Leh Road Trip SAGA - Leh to khardung la and to kargil

Disclaimer : The dialogues and characters may be mismatched. Any irregularities are pure co-incidential. There might be some dialogues and scenes to make the tale more spicy.

Next day we decided to tough the highest motorable road in the world - khardung la. We left at around 7 and drove at an easy pace. Everyone seemed tired even after a night's sound sleep.

R : Should we do nubra valley? We can go and come back on the same day.
J : Lets see what happens. It seems that all are tired.
B : What is there in Nubra valley ?
J : Sand and desert and camels with 2 humps
L : Lets send guddu to get a pic of the camel with 2 humps and we will use photoshop to put us on to the camel.
N : I am tired but i am ok with going. After coming so far, we dont want to miss out on any thing.
Guddu : Sir kaha chalna hai ?
R : Lets go to Khardungla first and then we will decide if we want to go further.

We drove to khardung la which is around 45 kms from leh. The road was smooth in the beginning and the climb is also not very steep. But later in the last 5 kms, the road turns very bad and broken with snow all over. We all have headaches by the time we reach the top. We get out of the car.



J : It is very very cold here.
N : What else do you expect at the highest motorable road in the world.
R : lets click some photos.
B : My headache is getting worse. Why do we come here - to get headaches?
J (to R) : I dont think we would be able to go to Nubra valley.
L : There is no one here to offer tea.



We see lots of cars pulling up and people getting out and clicking photos. In 30 minutes we click many photos. Both B & N go inside the cafeteria and sit down. All have bad headaches. We decide to head back to leh from here. And proceed to shey palace - local sight seeing.



The shey palace is around 40-50 kms from leh - it is in shey. It was well located and there was a huge fish pond in front of it. We saw lots of tourists and a huge buddha statue there.




We drive back and reach leh by lunch time. We all go to bed to relieve ourselves of the terrible headaches. We leave in the evening and look for a new resturant for food. There is a rooftop resturant which we enter, but it is cold on the roof top, so we decide to have diner inside the
resturant itself. The soup is good. And the food is gr8 here - even non-veg. We try kashmiri non-veg dish and it is too good.



After a nice sleep in the night we start towards kargil & kashmir the next day at around 7 am.

L : Kya yaar, we missed nubra valley.
J : Lets turn the car around and go to nubra valley.
B : No yaar, we have to join office on monday - lets go to kashmir.
R (to Guddu) : Can we reach kashmir in a single day?
Guddu : We can, but it will be a long drive - around 14 hours.
J : We will stop at kargil or drass where-ever we get tired.
B : And at Patthar Sahab and take his blessings
N : And at magnetic hill and see how it works.
B : And eat langar at Patthar Sahab.

So, we drive out of Leh and in an hour we are at patthar sahab. It is a gurudwara where a huge stone had fallen on one of the gurus. And as history says that the stone turned to wax and the figure of the guru was engraved into the stone. The gurudwara was almost deserted with a few military men taking care of its maintenance. There were other travelling people who stopped there for a visit. We came to know that the langar was held in the afternoon, but they had some left-overs and we had that. It still tasted great. And we moved ahead.



Within 15-20 minutes we were at magnetic hill. There was a simple board on the road which says "Magnetic Hill".

N : What happens here?
J : If we leave the car in neutral, it will start sliding.
Guddu : You all get down, and let me try.



We all get down and guddu tries the magnetic hill. The results were good and we enjoyed.



As we proceeded ahead from magnetic hill, the landscape was very enchanting. The roads were very smooth. You could call it a moonscape cause there was hardly any vegetation. The whole area was full of soil and mountains of rocks. We drove for around 4-5 hours with a small lunch stop in
between. Around 5 pm we were in kargil. We were losing altitude. The road from leh to kargil was muddy and most of it was still under construction. But there were no peaks to be crossed. The highest point on this road is Fotu la around 13,500 ft.




J : Lets go till drass and stop there.
R : How far is drass ?
J : Around 50 kms
L : No, lets stop here itself, it seems like a huge town.



Kargil is a huge city built on both sides of a river. We had thought that kargil would be some small city and it would be difficult to find hotels there, but looking at the size of kargil, we were sure that we could find hotel there. The city is very strategically located on the banks
of a river and with a huge river bed. But it has not been well kept. It could have become a tourist spot if it was well kept.

We searched for hotels. We had heard about a hotel named Caravan and we went there. It was on top of a hill and the roads were really very narrow. The rooms were not very welcoming though they costed 1000/- each (after discount). Another hotel recomended to us by the leh hotel manager
was hotel siachen. It is very close to the market and the approach road is very crowded. There is a parking space near this hotel, but it was full. We went to the hotel and looked at the rooms. They were better but still dingy. The fact that this was supposed to be the best hotel in the city made us feel a bit insecure.

The city was dirty and the streets were narrow. The hotel room itself smelled strangely. The people looked un-educated.

L : I want to run away from here as soon as possible.
J : Kyu ?
L : I feel strange over here. The people look strange.
B : I dont feel safe.
R : We should have stopped at drass.
N : What's done is done, lets have diner and sleep early. We will leave from here at around 5.
J (the early riser) : Ok with me.
R : I wont try non-veg here.
L : I dont know if they have proper chicken here. They could feed you something else.
J : Lets eat simple veg - dal & rice.
R : The hotel is veg.
B : That is ok, but why do the rooms have this strange smell.
N : Dont worry, you will get used to it.

We have diner at 8 and pay our bills there itself. The toilets are not well maintained. The Bed also seems strange with small pillows and lots of blankets. I counted 6 blankets in my room itself. We sat in a room after diner and had a long chat - something we were missing in this trip
- a relaxed chat. We refreshed our old memories about our jobs and our early lives. It was a night to remember. We went to our bed at 12. The whole town was in darkness.

