Ladakh- On the Top of World - Part III

Our Nubra valley trip started in the end of Part -II

The sand dunes was an amusing thing to watch, cold during day time, with no shortage of water.

Here are more shots of the sand dunes.

 

Thats my better half with her favorite prop.

 

 

Believe me guys these are brand new pair boots of my wife. One trip to leh and you are done.

 

 People suffering with similar syndromes like us

There was a mother son camel duo at the dune and poor guys were getting so much disturbed by someone's masajji, chachaji, fufaji etc. (uncles). Everyone wanted to poise with the double hump camel duo for a click. I was feeling a bit sad for them, the way they were getting treated.

I took some more shot while on the way back. The double hump camel or Bactrian Camel are basically migrants from Afghanistan/Pakistan brought by the Haj pilgrims as told by Lumpung.

We had a night stay in a guest house at Diskit. We had another comedy instance there, I mean it was a mark of innocence of ladakhis. The waiter took our luggage to the room and once he opened the room I was shell shocked to see the size. That room was almost equivalent to a nice 2 BHK flat in Bangalore. The waiter very seriously (funnily for us) said "Sir room jyada bada ho gaya to chhota room deta hun" (Sir if the room is big for you then I can give you a smaller one). We could not do anything but burst in laughter. I tipped him nicely before he took off. BTW the bill for sumptuous dinner and breakfast for two was, Ahem! , 120 bucks LOL! .


 Very next day we visited the famous Diskit monastery.

 

Had an opportunity to click many stylish pictures. There is a huge statue of buddha facing Nubra Valley.

 

We returned back from Nubra Valley to Leh crossing the same bone crunching route through Khardung-La. This time I had a chance to take a loo break and I crawled into an ice-clad toilet. The toilet was less of a place to relieve and more of a freezer full of ice. I had to somehow balance myself to avoid slipping on a totally wrong base.

It was amazing to see the bulleteers with many accessories.

Stream on the way at Khardung Village

Some 5 kms before Khardung-La there is a small village on the foothills called as Pullu. We took a tea break there. It is a rather funny restaurant. The owner was a lady, very innocent but with a high temper. The reason for temper was, people come to her restaurant simply to use the toilet. Come on man, why people keep their common-sense back at home before traveling. So there I was sitting on a table and watching the things happening. Many people came in, and the lady owner alone was quite not able to handle the crowd. Crowd was more but there was no money flowing in. 

Out of frustration she started to charge 10 bucks to use the toilet. See the shamelessness of people coming in cars like Innova and flashy brands like The North Face who started negotiating for 10 bucks- Idiots ! ..

So later I went to that lady with sympathy and struck a conversation. She said the most utilized stuff in her shop is Amrutanjan balm. Hearing that, there were some waiters who came to talk to me. One of them asked me about hometown. Getting to know that I am from Ranchi, those guys jumped with happiness, as if their party leader has come. I happen to know that they were not waiter but laborers who were working for the Army to mend roads and they basically belonged to a small place called as Dumka near Ranchi. They explained about the challenges and difficulties they face. Their deputation starts from the month of March and ends till October. 

Little we know the life of these guys who make our life easier or rather make our adventure easier.

Here is a portrait of Mr. Hazrat who is a very down to earth personality and explained me things to detail.

 Road while on the way back

Air was becoming thinner with every metre while approaching Khardung-La.

Here is the height in my Pro-Trek for Record purpose

We came back to leh to start packing for the most power packed journey next day. We were going to Pangong-Tso.

We were back on the Leh-Manali highway again. This trip to Pangong was full of interesting stories. Took a short break at Druk White Lotus School at Shey where 3 idiots was shot. The school runs 100% on trust and provides free education to under-privileged kids from remote villages.

For any donations etc. you can visit the website
http://www.dwls.org/about.html

 Coffee shop on the name of Ranchordas Chhanchhad aka Rancho.

 

The pissing point

We stopped our vehicle at Karu where we gave lift to three school kids till village Martselang. We had interesting conversation with the kids, about their interests, hobbies, studies and life during winter.

