I’ve wanted to explore the mysterious bushland that surrounds the tarmac. So with the Husky 610 under me and a map in my pocket, I went exploring on the dirt.

I started at the Colo river, which is one of the last, undammed big rivers in NSW. It sure is purdy. Crossing the river on a wooden plank bridge, I took a scenic back road that followed a stunning orange sandstone escarpment and hit the Putty road at Colo Heights. I filled up here, to the brim, as the Husky only has a 12L tank and I had a lot of dirt riding to do. I wasn’t even sure if I had enough fuel to make it back but fuck it, that’s part of the adventure eh.

The village of Putty is, well, umm….not really a village. Its 3 old, rural buildings. I continue down the Putty Valley road, and spy houses off the road, hidden in the folds of the hills. I can hear horses, smell cowdung and see wood smoke wafting in the air. I feel time slowing down within me. It’s magic. Soon there's a climb up a steep, loose hill and in seconds, the jungle laps me up. Over the next 4 hours, I cover 120KM on dirt, do not see a single human or vehicle, never leave the jungle, shit myself with fear, piss myself with joy and come out the other end gaping at the world with very different eyes.

The trail to Kindarun is steep and rough. Kanagroos were jumping across the trail with alarming regularity and I was getting seriously knocked around due to the stiff suspension. I stopped to calm my nerves and back off the damping on the forks. I didn’t have the shock adjusting tool with me but even softening the forks made a huge difference to my comfort and confidence on the rough stuff. What I didn’t realize though, was that there were serious jumping opportunities down the trail and when I got stuck into those, I was compressing the forks completely! You must understand and be patient with me as I am only a novice at dirt riding and do not yet know shit, about fuck. 

Soon there's a fork in the trail called Baxters Junction. The trail going straight up-hill heads towards Kindarun mountain and is a shortcut back to Putty Road. The trail going left heads deeper into the forest towards the Wollemi wilderness. I went left. The trail is narrow and winds through fantastic eucalypt forest before climbing to a ridge that offers magnificent views of endless mountain ranges. 

After this lookout, there are some steepish downhills peppered with large rocks. By now I was locking up the back wheel all the time and getting comfortable with the bike sliding around under me. It was starting to get seriously fun and I was upping the pace. In the open sections I started hanging my leg out in the corners and leaning it a bit more. I started getting on the gas early and intentionally sliding the back out of corners, which wasn't that hard really since I was on road tyres! It was all very fun but controlled. Woohoo! The Husky was HUGELY impressive. This is what I’d bought it for and I was finally fucken riding in the proper bush!

I reached a clearing in the forest called “The 3 ways” and it was a lonely spot. A trail went off to the left called the “Hunter Main Trail”. This trail heads to the Bylong Valley Way near Rylestone through the Wollemi National Park. It was once popular with off roaders but then in the 90s, one of the rarest plants in the entire world was discovered in this area and the trail was closed. The Wollemi Pine was thought to have gone extinct some millions of years ago but only recently one rock climbing park ranger stumbled on a few stands of these growing in some obscure gorge in the Wollemi National Park and apparently it sent the BotanyNerd forums into a tizzy.

Anyway, I took a breather before continuing on. The riding past 3 ways is epic! Open flowing dirt trails in closed forest with huge downhill whups! 

If I actually knew what the fuck I was doing, I would’ve been doing epic jumps and shit on this section. Not that I didn’t have fun but after doing one too many jumps I almost went over the handlebars when I came over a high crest, got some air, my feet left contact with the footpegs and I looked at a big muddy puddle under me. I shat myself, closed my eyes and left it to god and the Husky. Obviously the Husky + God combo is a lot more potent than me. I landed awkwardly in the slippery mud, my left foot landed on the gear lever instead of the footpeg and clutchless downshifted into 3rd from first. But I came through the other side of the mud still upright. I really don’t know how the fuck I didn’t land head first over the bars into the mud. God must be Sikh or something.

I got the fear in me a bit after this as I hadn’t seen anyone on the trail all day and it was pretty remote. If I fuck myself up or the bike, it’ll be a long trek out of this forest probably involving an overnight stop in a cave. I didn’t really want to be drinking my piss to survive and lighting my farts to attract attention. That shit only sounds cool when you're reading about it in someone else's book.

The fear didn’t stop me exploring an old abandoned hut, deep in the forest but. I found it to be called “Sheepskin Hut”, built in the 1930s by cattle drovers who grazed cattle and sheep in these forests. It’s a fantastic setting in thick forest and would be a great place to camp. This whole area has quite an interesting settlement history and I’ve bought a couple of books with the intention of gaining more knowledge and insight.

From here on I followed the Commission Trail along some scenic ridgelines and then all the way down to the Putty Road. Along the way there was an interesting diversion up a steep, rough track to a great spot next to a power line. It gave commanding views over a wilderness thick with mystery, including the distinctive ancient volcanic peak of Mt Yengo, which is of deep aboriginal significance.

The lower sections of Commission road are quite open and it was exhilarating to open the throttle a bit after being restricted to 2nd and 3rd gear running for the past hour or so.

I emerged out on the Putty Road near the Howes Valley at the southern end of the 10 mile. I felt like I’d been ejected into space from a constricted capsule and just stood there for a good 5 minutes taking it all in. Then I hit the tar. Tar! I couldn’t believe a road could be so smooth after being bashed around for 4 hours! I did one of the smoothest runs of the 10 mile I’ve ever done. No braking, just flowing consistent speed. By the time I filled up 11.2L of fuel in Bulga, I’d clocked up over 250Ks on the tank, half of them on proper dirt roads which were slow going. Amazing fuel mileage from a pretty performant engine. All up I did over 450Ks for the day including 150Ks on dirt, long stints at 130 on the highway, city traffic and tarmac twisties. Sure, my arse wasn’t exactly enjoying the run home on the Putty in the gathering dusk but it was nothing a bit of HTFU didn’t fix.

This bike has blasted open my world of possibilities. Fucken Husky does everything and looks great while doing it! What a great bike.