J : We leave at 6.
Everyone else laughs.
L : As early as possible.

J closes the door to his room and locks it properly. He then puts his bags against the door to prevent anyone from forcing it open. Our of the 6 blankets, he keeps 2 and throws the remaining on the floor. The bed and the blankets smell stronger. He thinks how would he sleep with this s
mell. Maybe he would not be able to get the smell out of his head. Maybe the smell will haunt him - linger with him throughout his life. (Today as I write the blog, the smell has returned to my head.) He checks the bed for any bugs/insects and then lies on the bed and covers himself with the blanket. He tries to cover his nose, but it does not help. But he is tired, so he sleeps.

J wakes up at 5. N is sleeping. He feels that the smell has embedded itself in his head. He takes a quick bath and wears clean clothes and watches TV after knoching on all the rooms and waking the sleeping members. The car is ready and we all leave without breakfast at around 8. Though
the city and the hotel is left behind now, we could still feel the strangeness and insecurity.

The Leh Road Trip Saga - leh to pangong lake and back

We checked in our hotel and the slept the whole day.

Hotel Manager: Sir, there is hot water. Come down and have some tea, once you are ready. You were supposed to be here last night.
J : We got stuck at tanglangla. Please take the luggage to our room. We would like you to arrange for permits to pangong and nubra valley.
(We had done some research and knew that permits were required to visit these restricted areas. Also 4-5 photocopies / region is required, cause you need to submit the photocopy when you cross a military checkpost.)
Hotel manager : Ok sir. Please give me your names and it will cost you 150/- rs per head.

We knew that the permits were made available for free, but we did not have the energy to go to the permit office that day. Neither did we have the energy for arguing with him. We handed him over the money and the names and proceeded with fulfilling our sleep.



J woke up around 3-4 hours later and took bath. Others were sleeping. J was very hungry, so, J woke up N and L and around 2-3 pm we went for lunch. We were aching to have lots of good food preferably non-veg. But the scene was sad. There are some days in laddakh when non-veg is not available in the entire market. Our luck was bad - and today was one such day. We moved from one resturant to another looking for non-veg. Finally we found a place "Bon Appetit" where we could have non-veg. We ordered soups. J ordered french-onion soup and L ordered chicken soup. We ate whatever was available. The food was not that good - but the soups were great. J fell in love with french-onion soup and for the rest of his stay had only french-onion soup with all his meals.

We went back and slept for the rest of the day. R & B had lunch later in the evening. Around 7-8 we went out for diner. Our hotel manager suggested a resturant - tibetian kitchen for tibetian food, but we found it dingy and smelly. We instead went to another place known as golden dragon and had a lot of veg food. When we came out of the resturant at 10:30, we could not find anyone on the street. We were the only people - and we walked back to our place fast.

Our impression of leh was that it was a very small city and the market was equally small. If you spend 2-3 hours walking, you might cover the whole city. The people were not-very-friendly. In fact they seemed frustrated. The season in leh is only for 3-4 months during which they make money. Most of the stuff in leh comes from big cities like Delhi so they sell it very expensive in leh.

There is also a taxi association in leh, so if you get a taxi from outside you wont be allowed to run that in leh. You have to hire taxi from leh only. Since we had a private number - we made the impression that it was our own car - which saved us the trouble. The taxis in leh are very
expensive but at the same time they could be bargained to bring down the cost by 10-15%.

We slept like a log that night. Next morning around 7 we were up and ready and we left for pangong lake.

Guddu : Sir, do you know the way to pangong.
L : Guddu, you have been here before, you should know the way.
Guddu : Sir, last time we did not go to pangong.
L : Lets ask people on the road.
J : It is 170 kms from here.
[We ask people and figure out the way]
R : I hope the road is good.
Guddu : There is a checkpost - let me go and submit the permit there.




We move ahead and after some time the road starts deteriorating. By the time we reach The Might Chang la - the third highest pass in the world at 17,800 ft. It is called The Mighty Chang la because of the steep and bad roads - which make the climb challenging. We stopped at Chang la and took some photos. There is an army base there which serves herbal tea. We all had fresh headaches due to the height and loss of oxygen. It was terribly cold there.



We started our descent soon. And we were in a valley with amazing landscape on both sides. The road turned smooth and we could see snow on the base of the mountains. We stopped on the way to do some photography. Saw lots of yaks on the way. And after driving for around 4 hours we had the first view of pangong lake. It is actually difficult to believe that within these mountains and at such height there is such a huge lake with so clear water.



The approach to the pangong lake was bad. It seems that fresh roads were being built. We heard rock scrape at the bottom of our car 3-4 times.
We stopped at pangong and started shooting photos.



N : Wow such a beautiful lake.
B : People are getting crazy due to the beauty.
J : Look - ducks.
R : Is that chinese crazy. He is taking of his clothes and getting into the water.
L : The water is too cold.
J : What else do you expect - we are at such height. I am not going to touch the water - though it looks very inviting from here.
N : Look there are dhabas here too.
J : And tents. It seems we could spend the night here.
L : The lake would look very good in the night under the moonlight.
R : I wish we were on the bike, or we had more time, so we could spend one night here.



We had our lunch there and started our journey back. We came across a strange animal - which looked like a rat but was as big as a rabbit. Offered it some biscuits and took some photos.



We reached back by 5-6 pm - exhausted and rested. Later that night we again went to Golden Dragon for diner and had our fill of non-veg - even though the food was not that good. J had his spring onion soup earlier so he was satisfied.