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My brother Sam

took this photo

just 20 minutes before he died.

I remember being in LA

and getting the call from my mom that morning.

The sound of her voice,

the feeling of being stuck on that flight to Boston,

thinking,

"How can this be?"

Say, "Hi, Sammy." Sammy. Hi, Sam. You want to blow a kiss at his

sissy?

Who's that, Ben?

Sam. Sam. He's your best buddy, huh?

If there's such thing

as a perfect other,

for me,

Sam was it.

More than a brother,

Sam was my best friend.

He was like gravity,

subtle,

yet powerful.

He was always right there in the middle,

pulling us closer together,

making me laugh,

feel heard,

feel loved.

A captain on the wrestling mat.

He showed me what dedication could achieve.

As a friend,

Sam reminded me

that making time for those closest

is always worth it.

I don't know why.

I don't know why.

I share my life...

What breaks my heart the most

is the possibility

of what could have been.

One day,

he would be the best man at my wedding,

the uncle to my kids,

and I

would be the same for him.

But all of that possibility,

all of those plans,

all of those dreams

were just like that,

reduced

to memory,

and my gravity,

gone.

Thank

God for friends.

They knew I was hurting

and wanted to help

the best way they knew how.

And seeing the world on motorcycles is what we did together.

First in Vietnam.

Then Turkey.

And now,

the Himalayas.

What could 10 days in these mountains teach me

to help me carry my broken heart?

Could Buddhism,

a faith native to these mountains

and one I knew little about,

help me find my gravity again?

They say in Buddhism,

no one can save you

but

yourself.

No one can,

and no one will.

The only question

is how?

Ashish was our guide,

a child of the Himalayas. Ashish was as connected

to these mountains as the snow and stone.

The first day, everyone can see Leh to Lamayuru.

It's 114 kilometers

And you said that might take three to four hours.

Three to four hours?

Three to four hours. Twisty terrain.

It's not like straight roads. So sometimes you have to go on the first gear.

Sometimes there are hairpin bends.

Because Ashish knew about Sam,

he set up a meeting with a local monk,

hoping they might have the answers I was looking for.

The reason I am on this journey, my younger brother

passed away in a skiing accident.

I see.

So my question is, what do you believe happens

when you die?

According to the Buddhism, we believe it is rebirth again, okay?

Until and unless we have not

purified our mind, still we are

rebirthed in this wheel of life and existing.

Sam is the name of my brother.

What would happen to him,

for example?

After death,

everything is dependent upon their

karma, their actions. But everything is

create our own mind. For example, the

suffering. Why we make a suffering?

Why we will be more suffering? We will feel more suffering.

Because we have a lot of attachment.

Attachment create some anger, some suffering in

our life. So suppose one person will be dying, we just crying

for that. We remember our parents will be dying, our brothers and our sister and

our friends, but we are crying. If you will reduce

these negativities things in our mind,

then

there's no more any suffering. Because a dead person,

because...

Sorry.

I'm sorry.

It's

okay.

Suffering is a creation of my own mind.

And therefore,

my pain

is my choice?

Can I choose not to suffer

if I choose not to love?

But what kind of life

is one without love?

Why don't people talk about death?

They put it in a box

and forget about it.

I couldn't do that.

All right, what's up, Adrian?

What's up?

How you doing, buddy?

I'm doing good.

Yeah.

How was that for you, huh?

We're already a fourth of the way there.

Really?

I'll show you the maps.

Do we want to get there early? It would be nice to be able to get there, settle, go

to the monastery.

How much

can a map really tell you?

Because on a motorcycle,

you don't know what's around the next turn.

It forces you to let go.

And even though it's my hands steering the

motorcycle,

it's Sam

who's the heartbeat,

the motor.

This

is Samuel J. calling for Benjamin A.

Hope all is well,

and give me a ring either tonight or tomorrow.

I'll talk to you soon. Hope you feel better. Love you.

Bye.

