Pangong Lake here we come

Good Morning Leh

 

All Set to March Leh - Pangong Lake

Our Permit to visit the Lake was ready previous day, collected the permit from tour organizer our bikes marched towards the great Pangong Lake,And here's the second last one for the road. The much hyped Pangong Lake. Decided to start our trip by 7 but we could start only by 10AM due to XYZ reason. All of us were excited expecting to reach the lake by 3 to 4 PM. Our second last stop before we say good bye to Leh Laddak. We had been amply warned to expect a hoard of happy picnicking tourists, posing for photographs everywhere. Ever since it was show cased beautifully in Aamir Khan's Bollywood blockbuster 3 Idiots has really put this place on the map. There are reminders of the movie all around the lake! Anyway, more of that later. Pangong Tso is about 150 kms from Leh. Its a saline lake with a length of almost 135 kms! More than half of it is in China. 

Sign Board by BRO

Sign Board by BRO

At Karu, about 45km from Leh city, we had to deviate left for Pangong lake. Till Karu, we happen to see many monasteries on either sides of the road all back dropped by tall rocky sierras with snowcapped peaks. The road till Karu, that goes along the river Indus, is in a very good condition and could be made to Karu in well within an hour. The road that starts immediately after the deviation at Karu seems to be a newly laid tarmac, it's dashing black, clean and without any damages. We happened to see a distant monastery on to the left, after which we reached the town Shakti ,From Shakti town the ascent to the mighty Chang La pass begins.

Road To Pangong

Road To Pangong

The roads are narrow but in good condition initially and starts winding up mercilessly, there are protective barricades on the valley side and frequent banking is made to give allowance to oncoming big vehicles or for overtaking. We stopped at one of the banking above Shakti village for photographing, the scenery was breathtaking - we were like tiny dots standing among gigantic barren rocky mountains all around and in the valley, people, who again looked like dots to us, were busy farming their fertile green lands, dotted here and there with cattle. We continued our journey further over taking the military convoy’s . We had just completed 70 KM of ride for the day when weather changed suddenly and it started drizzling, snow snow snow with less than 10 mtr visibility.  our first challenge was to tackle the snow fall, it was really bad, we couldn’t ride the bike,  we were almost close to CHANG LA ,we waited for some time expecting snow fall be reduced, finally we have decided to give up for today and marched towards Leh.

A small photo break, vikky came up with the idea to for the second approach, all agreed and started our 2nd approach by 3PM. On the way back bhayya’s bike had flat tyre and our mechanic didn’t had the tube to fix it, we have decided to drop the bike to the military camp and take upon our return next day.

As we started ascending higher and higher, the temperature fell drastically and oxygen kept depleting. As we approach closer to Chang La pass, the roads start getting worse with Snow, Ice,potholes and sharper curves. At Chang La, the second highest motor able pass in the world at 5360m, the mountains were magnificently snowcapped and the weather was mind-numbingly cold. There is an army outpost at Changla pass which serves complimentary tea (it was cold due to extreme cold, I guess) and has maintained public conveniences like toilets and also there is a temple embellished with numerous fluttering Buddhist festoons, as colorful as a rainbow. 

Time Pass for Indian Army & BRO 

Temple @ Changla Pass The guardian of mountain pass

After a few clicks, we started our descent, bikes Skidding in this area is normal we all had good skidding experience especially rakesh and bhayya on that route. Now we were eagerly looking for the recent landslide spot. In some time we had to stop in the middle of now where as there was road repair work was on. The road from both side was full of vehicles. And later we realized that this was the very same place where couple of days back there was huge landslide.

The best part of the trip to Pangong Tso is the drive and the challenges which we faced during the ride. No doubt, the lake is pristine and beautiful. But the drive to reach the lake must rank as one of the most beautiful drives. The landscape changes every few KMs and we are greeted by mesmerizing landscape with amazing colors of mountains and sand. The barren landscape is broken by small streams with wild flowers growing in abundance. Fortunately, the road was freshly laid and fantastic. There was one patch which was bad - a avalanche prone area - and we had to literally struggle to get past that. But for this, it was a drive we always cherish.

The Military station enroute to Pongong serves as a reminder for the fact that we are in the Indo China border and probably one of the most tense borders of India. We could see Tibet so close yet the hearts lie so far. There are these aphorisms placed equidistant from each other on milestones erected by Border Roads Organization (BRO) which attracted my attention. Some of them were 'Always remember God', 'All will wait, better be late' so on and so forth. These boards served to keep us awake as well as tested the memory by repeating itself in a while.

Indian Military banner

In the later part of the ride, we reached a place where in a board was put in to indicate the first glimpse of Pangong Lake. This is where my excitement increased manifold. The blue color of lake always attracted me. We couldn’t enjoy the lake that night because we reached our camp site very late about 8.30PM and It was pitch dark around.

Our camp site which was exactly in front of the lake and we opted for a lake facing tent for the night. The hospitality of people here was extremely impressive and we had superbly delicious dinner followed by a coffee under open sky. Again Bhayya refused to get out of the bed, we requested them to serve the dinner in the room, Rakesh was in pain, he had a bad skid while descending from Chang La.

Pangong is a remote area. The only way to communicate with the outside world is through a satellite phone at the army camp nearby. Not many people want to spend the night there, But we did and it turned out to be one unforgettable night!

We were far away from humanity and we could almost hear the silence. At night the stars seemed so bright and so close to us that we felt we could almost touch them.

After a long tiring bike ride we decided to get up late. But whenever we decided to get up late we will up by early morning. By 6.30 all of us were out of the tent and enjoying the sun. all of us were busy drying out wet clothes from the first day . lolz.

After breakfast we ambled around the lake for some time photographing the brilliant blue lagoon. The cold winds from the lake made us shiver and dried our lips to crack, yet it was pleasure to promenade on the banks watching the waves of crystal clear water. I expected to see few aquatic birds but there were absolutely no fauna, probably due to cold. clicked few photographs and started our return journey.

We had to ride back to Leh and we were nearing towards the end of the mega trip. This brought a sadness in me. But we had no choice than to come back to the reality.