Kashmir to Kanyakumari Bike Trip: 11,454 km in 53 Days

For fifty-three days, the bike was home. I rode out of Gorakhpur one morning in June and didn’t really stop, in any lasting sense, until I rode back into it almost two months and 11,454 km later.

In between, the road went just about everywhere India goes. North first, up through Himachal and Ladakh to Leh and the small villages near the Indo-Pak border, where the country runs out of road. Then the whole length of it the other way, down the western coast through Goa and Kerala to Kanyakumari, the southern tip, before the long turn back home through Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh.

These are the notes I kept along the way, written mostly at night after the riding and the work were done. I have split the 53 days into six legs. Start anywhere, or ride straight through from the climb up to the run home.

How the ride came about

The idea started at home in 2021. Aditya and I were talking about a bike trip when he called and said he had something adventurous in mind. At first we kept it small: just the Ladakh circuit, on a bike rented from Chandigarh. Then he said it. Let’s do Kashmir to Kanyakumari.

Neither of us owned a bike then, so the first step was to buy one. Later in 2021 we both bought new bikes and spent the months that followed planning the route around work. We set off on 1 June 2022. I rode out from Gorakhpur, Aditya joined from Lucknow, and Pankaj, who decided to come along in April, joined from Varanasi. That was the group that started the ride.

The ride at a glance

• Total distance: 11,454 km
• Duration: 53 days
• Riding days: 38 (average 297 km per riding day)
• Longest day: 870 km (Namakkal to Hyderabad, Day 44)
• Route: Gorakhpur → Leh → Kanyakumari → Gorakhpur

The route, in six legs

Read straight through, the six legs run in sequence: up into the cold, down the length of the coast, and the long road home.

1. The climb up: Gorakhpur to Leh (Days 1–14)

It began at five in the morning, riding out of Gorakhpur while the city still slept. The first days were expressway miles up to Delhi, and the biggest traffic jam of the whole trip near Mandi. Then the road climbed and the riding changed completely.

Kasol, a clifftop room in Tosh, the Leh to Manali highway shut for a passing convoy, the blind bends of Hampta Pass, a tent at Sarchu where the cold kept us awake. Somewhere across those fourteen days and 2,294 km, two strangers, Himanshu and Shri Krishna, joined us, and we rolled into Leh a bigger group than we left as. Fourteen days from a 5am start to the top →

2. Ladakh’s far north: Turtuk, Pangong, Nubra (Days 15–17)

From Leh we pushed as far north as the road allows. An abandoned school at Turtuk, the Indo-Pak border in view at Thang, a single petrol pump in all of Nubra, and the water at Pangong changing colour through the day.

The way back gave us snowfall, rain and a numbing cold over Changla-La. Three days and 540 km that felt like the edge of the country, because they were. Three days at the top of the country →

3. Coming down: Leh to Rajasthan (Days 18–25)

Then the long descent. We stopped at the Kargil War Memorial, crossed the mud and meltwater of Zojila, and I lost the others near Srinagar. That tense stretch ended with a night stranded in Qazigund, waiting on a clutch plate.

Amritsar’s Golden Temple came as relief, and then Rajasthan went the other way: a 540 km haul into Udaipur through 45°C heat, drinking water that never seemed to reach me. Eight days, 2,054 km, and the mountains were behind us. Off the mountains and into the heat →

4. Gujarat to Goa (Days 26–37)

The west coast took twelve days. A Gujarati menu none of us could read, the first real rain soaking us into Daman, Marine Drive at four in the morning with Mumbai asleep around us, and a chain that came apart in Pune and cost a whole afternoon to fix.

By the time we crossed into Goa the monsoon had taken over. Chapora Fort in the downpour, Morjim Beach nearly to ourselves, and one long night with the hostel owner that ran through to 4am. The whole wet run down the west coast →

5. The deep south: Goa to Kanyakumari (Days 38–43)

South of Goa it was rain and NH66, the Konkan coast running green and wet for days. Trasi Beach, dosa at Udupi, the small enclave of Mahe, and then the tip itself.

We watched the sun come up over Kanyakumari, the southern end of India, 1,838 km from where the descent began. From there the road turned east, out across the long sea bridge to Rameshwaram. The full run to Kanyakumari →

6. The run home (Days 44–53)

And then I was alone. The others turned for Bangalore, and I turned for home. It opened with an 870 km push to Hyderabad, where the chain finally snapped after dark on an unfamiliar road. The one repair shop still open that night got me moving again.

Then Nagpur, Indore, Jhansi, and a final 603 km into Gorakhpur through steady rain. Three thousand kilometres, ten days, mostly just me and the highway. I reached home around five in the evening, excited and a little sad it was over. The solo ride back to Gorakhpur →

Full route: all 53 days

About this ride

This was never a holiday. Most days fell into the same rhythm: ride through the morning and afternoon, then open the laptop at night to finish client work, wherever the bike had stopped. Some nights that was a tent at altitude with no signal. Other nights, a friend’s flat in a city reached well after dark.

The legs above carry the texture of it: the chain that kept breaking and finally snapped on a dark road outside Hyderabad, the strangers who fixed it and refused payment, the rain that followed us down the entire west coast, and what each stretch of highway actually felt like to ride. Three of us set out together, and I rode the last ten days home alone.

End of the road. Home, after 53 days.