If you were in the conversation, I think you'd be able to just steer

us, so it was like-

Yeah. The only problem with last night is I-

No, our brains were noodle dust.

Yeah.

Totally.

I was impressed by you because I was sitting there trying to keep my head up.

Yeah, it was tough. I hope I didn't make a fool out of

myself because I was asking him probably the most basic Buddhist

principles.

Yeah, those guys are about education and you know.

I know.

Better keep your lights on, so.

I guess that's just my own insecurity coming through.

This is Tuesday, the 25th of July, 2022.

Day two. We are in

Lamayuru. I cannot pronounce the name of this town for

the life of me.

I just left the Lamayuru Monastery, and it

was

intense.

I can't understand the words that they're saying, and I felt

the energy in the room of togetherness,

and that's what I felt with Sam, is that bond of

brothers, that team, that together spirit.

I couldn't help but just

let the emotion pour out of me.

Ben, he's had a tough year.

Ben is doing a lot more

of the spiritual exploration than I think Kyle and I are doing,

and I don't think that this would be something I would want to do

this quickly after that. From my perspective, I lost my father in

2018. I almost wanted not to talk about it.

I wanted to not really deal with it.

From my point of view, I was looking more for escapism.

And Ben's going the opposite tact.

He wants to come here and explore the similarities between

his home and Sam and here, which is a completely

foreign spot.

So we'll see where this ride takes us.

Is this the last

mountain-

Peak

... we're on today?

I think so.

Or we have one more?

Yes. This was the second pass, and then it's downhill into the valley.

But we have one more little...

Do we?

Yeah, but it's nothing like this. It's apparently just over that saddle over there.

Anybody want a cookie?

I'm solid.

Did you get those at the monastery?

Yeah.

Mm.

These are monastery biscuits.

So do you feel holy?

No.

What would Sam say about all this?

Was this how I was supposed to mourn him?

Is there even a right way

to mourn a loved one,

or

was I doing this all wrong?

Z, we are in Kargil. Just completed our second day of

riding.

Got Ashish and our boy Dalex.

How was our riding today?

Riding was quite good.

Very good?

Very good, sir.

Ooh, nice. Yeah, we have the training wheels off.

I don't know about tomorrow, because you're going to get f****d tomorrow.

Yeah, we're going to get f****d tomorrow.

So be prepared for that, guys.

What makes you say we're going to get f****d?

What constitutes f*****g?

A lot of off-roads, man. A lot of river, a lot of stones, a lot of water, a lot

of sand. You name it.

Is tomorrow the hardest day?

No.

You ever led a group where you felt they were not quite prepared for the

riding?

You guys.

What?

Oh, come on.

This is the last filling station for gas for the next week.

We've got to load up because after this, we are out in the wild.

There's no opportunity. If we are out of gas, we are out of luck.

This

is starting to set in that we are going to be way out in the middle of

nowhere.

My life will always be divided

by my time with Sam

and my time after Sam.

But will my life also be defined by that?

How deep is the water?

We get stopped at this checkpoint in Sankoo, and we get news

that a glacier burst. And I don't know which one it is.

I don't know how many kilometers up the road it is.

All right. If this is completely axed, then we have to come back this way, right?

Yeah, if we can't go here-

Like Sam- ... do we have to go back to Kargil?

We will go there. Don't worry, guys.

We'll make it?

We will make it.

We got stopped here because the village doesn't want people

running through

because if they do, they think the government's not going to clear the main road

because now they have a solution.

Mayor of the city is having a conversation with a government official,

and I don't think it's going great.

Hopefully, they can come to a reasonable solution.

Got to reach Rangdum.

Gotta make it fast, guy. Have to reach

Rangdum.

Gotta ride pretty fast today.

Singing my blues in the middle of nowhere with my brother,

good to-

How do you brace

for the unimaginable?

For losing Sam.

What's going on?

What happened?

Is everyone okay?

Sahil, he's going to need a Band-Aid on his nose.

