The kind baba jee had given us enough "lefts" and "rights" to work with over the 11kms to Rama. His best direction was "do not leave the mettled road and it will take you to PTDC Rama". Sounds very good, however, the mettled road was invisible only after a mile up the bazaar.
Anyways, we were glad to have moved out of the Astore Bazaar and thanks to the intution present in XJ, we were getting closer to PTDC Rama.
Here I would like to add that the GARMIN GPS, giving us very nice stats otherwise, was clueless as to the way to Rama. Not showing off road tracks even. So Google Maps was opened when network signals were present. Map of Astore was loaded and live GPS tracking was showing our movement towards PTDS Rama, which was marked on Google Maps, but again no marked track present either. All the Ms. Confusions we met, were nicely handled by the great sense of direction present in the XJ. Also I think, Allah ko bhi hum per reham aa gaya tha and inspite of the distractions caused by a Ms. (confusion), we were getting closer to the PTDC.
Fj moving up and tackling track real good. I said to Sync.
"yar, thanks for the DIYs and keeping FJ moving. It is behaving very nicely"
Spoke too soon. As even the echo of my words had not left when came my next words
"yar, clutch is gone ! "
Dark surroundings, haunting audio of the night, death drop on one side and FJ without a clutch !! A Bitter Sweet Symphony !
XJ came back. Janj was like..
"aur kheench ! aur daba ! laga 0 to 100 ? !"
"ab daal pehlay gear mein aur chal" " we are not stopping here in the middle of the night!"
Right boss!! but how ? I had not driven a vehicle with no working clutch before. So he showed me how and we were moving again.
There are 2 places to stay at Rama. One is a Frontier Rest House and the other is PTDC Rama. The rest house came first and we, clueless that we were, went there first, made a turn and continued to meet Ms. Confusion number 4 only a 100 meters from the rest house.
Finally in the parking lot of a deserted PTDC Rama, collapsing with fatigue and hunger, waiting for Amir Bhai, Sync and Immi to make contact with admin of PTDC, Janj and I are sitting waiting and sharing a smile about our achievement that day!
After getting the PTDC guy up from his beauty sleep and checking into our room I went with this guy (sorry name has been forgotten) to the kitchen. It dawned in the morning that this guy was the head chef at the motel. He was very kind and welcoming. Didn't frown a bit even after being awoken at that hour in night. Let us into the kitchen, shared his supplies and allowed us to make dinner for ourselves.
For dinner we had a few choices..
- There was a 'frozen' aalo ki bhujya with scraps of rooti in the kitchen that could be heated and eated
- There was our packed food survival packs, which Janj was carrying. Thanks to our amriki friends. BUT, the underline word here was "survival packs"
- and then, we had been given a choice to make eggs n have bread with tea.
Having mercy on our stomachs, we left option 1.
Sensing, we are not in "survival mode", we left option 2.
So the team had to rely on my cullinary experience and I tried my best to make the best out of what was available in the PTDC Rama kitchen and made an omellete. We were so hungry that the omellete felt like the best meal anyone could ever get !
So finally with food in our stomachs and an attached bath in the room with running water, we cracked the last laughs of a tiring days travel and dropped like stones on our beds.