Leh – Pangong Tso Lake (night stay) – Leh
Above: Pangong Tso, looking towards China
After a refreshing night’s sleep, we obtained our permit for Pangong from the SDM office in Leh. The pass to Nubra valley was closed due to inclement weather, else we would have preferred to go there first, intending to spend the night at Diskit or Hunder, and taking in Turtuk (with its apricot trees and double humped (Bactrian) camels).
We tanked up on fuel at Leh, and retraced 35 kilometers down the way we had come from Himachal through Baralacha La and Tanglang La. From the well-settled town of Karu, the road to Pangong begins with an upward cut from the main Leh highway. It is best to prepare for the drive ahead by lunching at Karu, which we did.
Above: the turn towards Chang La, for Pangong Lake
The pass ahead is called Chang La, and is a muddy, slushy road due to the snow that borders the track. We were glad to give a lift to a few local ladies till Shakti/Sakhti, about 10 kilometers uphill from Karu. The road worsened steadily, till we reached the top, where DRDO has its highest Research & Development Centre (update: India’s seed vault is also managed by DRDO at Chang La!). I got a lucky frame of a mountain dog (we used to call them ‘gaddee’ in Sanawar, I couldn’t find out the local names for these shaggy dogs) perched on the snow with the sun shining feebly through the snowy clouds.
Once we rounded the top of the pass marked by the DRDO facility (where you can rest and eat – but very basic facilities only), the snow stopped and we descended steadily, taking care to cross the river-inundated valley without damaging our cars. The road after Chang La is relatively good, reminiscent of the Roller Coaster Road before Tanglang La. Once the army camps start, you know you are at Tangste valley, home to Pangong Tso. We reached here at the ideal time of around 3:30 – 4 p.m.
We got our PERMIT checked at the ITBP-Army checkpost, and the 20-30 odd kilometers remaining between us and Pangong went by pretty smoothly, with a green, mossy swamp covering the middle of the valley through which the road runs. The last 5-8 kilometers are the usual mountain road – rocky, slippery but not too dangerous if you drive sensibly. Once you round the last mountain, the glimpse of the beginning of Pangong’s blue waters hits hard!
There was a broken down truck just beyond this last major turn, but we were fortunate to have space to just squeeze past it and descend to Pangong’s shores. From the beginning, the road runs along Pangong up to the border area of Chushul, about 30 kilometers ahead. We chose to stay near the brightly-lit and well-peopled (with tourists) eateries, and soon found a good tent with cots that could easily accommodate all four of us. The owner was from Leh, and with a hearty “Julley”, we settled in for the evening.
We were lucky to have a cloudless night. It was freezing cold (this is the second week of June, by the way – the hottest time of the year in most of India), but I took a couple of night time moonlit photos as we filled ourselves with food and drink. Around midnight, after watching the larger groups (mostly bikers on Royal Enfields and the like) gambol around the bonfires, we retired to our tent.
I woke up at 5:30 a.m. in the morning, and took a short time lapse of the sunrise over the mountains on the opposite shore of Pangong. It was windy and bitterly cold, so I crept back into our tent, under the quilt and arose again at breakfast time. Then we went down to the shore and I splashed around a bit – just face, hands and feet – the water is too cold, and combined with the wind, makes one feel frozen!
Now that we knew the lay of the land back to Leh like the back of our hands, we drove at a leisurely pace, enjoying the small hailstones that fell along the way up to Chang La. Our descent was muddy again, and there were significantly more tourists than yesterday. We had a late lunch at Karu, at the same place we had eaten before, and reached Leh by 4 in the afternoon. Thus, with time on our hands, we took in the famous Leh Palace and the Castle of Tsemo before returning to our hotel and indulging in some much-needed rest after so much of grueling mountain driving.
Update for the culmination of this trip coming soon: Leh – Lamayuru – Kargil – Zoji La – Srinagar – Pathankot – Amritsar – Delhi.