Since I must begin this narrative somewhere, I will start in no particular order, with this wonderful road trip from Leh to Lukong, a 140 km journey, where Pangong Lake is situated. And I write about this trip only because I am sitting inside a tent in Lukong, in freezing cold, with a light drizzle, and heavy winds, and the memory of the journey fresh in my mind. I have nothing better to do, dinner being a good hour away, and my partner in crime lying next to me nursing a slight altitude sickness. And while I write about this trip, let me leave the lake itself for later and instead talk about nature, and the mountains we encountered on our way here.
To me, Himalayas was mostly about those trips to Nainital, Almora, Dharamsala, McLeodgunj, Dalhousie, Darjeeling, and a dozen other hill towns nestled in the mountains. Places where hardy men and brave soldiers took on nature to live a life, or protect a land. It was about long scary yet scenic drives, where I had a prayer on my lips, and implicit faith in my driver. Where every bend over a gravely road scared the living daylights out of me. Over time, I of course got wiser and breathed easier, especially after I started sitting behind the wheels, and climbing those very mountains. But most times, it was about getting to the destination, and stealing those wonderful sights, people, food, and culture, all along the way.
This trip to Ladakh was somewhat different. To begin with, I did not plan the trip. And I did not care about the places we were going to. It was about the journey. About living up every minute of our ten-day trip. About breathing, nay, savoring the local air, making friends with the locals, eating their food, living with them in their homes, and walking with them whenever we could. So when Ratan said he was working on the itinerary, I showed no interest. I was fine with anything he wanted, anyplace he chose, living anyway he liked. I knew we have a bunch of things in common, intrepid travel being one of them, and that he would not go too wrong.
This time around, I took in the mountains. Every bit of it. And every minute of the journey. Words fail me when I say that I have never seen a mountain range (and I must unabashedly confess that I have seen a wee bit of them) as wonderful, as imposing, as fearsome, as welcoming, as majestic, and as varied as this one.
Some facts - the drive took us from 11,500 feet (Leh) to 15,000+ feet (Lukong) through Changla Pass. The unparalleled Border Roads Organization has done a fantastic job, building motorable roads through some of the most hostile terrain that nature could throw at engineers. Except for two short stretches totaling ~15 kms, the roads were good enough to give the Bangalore Municipal Corporation a serious inferiority complex.
Now let me spend a wee bit of time about the Ladakhi section of the Himalayas. At this height where O2 is thin, there is not much flora or fauna. Marmouth and yak and a bird or two are the only ones that who have made this harsh land their home. Thick bunches of rough grass peep out of shaggy outcrops, some here, some there, all fed by snowmelt. Otherwise, it is a unbelievably vast expanse of extremely harsh desert that rise up, sometimes suddenly, into imposing mountains. A land that is extremely hot or extremely cold, and where there is neither shade, nor cover, nor protection from the elements. You are completely left to your wits with no help whatsoever should nature decide to test you. And with human habitation extremely sparse, you can't fancy your chances much in such conditions.
My understanding of the Himalayas like I mentioned, is built on an amalgam of several trips I made in the past, a few articles and books I've read, and the picture of Mount Everest that I might have seen a hundred times in magazines, and on NatGeo & Discovery channels. It was mostly about tall snow filled peaks, and narrow, winding, steep roads that took folks from tourist town to tourist town. Or about NorthCol and SouthCol routes that climbers took as they started their lonely climb from base camp to reach Mt Everest.
I quickly realized how narrow my perspective was. The Ladakhi part of the Himalayan terrain, and the mountains themselves are varied, with the landscape changing every few miles, and throwing up a surprise at every turn.
For a mile, it was all purple, probably light and minerals on the surface giving that rare hue. And then some were dark brown, followed quickly by some very light brown rock faces, clearly indicating that not all of these mountains were formed at the same time billions of years ago. And then there were some astonishingly white rocks at the lower third of a large rock face, almost as if a prankster had placed a hundred large drums of white paint about two hundred yards from the mountain face, and then threw a few dynamite sticks at the drums. And if these were not enough, I saw golden brown colored rock faces interspersed with maybe with foot tall black slate like rocks every 10-20 feet, forming a beautiful pattern. Obviously as the mountains were forming, the earth was throwing up molten material of different types and at different frequencies to form this wonderful geometric pattern.
A few miles further, I saw ones we see in pictures, imposing and majestic, with narrow valleys, and water marks and crevices telling you what route the water took on its steep rush downwards. Yet others had extremely wide valleys that sloped gently down towards the road, and appeared as sandy as Marina beach, except that the beach was at a 45 degree angle. And still some others seem to have titled back almost as if some giant stepped on the feet of the mountain, and gave the head of the mountain a violent shove back and to the side. And it seems like copious amounts of tears rained down its body, leaving deep vertical pick-marked crevices all the way to the base. Somehow, those tall mountains reminded me of a wrinkled, drunk leaning quite awkwardly against a lamppost a distance away. Still some other tall rock faces showed signs of weathering the brutal winds incessantly pounding its face for millions of years, leaving long horizontal scars along the breadth of mountains for miles and miles. And as we neared Lukong, the mountains receded a wee bit but left a shower of pebbles, some big, some small, some tiny, and still many gazillions into fine, soft sand running 200 feet on either side of the road, for miles on end.
Changla Pass, half way down our journey, was completely snowed under, with just the road cleared for passage. Large boards all along the route gently coaxed us to drive carefully. Nowhere did the warning hit home harder than 100 yards past the rest area we had stopped for hot tea and loo at Changla Pass. Three carcasses of very large military vehicles lay topside down, about 100 yards below us on a gentle slope, partly covered in ice. Our driver Tashi informed us that an avalanche had taken these three vehicles and with it, six brave soldiers down, just six weeks back. Of course none survived. Tashi apparently was no more than 100 yards away at the time of the tragedy, caught in a traffic snarl caused by iced out road conditions. Sobered by the scene, we slowed down for a brief prayer and thanks for those that guard our borders, and continued our journey.
To our left, the valley opened out into a very very wide river bed, probably a couple of miles wide and maybe four miles long, with sand as fine and as white as those on South Goa beaches. There was no water of course. But I was told that in a month's time, it would become a very wide but shallow snow-fed river. We started descending and before long, we spotted it - the pristine blue waters of Pangong Lake.
To say the lake was breathtaking would be cliched but not incorrect, given the rarified atmosphere of the place. The lake, stretching eastwards as far as the eye could see, was as brilliantly blue as the sky above. It is probably a couple of miles wide from my vantage point. Two thirds of it belong to China, and a third of it to India. A few gulls sat around at the edge of the lake, a couple of geese were noisily cackling, and a horde of tourists from Gurdaspur were yelling to each other.
As I walked away from the crowd to a quieter part, I felt gentle waves lapping the edge of the water. I dropped myself on the pebbly beach, and the rhythmic whoosh slowly soothed me. I stared what seemed like eternity at this marvel. Was it just another lake? Yes it was. But to find one tucked half way up our world, in a remote corner of the earth, far from human habitation was somehow awe inspiring and numbing. The tall mountains around it, the harsh terrain, and extreme weather, all seem to indicate that Mother Earth guards its most precious jewels in ways that seem to suggest "I will let you have a piece of me, but only if you respect and protect what I share with you". For once, I felt one with nature and God. Ten minutes later, I stepped out of my stupor and walked back towards humanity to help an SUV stuck in the sand.
I went back to the lake a couple of times before the pitter patter of rains, and bone-chilling winds took me back to the tent and to my iPhone to tap this story in.
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