When Plans Meet the Road’s Own Mind (28th August, 2025 – Day 1 )
This was my sixth solo trip — but unlike the earlier ones, this one fell apart halfway. And maybe that’s exactly why it deserves to be written as a blog. After years of dreaming, my solo road trip to Ladakh finally began on a rainy morning in Hyderabad. Packed with noodles, a kettle, oxygen cylinders, and excitement, I waved goodbye to family and hit the road…
Setting Out
Morning Mines
By Kamareddy, the horizon turned silver and idli-coffee from a roadside stall felt like a warm handshake from the day.
“Leh?” the stall-keeper repeated, eyebrows raised.
I nodded, smiling.
He laughed softly — the kind of laugh that knows both admiration and doubt.
The road to Nirmal was kind — green fields, sleepy villages, scattered trucks.
By Adilabad, the sun had claimed the sky and the air smelled faintly of dust and diesel.
When the Road Turned Silent
After Pandharkawda the clouds thickened. Rain became cloud burst suddenly, heavy and impatient.
For nearly an hour, traffic crawled; flash floods made low stretches uncertain.
At one point we were stranded for 3 hours — no shops, no chai stalls, just the rhythmic drumming of rain on the car roof.
That’s when the kettle came to the rescue — kettle noodles and kettle coffee, a quick ritual of survival that felt oddly luxurious in the middle of nowhere.
Steam fogged the windows, and for a while it was just me, the sound of rain, and the comfort of something warm.
Ironically, I was enjoying the weather, forgetting the delay, some times with rain jacket, sometime with a cap – go out, chat with the truck drivers who all had been roaming around in uncertainty.
