There had been reports of Rohtang Pass being closed the previous day. Still, we found it better to wait at the pass than at Manali and moved on. It took us about one and a half hour to reach Marhi. There was a huge crowd there. On interacting, most of all by Ajit(he's a very good PR person), we found that some of the travelers had been waiting at Marhi for 3 days. There had been heavy landsliding following dynamite blasts. The road is being double laned. Some of the guys did show us some hope saying how lucky we were that the pass would be opened today. Little did we know that luck would take few more days to come to our side.
We started to move ahead after having a leisure breakfast of egg maggi, the staple food of this trip. We did not get far. Vihans' FZ did not start. We tried everything. We even brought in couple of mechanics of other groups, but no result. There was no going forward. We had to board the bike on top of a pickup and bring it back to Manali. Gagan helped us in finding another cheap hotel. Mangaldeep at Gompa Road. A mechanic checked the FZ completely and fixed it up. He promised that it would go all the way. By now, Vihans was very concerned about the performance. He asked the mechanic to come to the hotel after his day was complete. We were planning to take him along with us. It would be a good insurance policy for all of us.
The tension was evident on Vihans' face. When we reached the hotel, there was very less drinking. The news floating around was that Rohtang got opened in the evening. We had to leave very early if we were to keep up with our schedule. One rest day had already been lost. Vihans was telling us about all the education he had while traveling in the pickup.
When the mechanic came, he asked for an exorbitant amount of money. We declined and let him go.
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