We stopped at a police checkpoint. They said road closed to Rangdum.

One hit after another, huh?

We got weather coming over the ridge. We got a wait till the road opens up.

We have a car that could use some-

A couple hours of work

... TLC. Yeah. And worst case scenario, we get stuck down

there in rain or something, roads that aren't passable in a car that's-

At night.

Yeah.

You can hear the rain.

Yeah.

Wow.

You can see the rain.

Yeah.

So that's my thought.

There's no need to be a hero. This is the early day.

I hear you.

That's

where we're at. We're here in the noodle shack.

In the noodle shack.

I really hope that camera picked up the thunder.

That was-

It's not raining.

It's not raining?

It sounds like it might rain.

It sounds like that.

Because that was loud.

It sounds like that.

Ashish, you're going to tell me that that's not rain?

When we ride ahead,

the weather will be clearer.

My visibility sucks.

Yeah. That's why I just got...

How can you not feel small

when you're surrounded by

- giants? - The

cold,

the pain,

even the heartache

all felt

insignificant.

You start to lose yourself.

Wow.

It does not get much better than that.

We were mentally behind the eight ball all day.

I never felt like we were in control of today, which I think it

just wore on me.

It made it worse.

When you're riding, you've got the motorbike is the stimulus, right?

Yeah.

Then you're riding in the Himalayas, and you've got the mountains, and the bike

kind of takes a backseat.

Yes.

Then you have the rain,

and everything else just falls away, and it's just,

"Okay, keep this bike from dropping.

Get to our destination." And then you finally get here, and you appreciate

that s**t.

Yeah.

Are you kidding me?

Look someone painted that.

Take your pick.

You got one,

two, three,

four.

It is day four.

I wonder if

this trip was just too much too soon,

or if I needed to do this to just keep living.

I went into it thinking I was going to sit down

with some monks, and they were going to tell me something that

is unique to their religion, their culture,

that would just unlock something

in my brain, in my heart.

Not the case.

No.

Because

no matter what,

Sam's gone.

It's sort of the nature of Buddhism, and I think that's part of the power of

it, that you are the illusion.

And the more you

can embrace that idea, the more present

you become, but simultaneously, the less connected to others you become

because

it seems while you may be compassionate

and you might be kind to others, it implies

that family

is also an illusion,

and

your connection to those people

is also it.

I can't believe that.

Before Sam died,

life had a plan.

We would share in the joys and challenges of

life.

And now,

without him,

why does it feel like

all of that never

existed?

If my relationship with Sam

was an illusion,

then it's an illusion that I choose to believe.

And if I believe it,

isn't that enough?

So this is last night.

The bridge that we were supposed to cross

today-Got washed away. Heavy

rain, heavy meltage from the glacier.

This steel structure just toppled over,

and now we can't make it to Purne.

In this village,

Ashish told us there was a monk who built the very

mountain pass we rode on.

And when you're stuck like we were,

sometimes you have to look inside

to find your way out.

I understand you completed 40 kilometers of

the

pass between Purne and Manali.

Can you tell me about what motivated you to

do that?

They started the road because the school kids

with their bag and all, they had a lot of problem while coming here.

That rocky valley has turned into a flat road right now,

and it's very easy for the people to communicate because of

him.

Wow. So it was him and his brothers who did the road. It wasn't just him.

And two years before getting the Padma Shri award, his

elder brother passed away. And one month before getting Padma Shri, his

younger brother passed away.

So

how do you deal with death and grief?

Educate yourself as much as possible, but don't forget the culture.

Don't forget your roots.

Always do good things and don't do bad things.

If you do bad things, some or the other day, you have to pay back.

So why not do good in life?

He

said that it's good to have a brother.

He's like a companion because when nobody asks you or

ready to help you, your brother will always be there to help you.

He's like the closest friend you'll ever have in your life.

I don't know if I believe in fate.

How could what happened to Sam be so?

But still,

it felt like fate to meet M.A.