I did not leave an opportunity to top up my bottle with sweet water

To reach Pangong Tso one has to cross the world's third highest motorable road - Chang-La. This was the time when we started to feel short of oxygen. I have no idea why this feeling did not crop up at Khardung-La. I took just 10 brisk steps to buy a cup of tea and felt as if I am down with 10 kms of jogging. It became hard to breathe by time. After a sip of tea things started to become slightly normal. I took some shots, and took off immediately. But somehow our breathing did not normalize till we boarded the flight to Delhi.

 

 

Once there your brain starts behaving weird. Something like this when I thought of testing my watch. Don't know why I did that.

 

The terrain after Chang-La is very interesting and scary. The road is highly prone to Avalanches and June-July has more instances. We saw a wreckage of Sumo and upon asking Lumpung he said that there was a family driving in that car. They stopped their vehicle to take some picture and that is when an Avalanche came down taking the vehicle to ditch. One person who was left inside the car was suffocated to death. We were scared, again! .

There are number of stream you may come cross while on the way to Pangong.

And here is the sand ridden road. At times the road gets covered with inches of sand, and if it rains the road becomes non-motorable due to heavy slush. It is not easy to maneuver a bike on this terrain.

 

  After an hour of drive we reached the foothills and the height was almost same as Leh. All of a sudden we saw a completely different landscape far away. There was a Deep blue shade in the middle of golden brown mountains. Our eyes color balance had become Brown and White due to the duotone color all throughout, and this blue scheme was a welcome change.

First sight of Pangong

That was Pangong-Tso. Tso means Lake. Lumpung told us about the instance took place some 2 years back when many people thronged to see the lake and their was a landslide at their back blocking the Leh-Pangong route. As many as 600 people were stranded in Pangong-Tso. The only route to reach Leh was 300 km stretch through Indo-China border. The Indian Army gave high level order and the fleet was escorted till Leh. Lumpung said due to a sudden vehicle movement through the border, the Chinese Army started  creating problem and there was a high level escalation which was soon resolved. The travelers received full support from the Army all the way till Leh. There were food camps and free diesel for the vehicles to reach Leh. Salute to our Army.

I had 20 GB of memory in reserve only to shoot Pangong Tso. The most welcoming part was the migratory brown headed Gulls.

Pangong Tso is nearly 140 kms long with major part of it under dispute with china. The lake changes color as the day passes from green to deep blue with some parts as red etc. It is interesting to see the transition.

 

We had a tented accommodation at Pangong-Tso. It was a real good experience in itself since it was our first time stay in a tent. Our tent was hardly 30 mts from the lake side. The weather had started to become very chilly as it was already windy. We were idiot enough to leave our thermals and main jackets at leh assuming it may be pretty hot and humid in Pangong (such a bangaloreans we are u know). We were so sure about our instincts that we did not even bother to ask Dorji or Lumpung about the weather. In order to brave the cold we had to empty our bags and wear everything we have carried. T-Shirt over T-Shirt, Jeans over track pants, socks over socks, undees over undees etc. To everyone's surprise we were carrying woolen gloves LOL! .. I was trying to find out a way to wear those gloves on our head, but could not do it.

 

I had long old plans to shoot long star trails at some exotic location like this. For this I bought a new remote control (which was almost on the verge of collapse), a cheap tripod which started to shiver for no reason. I thought the tripod might have been trapped by some spirit and is shivering out of cold, but later discovered that a SLR camera with full magnesium alloy body, a full loaded battery pack with 8 AA batteries, a heavy weather sealed lens, if mounted over a Rs. 1200 tripod, then even its ghost will shiver. But somehow I was able to stabilize it and at least got one star trail.

 

This was a trial shot as I wanted to take some 2-3 hours long exposure. So post dinner I mounted my camera for another shot. By that time I mounted the camera it was already 10.30 PM. My wife had two options to choose from- give a loving company to her hubby while he waits for the shutter lag, or get inside the thick quilt and snore. She was not apologetic to choose latter.
 

