Ladhak – Heaven on earth. Tour Diaries, Day 4

Day 4 – (Darcha – Pang ) 11^th August 10

The day began early around 4:30AM and we had to crap out in the open as there were no restrooms and so we did. Uttaran got into a poetic mode while downloading and said the inspiration was the beauty of the place. I have heard that many ideas strike in the toilet but I poem was a first timer, well here is the poem :

What a view when i was at the loo,

It could have been to a fortunate few,

Slowly the sun grew,

Giving a yellow hue,

When i was doing poo

Everyone took their sweet own time to get ready but we managed to get nice breakfast, and got late again. There was an issue as soon as we started, there was a petrol leak from GK’s bike, this was the worse bike now, ofcourse Sayrathi’s bike was not with us. So a quick jugaad with a thin wire fixed the thing and we were set to go.

Around half an hour into the drive we reached “Deepak Taal” it was beautiful lake in the heart of the mountains, I hadn’t seen a beautiful lake than this before, we took out time there appreciating the beauty of the place and moved on after a while. The roads were nice to drive and we were going at a decent pace. Next stop was at Sarchu around 11 AM and to our surprise we got Daal chawal there, of course Maggie was also available, I had heard a lot about Sarchu and was supposed to be our stop for last night but we couldn’t make it due to delay and had to stay at Darcha, and found that it was quite similar to Darcha, a few more tents and places to stay.

We pushed on and reached Lachulungla, the highest pass we had reached so far, GK was struggling with altitude sickness and he had to take a Diamox, and we were also out of water so we had to borrow it from some passing by foreigners.

As we were climbing up the bikes were at hard labour, hardly managing to go up in the first gear and lack of oxygen was also not helping the cause. At one of the bends Varuns bike could not move further, any guesses who his pillion was (of course it was Bandar) and while trying to get down from the bike he managed to get entangled in the bike and both of them fell J. Just ahead I parked and we reached to their rescue. Bandar had strained his ligament again, and was in a bit of pain.

The worst part of stopping where its not necessary is that all the trucks you have overtaken so far move ahead at their slow pace and you need to overtake them once again L. On that note I must say that truck drivers in this region are the sweetest, you need to honk once and they will give way, some times you don’t even need to do that, more often than once did the truck drivers pull up at the side to let us through, i had a lot of respect for them. A few kilometers ahead a truck parked at the side stopped and asked for “Oxygen wali Goli”, and we were happy to give him the Diamox.

There were a lot of Army trucks on this route and it made for a wonderful site. One of the army trucks had a flat tyre and there was a road block, so we got down from the bikes and took some pictures, one of the army guys asked us as to what we were doing here and as told him we are here on a holiday, he had a surprised look on his face and he said we want to go back from here, why would you want to come here for a holiday J. Country man, little did he know the absurdities of city life J. It was a break of around half an hour and we pushed off again.

We drove for another hour in the valley and got climbing up again almost reaching the top we found a nice view and got down to take some pictures, believe me guys the beauty of the place is breathtaking and the calm and peace about the place was feeling so good.

On one of the turns a slowed because of traffic on the other side and Sayarthi hit my bike from behind and fell down. Luckily no one was hurt and no major damages to the bike.We had almost reached Pang but were thirsty as hell so we stopped by the side and washed our faces in the river and also drank the water, it was cold and refreshing. Almost at pang we had to cross a check post and needed to register there. The point is that these are so remote places that the police wants you to register urself just in case you are lost and they can track up. Two of the bikes had gone zooming past the checkpost and the officers were really annoyed with them on doing such a thing.

We reached Pang around 4 and it was pretty early for us to park, but most of us were just tired driving, driving and more driving, so we wanted to take a break. Ashish wanted to move on but we didn’t buzz. GK was still in bad shape and headed straight to the bed. Pang was no more than a few tents and we parked at one of them, all of the tents were the same cost , so we stayed at the one we had parked J. It was owned by an old lady, but she was very energetic and she handed over a notebook to us to write down whatever we take, this sense of trust was a great gesture and cannot be forgotten. Of course we were not gonna cheat her, but trusting travelers is a big thing.

The toilet was again in the open but there was slumdog millionare type of a rest room as well, and Sayarthi had some relief as he dreaded the open. We had a nice meal strolled around for a while and hit the bed early.