Or

was I just grasping at straws?

I wouldn't have met M.A.

if we hadn't gotten stuck. It reminded me

to stay open.

All right. One day later than expected,

we're headed out of Padum, headed to Purne.

The bridge is fixed, supposedly.

Here we go.

We're

going over the bridge that was

washed down

yesterday.

Made it across.

Well, I guess they did a good job. Oh, boy.

That's a little sketchy.

And we're up.

All right.

You know, talking to the elder man, M.A., it was

really eye-opening just how

there are certain things that just

help you heal. For him, it was his work that kept him

motivated, his ability to

keep building the highway. In Judaism, you call it mitzvah.

And it just reminded me of how I ought to be more

kind every day and caring.

So

let the hike begin.

Sam and I did a

28-mile hike around Yosemite

National Park. We had a tent

in Curry Village. Got up the next morning,

4:00 a.m.,

headlamps.

So by 7:00 a.m., we were at Glacier Point. We were cruising.

Sammy, he was in incredibly good shape,

and he just had that

spirit. He had that, "You know what, Benny?

We're going to do this. We're going to do this."

We go,

summited it.

8,200 feet.

And it's those memories

that are so

goodIt

makes me happy

to have had Sam in my life.

Of course,

I feel robbed.

How can you not?

This place seems to be deserted.

So this is the highest temple.

Highest?

Highest. The highest temple of the monastery.

How old are they?

Oh.

97.

97.

97? What brings them here?

And

they walk all the way just to have a glimpse

of him.

Even though Sam and I will never go hiking

together at age 97,

that hike

unlocked something.

I realized, as long as I have the memories,

how far away

can Sam ever really be?

Good morning, Purni.

What time is it?

5:30.

5:30. 5:30 a.m. Sun is just working its way over the

far side of the mountains.

Today is when we conquer the Zanskar Valley.

You could say this is our make or break day.

May I walk through the valley of the shadow of death

and I will fear no evil,

for Sam is with me.

He watches over me.

He protects me.

I keep thinking about just wanting to trust the bike-

Yeah

... and not being able to trust the bike on certain turns, like snowboarding and

my brother's accident, and it's just like,

I don't know. It sucks, because you got to trust your equipment a little bit, but

to truly trust whether it's your bike or your skis,

you have to go over the line.

Yeah.

You got to drop, you got to fall to know where that limit is.

That's the lottery of life right there.

Am I irresponsible

or even selfish

to still ride a motorcycle?

I do worry for my parents.

But at what point

do I just stop living?

Survivor's guilt

weighs heavy on my

heart.

Your shoulder?

Yo.

Turski.

My dude.

I was also stuck back there. That's why I couldn't get my s**t down to come to you

faster.

It was a s****y situation, man.

No, I get you. Literally like-

I'm going slow because we're going through mud. What do you want me to do, man?

I'm not going to speed up because I'm going to make you go up on our back.

Like go in front, dude. I will follow.

I'm not going to speed up because I don't feel comfortable going that fast.

Clearly, that was not a good place to go faster.

I think what we need to do now, though, is not be idiots.

Bro, we're in the s**t of it,

right?

The roads are in tough shape, and we just got word that Sarchu, our destination,

is -10 degrees Celsius. So we got to make a decision.

Do we stay here, let the storm pass, which

puts us at risk of potentially not being able to make it over the

snow-covered roads, or

do we go right now?

What do you think?

The good news is it's so cold, the mud isn't as muddy.

Back up.

There's another switchback. We can't pass him. He's not going to stop for us.

It's f*****g July. This is

a borderline survival situation here.

Come in, guys. They have something warming.

I'm shivering.

Wow.

The Himalayas threw everything possible at us.

100-degree heat.

Knock on wood.

Rain.

We're still not technically out of it, so knock on wood.

And now just horizontal snow.

Feels pretty good.

Okay, guys. We're different now.

This is your fans that you-

We're different. You know what I mean?

