We spent the night quite restless due to cold weather. In ice cold morning, bikes also needed several minutes warm up.
We didn't waste much time and at 7 am we departed from the lake. Just after a minute ride, there was a crossing over few large stones, Imtiaz was leading so he crossed first and i followed. After riding for another 2 minutes i noticed i couldn't see the Usman in my backview mirror. I stopped and waited for him. 5 minutes passed by and still no sign of him. I returned back, only to find that he slipped while crossing those stones and with all the luggage on bike, he was stuck under the bike and unable to lift it. I lifted the bike and Alhamdullilah he was alright but broke the clutch lever while trying to get out from underneath the bike.
Now this was serious, even with all the preparation, it didn't hit my mind to keep extra brake and clutch levers. Nearest place where we could get it was Nomal which was like 4 hours away from Lake. It crossed my mind to use the brake lever at clutch side but then again it would have been very risky to come down on GS with single brake on that track. After a bit of discussion, we decided to book a jeep and load the bike upto Nomal as we couldn't afford to waste a day and we had to reach Sost by evening.
We talked to hotel owner and he had a jeep and asked for 4.5K for ride upto Nomal. We tried to bargain but to no avail. So we agreed at the price and loaded the bike on Jeep. Usman was kind of relieved to know that he wouldn't have to ride down on that track now.
After loading the bike, we left and the jeep followed at slow pace. It was too cold at lake and hence no one thought of filling up our empty water bottles.
Coming down proved equally tough. Bike was gaining momentum instantly and with all the stones underneath it wasn't possible to brake much. We reached Naltar Valley without any more incident and i took a sigh of relief as the route from Valley ahead wasn't too hard. But after covering some distance, we had to stop as the road was blocked due to some blasting going on to make new road.
Now this wasn't good as we had already wasted time and now this.
It was hot there and everybody was asking if we had some water with us.
Had to wait for like 2 hours there. Once left from there, Nomal wasn't far. We stopped at a mechanic shop and discussed the case with him. He looked at the lever and told that "Honda old model lever" should be compatible. I got that from spare parts shop and mechanic fitted it after making some adjustments.
Unloading the bike at Nomal