So there I was all alone, braving the cold to get a nice long exposure. (I did not get a shot in the end though). 

For next couple of hours I had a similar company the one I had in  delhi bound flight with 'entertaining' conversations. So there was this family who took out a cot out in open, took  two quilts and all the members sat on that cot under open sky to gossip. I have no idea what fun they got in gossiping like that. Plus, they were LOUD ! I can tell you the saree color of someone's fufiji (aunt) in kaneda (Canada), or how many bhk is owned by Jaipur wale Ashutosh mamaji. Also I know that Geetika aunt's daughter priyanjali eloped with a guy from Indore and got married. I pity priyanjali's hubby's ear's condition by now.
So conversations like these kept we awake till 11 pm. My camera was mounted at a distance from tent with shutter open and in no thought was willing to loose the console. A loss of my DSLR kit meant cooking three meals a day, washing clothes, cleaning house, etc. for next two years for all known reasons(I am a happily married man)

I was not getting drowsy but got scared a bit when heard some khar-khar sound coming from behind my tent. I was aware of  wild wolves in Ladakh which is a biggest threat to livestock there. I thought to better save my life (after saving my camera), so I ran towards the camera, turned off the shutter which was in bulb mode and ran back to the tent only to realize that it was wind making that khar khar sound.

Softie me remember?

Next day I could not sleep past 5 AM as I did not want to miss the moment for silly reasons such as sleeping. Since it was a full moon night a day before, the moon was still up on the western side. Almost everyone was sleeping when I got the this image

 

It took hardly 10 minutes for the moon to hid behind the hills. Thankfully my wife was active enough to have a look into that mesmerizing sight.
I also took a full moon record shot the night before

 

My wife spotted a beautiful VIBGYOR ring around the Sun. Here is the shot. Check the relativity of size of the ring as compared to the hill.

 

We started early to avoid bad traffic and got an opportunity to click the livestock and grazing horses. Also had an opportunity to click the Himalayan Marmots. They hibernate for nearly 6 months in a year starting October. This was the time they were out and I was lucky enough to shoot them.

Once there I completely missed out on the local food, and this was the last day when I could have something local. We were fed up of Paneed makahani, mix veg, gobi matar etc. We asked Lumpung and he told us to try Thupka. By lunch we reached Karu and stopped at Druk Restaurant.

Thupka is basically spaghetti like noodles dipped in soup with mutton or vegetables. I had seen this dish on TV but never knew the name and I always wanted to try. Believe me I am gulping my saliva while typing this. The soup dipped noodles was an amazing treat and all through we had nothing to do but repent that we wasted eating paneer masala and all and not this.

We reached back Leh after a mesmerizing and highly eventful journey with so many memories. I lost count of how many pictures I clicked. A very awesome trip which I can never forget. All the while whenever I saw a bulleteer crossing the road I felt jealous. I could sense the amount of fun one can have in riding a two wheeler there. I kept dreaming is driving a Rubicon there, well maybe sometime soon I will be doing the adventure without a chauffeur.

I recommend every Indian to see Ladakh before they spend lakhs on a trip abroad. Highly hospitable and down to earth nature is something deep rooted inside any ladakhi, they are brought up like that. They do not serve you with an expectation to get a tip or anything, but they do so since they are follower of Buddha, they are taught to spread love.

 

Delicious food, awesome hospitality, second to none landscape and a test of endurance is all Ladakh about. Ladakh is  such a place that you may feel like going back again and again without get bored a single time. We are overwhelmed by the beauty and overall package of this place. 

Ladakh- Will see you again.

Thanks for reading. 

The list of equipments I used for this Trip-

Nikon D300 with MB-D10 vertical grip

Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8

Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR

Nikon 50mm f/1.8

Kata UL-220 DSLR bag

A Photography oriented brain

A highly patient and the most beautiful person in world- My wife- Who gave me lot of ideas for compositions.

Happy Blogging.

-Bibudesh Kumar Rohit