Take your socks off.

You know what I mean?

What?

We're different now.

It's not that cold.

No, it's not. We're going to come back here sometime.

What do you think the temperature is right now?

Well, it's not snowing outside, so it has to be above 32.

But not by much.

I

feel very happy right now.

Nothing's blue, right?

Despite the physical pain,

the sense of accomplishment is very

real.

It's one for the books.

This is definitely one for the books.

One for the books.

And in fairness, Ashish did tell us that today was going to be our hardest day.

Snow wasn't even in consideration in this trip.

No.

I didn't even acknowledge that as a possibility.

Bill went first.

Here we go.

Why was I able to ride away from that mountain,

and Sam wasn't

from his?

One foot to the left

or to the right,

he lives.

I torture myself not knowing what happened in

those final moments.

Good morning, Garcha.

I guess now

I have a guardian angel.

Pavement.

Slightly wet, mostly comfortable.

Yeah. It's so far so good.

If it stays like this all day, we're in great shape.

Shall we?

The thing about a guardian angel

is you have to listen to them.

And if I listen closely enough,

I can still hear Sam's voice

guiding me,

leading me.

And can that brokenness be healed now

that I can visit Sam in my heart?

Cheesing.

We are in Sarchu,

and this is where we were supposed to end last night.

So altitude,

it's backwards, but it says 14,000 feet above sea level.

A lowly 14,000.

Feels like we're basically at sea level.

On a sunny day

And weather's cooperating, we would've made it from Purni to here,

but we just had too much thrown at us.

Oh, egg omelet on toast.

It's not Heinz,

it's Hems. Tastes pretty good.

Well, we're back on track, boys. We have arrived in Tso Kar.

The sun is pretty low in the sky, so we got to get to camp and

making our tent pretty soon, but

what was a nine-hour day is now complete almost.

The sun is shining on us now.

Little wind makes it harder, but I think we're doing okay.

You don't like this at all?

At all. It's too windy.

Shutting it?

I don't know.

It's pretty f*****g windy.

Can we really not turn the tent 90 degrees?

We can, but even then-

I don't think that'll make a difference.

The wind's kind of blowing all over the place

... it's going to be slapping us all night long.

That's going to be impossible to put on right now.

All right. Then let's go. If it's impossible, let's go.

Let's make an executive.

I vote tent.

I vote no tent tonight.

We make it through the mountains, we make it through the rain,

and when we set up our campsite, that was going to be our

moment of triumph.

We get just

slammed with 40, 50 mile an hour gusts of

wind.

The ups and

downs of this trip have been...

That's what this whole trip has been, ups and downs.

So

I learned how to drive a manual transmission car.

Sammy taught me,

and it must have been

2013. He took me to the

Concord Middle School. It was a

mile down the road from us.

And it was just a loop.

Oh, I can't believe he's gone.

I can't believe he's gone.

And he was such a great teacher

because he's kind and he was patient

in ways unlike me or my father, who would be yelling and, "Don't do that.

You're going to burn the clutch.

Slam on the brake. Stop. Don't do that." And

he just coached me through it.

Any time you drive a manual transmission car, for me,

in some way it reminds me of Sam.

Just saying that out loud,

it's probably why I enjoy being on the motorbike so much,

because it makes me feel close to Sam again.

There's a saying,

anyone can ride in the sun.

But what they don't say

is you never know how long the sun will shine on you.

We're cool. I'm good. I'm good. I'm good.

It's

tough.

Okay.

TK. TK.

Okay, yeah. Fine.

Go

slowly.

Yeah, yeah, okay.

Goodbye. Go slowly.

Okay, slowly. Okay, well done.

On a motorcycle,

it's never a question

of if you're going to fall,

but when.

And with Sam,

it's never a question

of if it's going to hurt,

but how I carry the pain

and keep going.

Three.

Oh, boy.

I hear it.

Something seems to be ripping.

Isn't this so much easier than when it's howling wind?

