Day 6 – (Leh Sight Seeing ) 13th August 09
The done still began a bit early tha expected and almost everyone was up around 8, the main aim for today was to get the Bikes serviced and then visit Leh in general. So everyone got ready and moved out around to Tashi, the mechanic we had talked to yesterday. There was already a queue built up there and we knew we have to be here for a long time, but we were relaxed kept chattering around and waiting for them to be fixed, the work was not much but it still took the whole of the afternoon to get them fixed.
Meanwhile we had applied permits for Pangong Lake and Nubra valley, and got them till the afternoon. The rest of the day had to be devoted to sight seeing and the first place was the Leh Palace. The palace was nowhere as big as the Rajasthan palaces but the structure built on the hill was fairly fascinating. From top of the palace we could see entire Leh. The palace had a museum explaining the design and some old remains.
From there we headed off the Santi Stupa, built on top of a hill, this was something at even an higher altitude than the palace, at a distance from there we could see black spots in the grounds and concluded that those might be army testing grounds. There a rock and roll monk there and we listened to him before we headed back to the hotel. We njoied dinner at KCs again and went to bed soon.
Day 7 (Pangong) 14th August 09
The pangong lake was around 150Km from Leh and we were told to reach there by 9 and return by 2:30PM if we wanted to come back the same day. But as we are got late and it was 7:30 by the time we left the hotel, the ride was amazing, nice roads and beautiful sceneries. The time factor had been bothering me a little but we needed to push on.
As we passed a fairly green patch with a little stream of water and flowers around, everybody got down to take a little nap J. And we pushed again, near Chang la (third highest motorable road in the world) the road was really bad, the worst we have had so far, and it was similar after crossing the pass as well, the patch was around 10 Km on each side and it wasted a lot of our time. But the roads were gud again after that and we pushed along.
We were almost near the lake when we hit a road block, there was a stream of water running in the middle of the road and this is what we dreaded. The problem is that as the sun starts to come up the ice starts to melt and the stream becomes wider and starts pouring in more water, taking the bikes across was out of the question. It was around 12 and there was no signs of this slowing down. After an hour of trying to find the best place to cross, it was decided to cross from the same place where everyone was crossing :P . but the flow had increased even more of we formed a human chain and slowly crossed the stream, Ashishs ligament was in a bit of a problem, but we managed to cross it without much problems.
Now was the big walk, it was told to us that the lake was around 4 Km from there and we had to walk the rest of the way. The people who know me well know that I was really annoyed on being late at the place and not being able to cross the stream on the bike. But in any case we started walking, the sun was at its peak and at a distance there seemed to be a glimpse of the lake at a distance
I would also want to tell you that I had not heard about the lake and did not know anything about it, everyone else had researched a lot and were looking really forward to it. As we started walking Varun calculated that it will take him 20 minutes to reach there and he bet on it and started walking fast, and soon he was nowhere to be seen. The biggest problem with the walking was with Bandar and his stressed leg, so we were the slowest walking slowly. After walking for 20 minutes we realized wat mirage actually means the bright sun shining on the ground was making the ground look like the lake and the lake was still nowhere to be seen.
We keep walking further and I see a car coming on the road, the driver was going in the opposite direction going to drop some people at the other end, he said he will be back soon to take us. I was filled with joy as I was very tired. As the guy came back we got in the car, and picked up everyone on the way, except Varun. As I got down at the lake the sight was jaw dropping, I haven’t seen anything so beautiful in my entire life and I was just gazing at it with my mouth wide open. The best thing about the place was the calm of the place and the lack of commercialization as well, the place was perfectly clean and not many people as well. When we came back to our senses we realized that Varun was still nowhere to be found, we got a bit worried but then he had nowhere to get lost and we knew he should be here sooner or later. He arrived after almost 10 minutes, and we were altogether.
We ordered Maggie and kept gazing at the beauty of the lake, this is one of the biggest lakes measuring 140 KM, situated at the India China border and most of it being in China. We finished eating, lied down at the lake for a while and waited for the cab to return to take us back to the place where our bikes were. We reached the side around fiveish and the flow seemed even stronger. Now we realized that the flow might be pulling down small rocks downstream and it would be difficult to cross, we tried a few different places and decided on a spot to cross, made the chain and crossed, everyone was quite relieved to have crossed but we had been completely drained of energy and we still had to drive back another 150 KM, all of us being quite wet and the sun setting.
I was in no mood to slow down and wanted to cover as much of the distance as possible while there was still sunlight and was riding very aggressively. On the way we found a biking couple with apunctured bike, we tried to help them with a few of our tools and the pump and all we could manage was to waste another half hour not being able to be of any help ( well we tried J ). The sun had set and it was a bit chilly, being wet was really not helping our cause, and we were at the worst part of the road, we were very slow now as the visibility was also very low. While going up in one of the slopes GKs bike struggled to go up and I quickly stopped and Ashish helped GK get up, if the bike had slipped it would have hit my bike and cant imagine what would have happened.
We had been driving almost continuously for quite some time and because of my hands freezing, I asked Ashish to take over, as I was in the pillion seat soon my back started to hurt a little, but we had to keep moving. After some time I was standing on the back seat as I couldn’t keep sitting, it was a completely free road with not even a single road for kilometers and kilometers. As we came down I came back to the drivers seat and kept moving on, we reached straight to KC’s around 11, had dinner and went to bed.
It had been a really tiring day for me, and my back was starting to hurt a bit, I hoped things would be fine tomorrow morning and I would be on the road. Its 15th August tomorrow and being near the border with all the army around makes you feel even more patriotic.
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