A FEVER DREAM THROUGH THE INDIAN HIMALAYAS
Words by Ben Giese | Photography by John Hebert
In collaboration with Royal Enfield
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Squinting into the fading light of the evening, I brush the dust from my goggles and neck gaiter, remnants of the long day’s ride. Looking out at this indescribably vast landscape, villages cling to the side of cliffs, their structures blending seamlessly with the rocky terrain as if they’ve always belonged to the mountains. Life here feels untouched by the modern world, steeped in a beautiful simplicity and spirituality. It’s like stepping into another world. Aptly named “the middle land” for its location between Tibet and India, the Spiti Valley is a place where time itself seems to pause. People here live simple lives, closer to the heavens, existing as one with the mountains. For a brief moment I feel at peace, consumed by the overwhelming spiritual energy of the Himalayas. But the road to get here was not an easy one, and the journey out would be just as difficult.
Seven days earlier we had stepped off the plane in Delhi to start this wild adventure, where it feels like walking into an oven. A wall of suffocating, humid air slams into us, and the shock of Northern India’s brutal summer heat is immediate and unforgiving. The mugginess clings to my skin, and within seconds, sweat is pouring down my body and soaking through my clothes. Next comes the sharp scent of pollution—thick and pervasive. My nose starts running and the congestion sets in immediately. Before long, I begin to feel the sting settling into my lungs.
We collect our luggage and hail a taxi to our hotel, and this is where the real madness begins. The traffic is nothing short of chaos. Cars swerve in every direction, weaving between lanes as if the painted lines on the road don’t even exist. Motorbikes zip between massive buses, missing them by inches. Drivers head the wrong direction into oncoming traffic, not even slowing down as pedestrians leap into the chaos to cross the street. Cows walk down the middle of the road as traffic weaves to avoid them, completely indifferent to the pandemonium around them. A cacophony of honking horns, screeching sirens, and people shouting over each other fills the air in a total sensory overload.
With a population of over 30 million, Delhi is ranked as the second most populated city in the world. Over 11,000 people are packed into every square kilometer, creating a dense, chaotic environment that feels like a constant battle for space. The city is home to over 10 million vehicles, making it one of the most car-heavy urban centers on the planet—and with that density and the lawless driving comes some of the highest rates of road accidents. The infrastructure around us is shaky at best, with ramshackle buildings in every direction that look like they could collapse at any moment. Everywhere you look, the streets are covered in trash and debris, adding to the overwhelming sense of disorder.
The taxi drops us off at our hotel, where we are greeted by a familiar crew—old friends with whom I’ve explored the globe on two wheels. From the jungles of Costa Rica to the savannas of South Africa, and now the turbulent streets of India, we’ve shared countless adventures together, all thanks to the incredible motorcycle adventure company Moto Safari. It’s the shared love of motorcycles and travel that keeps bringing us together, along with a few newcomers eager to join our journey.
But this trip has a different twist. This time, we aren’t riding solo. Our significant others—wives and girlfriends—have joined us, adding a whole new dynamic to the journey. I am especially excited for my girlfriend, Paulina Viechorek, to experience one of these epic motorcycle expeditions I’ve been telling her stories about.
We gear up and set off with our sights on the distant Himalayas, but first, we have to survive the intense ride out of the city. What felt wild enough from the backseat of a taxi now becomes far more intense on a motorcycle. The streets are a maze of unpredictability—cars and buses veer in every direction, while cows seem to materialize out of nowhere. Monkeys swing and climb all around us, distracting my attention as massive potholes threaten to take us out at a moment’s notice. Every turn feels like a gamble.
I can’t help but think of Paulina riding on back, holding on for dear life as we dodge obstacles at full speed, eyes wide with adrenaline. It feels like a real-life video game, every second demanding complete focus. But after an intense day and a half of riding, we finally break free from the city’s grip, discovering the much-needed space and solitude of the mountain roads.
As we venture farther, the road narrows, twisting and turning sharply, guiding our group of bikes higher and higher as we gain more and more elevation. One side of the road drops away in a sheer cliff, plunging hundreds of feet down into the valley below. We stop frequently to take in the stunning views—mountains rising majestically, canyons carved deep into the earth, and waterfalls cascading down the lush green slopes into the raging rivers below. Now this is the India we’ve been waiting for.
By day three, the pavement becomes nothing but a memory as dirt roads guide us deeper into the heart of the Himalayas. We encounter a section of road blocked off by a recent landslide. Massive boulders, some the size of small cars, litter the road ahead. Workers scramble to clear the debris, but rocks continue to crash down from the steep mountainside with terrifying unpredictability. The rain from the night before has loosened the earth, turning the entire slope into a ticking time bomb.
The road through is a muddy quagmire, churned up by the landslide and heavy machinery. Tension hangs in the air as we watch enormous rocks crash down from above, smashing into the ground with bone-rattling force. Even the smaller stones trickling down serve as a constant reminder of the deadly potential above us.
Finally, after hours of waiting, the path is cleared, and it’s our turn to make a run for it. Timing is everything. One wrong move or one miscalculation could be disaster. So we open up the throttle through the mud, eyes locked on the mountainside above, scanning for any sign of deadly rockfall.
As everyone in our group makes it safely to the other side, we celebrate with high-fives and laughter. We are in the clear, and the road ahead looks inviting, promising new adventures. Yet, just as everything seems to be going perfectly, I begin to sense it—a subtle ache building in my body, a lingering discomfort that would haunt me for the rest of the trip.