Yeah?

Yep, there she goes.

That's pretty good.

All right. Roll tide.

This is about as nice of a campsite as one could ask for, I think.

I also love the Buddhist flag

zip line situation we have above us.

I agree.

If this is what we earned from

Shingala and yesterday-

Worth it

... it was 100% worth it.

If suffering

is a creation of my own mind,

then isn't suffering just the price you pay

for letting yourself care?

And because I let myself love Sam,

it's painful.

Painful,

but worth it,

just like this journey.

India is just epic.

We knew it was going to be tough. We knew it was going to be

probably a little crazy, and

you start to think about those things and how amazing this adventure has

been both introspectively resetting and

appreciating what it means to keep going, what it means to

carry forward, what it means to carry a broken heart forward and

still set ambitious goals and go and do the

most

that you can with the time that you have in

life. I don't think Sam would want me to close off and

not do everything that he would want to do or I would want to do.

He would want me to do more, if anything.

I need to do twice as much to see

things for both him

and I.

I think today was a pretty good day.

Today was very good.

It is a beautiful night.

I'd like to raise a toast to the late, great Samuel J.

Here, here.

Ding.

Let the water fill this

hand. And bring it to your

mouth. Pass it on your

lips.

No, girl, can't ride this

train. Because I can't stand to stay.

Right where I am.

Let the water fill this

hand.

And bring it to your mouth. Let it pass

beyond your lips. No,

girl, can't ride this

train.

Oh, that one's for Sammy.

You got it, bud.

What do I take back with

- me? - That

even in death,

there's still life.

And you only carry a heavy heart

when your heart

is full.

Somehow,

Buddhism gave me exactly what I needed.

Not a secret cure

or promise to see Sam again in another life,

but another perspective.

And even though the monasteries were empty

and temples locked,

it gave me a way to learn

that what I was seeking

was inside all along.

Back in Leh with different bikes this time.

Kurt, how we feeling?

Feeling good. Morale is definitely high.

I think this will be a good

almost a joy ride up to 18,300 today.

A motorcycle

is a simple machine.

Rubber,

metal,

and fuel.

But on this journey,

it gave me so much more.

It made me believe

that there is such thing

as moto therapy.

Having fun today.

The top of the world,

17,900 feet.

I thought I was getting the hang of this whole high-altitude thing, and here we

go. 11,000 to 17,000 just knocks you right back on

your a*s.

A little sad. You feel bittersweet.

So much of this trip has been bittersweet.

You're grateful that it happened,

but you're sad that it's

ended.

If I hadn't gone to the Himalayas,

would I have found my gravity again?

It wasn't a mountaintop

or river crossing,

but a sense of purpose,

a higher calling

that led me here.

And I couldn't have done it

without my brothers,

the mountains,

and of course,

the motorcycles.

This is the part of the journey where you start to reflect.

We got an incredible education about Buddhism, about

how Ladakhi culture looks at life, death,

grief, and how those are all

intertwinedSome of it was helpful.

A lot of it was new.

And most importantly, it's

simply

being here and being now

so that

you can just

keep moving forward.

Because if you let the past trap you or you let the

future planning paralyze you, you get stuck.

This is like an opening salvo of dealing with

a loss the way that Ben is.

And

I think this is a great opening salvo.

He's with a couple of friends.

We've spent two weeks in the middle of

absolutely nowhere

and

doing things that are difficult physically, emotionally,

but that was kind of the point.

You have this warm feeling in your chest when

you've

finished what you set out to do. I'll be able to

look back at this or remember these

days with such a full heart.

Yeah, I think Sammy's proud.

Bye, my man.

Take care of yourself.

Be in touch.

Heart over cheese.

Jam cheese it.

Cheese and heart.

Get that passport.

It was so good having you, man.

Yes, it was a pleasure.

In the end,

I learned to face my pain,

to carry my broken heart forward.

And I learned that even though Sam's gone,

I'll always be

his older brother.