Travels with Penelope

"Actually a root word of technology, techne, originally meant 'art.' The Ancient Greeks never separated art from manufacture in their minds, and so never developed separate words for them."
-Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

So recall that i bought a Royal Enfield Bullet Classic 350 last summer from Santa, christened her Penelope, and promptly left her to fulfill nine months of academic duties. I returned to find her in Manali under a tent. After a few swift kicks she started just fine. Here, between Keylong and Jispa, parts of the road—the only major highway between Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh—could resemble an intermittently-maintained county road somewhere in Colorado, or the Cascades.

Other things are utterly unlike anything i’ve ever seen before in my life. The road at Baralacha La, although dry, was quite literally carved into a mountain of snow.

Once things smoothed out a bit after Pang, into the Morey Plains, i could finally get into fourth and Penny was in her element.