As darkness falls, the first signs of trouble creep in. My body begins to hurt with increasing severity and there’s a tickle in my throat. I wasn’t the only one feeling it—Paulina was hit by it, too, and nearly half of our group seems to be battling the similar symptoms. So, we go to bed early, praying for relief in the morning light. When dawn finally breaks, Paulina and several members of the crew seem to be feeling better. I wasn’t so lucky. But the show must go on, so we gear up and continue riding deeper and higher into the remote Himalayas.
With every passing mile, the aches intensify and uncontrollable shivers overwhelm me. The tickle in my throat has now become a brutally painful cough that feels like my insides are bleeding. As the day comes to a close, we roll into the remote mountain village of Nako, perched at a staggering 12,000 feet above sea level. A dizziness and lightheadedness consume me like a heavy fog. I roll up to camp slumped over my handlebars, half-conscious, staggering into our tent, skipping dinner and a bonfire with the crew and collapsing into bed.
The next 14 hours were a fever dream like I’ve never experienced. My body shivers and shakes uncontrollably as the sheets get soaked in sweat. My skin hurts, I’m aching to the bone and my head feels like it’s about to explode as a fire burns in my throat. My lungs are filled with liquid, making it nearly impossible to breathe. I can cough and expel air outward in desperate gasps, but I can’t get anything back in. The oxygen never returns. In a disorienting haze, the room spins wildly around me as my fever reaches new highs, and my blood oxygen reaches new lows.
Morning arrives with only a hint of relief, and the thought of hitting the road again feels overwhelming. But the camaraderie and encouragement from my friends summons the last reserves of my energy to keep pushing forward. The fresh air feels like exactly what I needed, but just ten minutes into the ride we come flying around a blind curve, and I’m startled by the sound of Paulina’s terrified scream:
“Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!”
With a jolt of adrenaline, I look up to see the mountainside collapsing in front of us. A massive landslide erupts, consuming the road ahead in a torrent of gigantic boulders crashing down with earth-shattering force. The ground trembles beneath us, sending shockwaves through our bodies with an ominous and powerful rumble that shakes us to our souls.
If we had left just thirty seconds earlier, we could have been caught in the middle of that landslide, and it would have been certain death. I look around at the group, all sitting there on the side of the road, stunned into silence, grappling with the reality of what we had just witnessed.
After taking a few moments to gather ourselves, we approach the landslide area. There are a few locals standing by on the side of the road, acting as spotters and waving us through one by one. When they finally signal us to go, I twist the throttle and ride as fast as I can. Again, Paulina’s eyes are fixed on the mountain above, ready to alert me if there’s any more sign of falling debris.
These landslides are a terrifying thing to witness, but it’s just part of the experience of traveling through the Himalaya. We’re still rolling and still smiling, and the goal we’ve been chasing for the past five days lies just ahead: the magical and remote Spiti Valley.
The roads into the Spiti are nothing short of breathtaking. The landscape feels like a dream, with colors that seem almost otherworldly—brilliant shades of gold and silver in the rocks, and mountains painted with a soft purple hue. Vast, endless, and on a scale that’s difficult to comprehend.
For the next few days we explore the various ancient Tibetan Buddhist monasteries that Spiti is famous for. Some of them are over a thousand years old, and while each one is completely unique, they are all spectacularly beautiful, colorful and intricate.
There are so many interesting things to see and learn while in the Spiti Valley, but the most unforgettable thing we encounter along the way is a self-mummified monk believed to have died over 500 years ago. The practice of self-mummification was an extreme form of devotion from the 11th to 19th centuries, where spiritual masters would slowly starve themselves while consuming a tree-based diet of roots, nuts and herbs. Over the course of months or even years, they would gradually deplete their fat reserves and ingest poisonous substances to prevent decomposition. In this monk’s final meditative state, he slowly embraced death in the pursuit of enlightenment, his body naturally mummifying while he was still alive.
By day seven of our journey through the Himalayas, the sickness is still clinging to me, but the magic of Spiti and the excitement for what’s to come is fuel to keep exploring. So, we continue riding up, climbing farther and farther into the sky. Our bikes are all sputtering, running low on power at this altitude as the road continues spiraling upward. Approaching the upper reaches of the Himalayas around 16,000 feet above sea level, we crest one of India’s highest mountain passes, arriving in Komic, the highest village in the world.
We stop to enjoy lunch at the highest restaurant in the world and enjoy perhaps the best meal of the trip—a moment of simple, delicious contentment with friends. It feels like we have truly reached the peak of our adventure, both literally and figuratively. It took us a week of riding to get here, but we finally made it to the highest point of civilization, surrounded by mountain peaks and the vast, unending sky.
It would take three more grueling days to descend from the heights of Spiti down into the lower altitudes of Northern India. The roads in this region are merciless—brutally rough and unforgiving, sending jolts through my arms, up my spine and into my skull. Occasionally the bikes bounces up so violently that I thought the ladies might go flying off the back, but Paulina just laughs under her helmet and says, “I’m all good.”
As we continue the descent, the stark, alien landscape of the high Himalayas slowly gives way to greener mountainsides, and with it, the sweet return of oxygen to our lungs. I think everyone in the group was breathing a sigh of relief.
By the time we reach Delhi, we are completely spent, utterly exhausted from the last 11 days of adventure. The ride had taken everything out of us. We move through the airport like zombies, just trying to survive the 36-hour journey home. Even after returning, my lungs are still burning, and it takes two more weeks and a few rounds of antibiotics to finally feel normal again.
But once the haze lifts, we are able to look back and reflect on the magic of our time in Northern India. Beyond the chaos of the city, there is a world of pure majesty in those mountains. The Himalayas hold a timelessness, a sense of being both ancient and eternal, where you can get closer to the heavens than anywhere else on Earth. The experience was brutal; it tested us physically and mentally, but it was also breathtakingly beautiful and inspiring, and I’m so grateful we had the chance to experience it.