We woke up early today, earlier than the last 2 days, as a long journey waited ahead for us - journey to Pangong Lake. We came down to realize that a new driver waited for us as well. Our previous local friend had fallen sick, arranging for his younger friend to take his place.
Our journey started, as the sun kept trying to come up. Today's route was a different one - Leh-Manali highway. We crossed more desert-like areas today, passing by Shey palace, getting a brief view of Thiksay monastery... and soon we were on the famous Chang La pass.
The mostly narrow highway wriggled around the mountain, making its way up. The higher we got, the prettier was the view of the valley down below... but scarier too. Some of the portions of the road was badly damaged, covered with slippery pieces of pitch, which would be a normal sight otherwise, but up high on Chang La pass, claimed to be second-highest motorable road in the world... it made me nervous. The army maintained the road in a regular basis and they did a pretty good job there too, considering how often landslides happened in these parts of the mountain. But they could only do so much.
Bhavna had fallen asleep by then. I kept chewing on my chocolate sticks to give me strength, as the air had become even lighter up here... and I didn't do too well on mountain roads. But the view alone kept me going, without ever making me feel sick. It was a different kind of thrill ride, the view on my left constantly helping my imagination on picturing our way down, in case we skipped a note somewhere... but it was fun, nevertheless. It was the chilliest today, finally allowing me don my favourite leather jacket. I could even see a few faraway mountain peaks covered with snow.
In about 8 to 8.30, we reached Chang La peak, a pit stop for tourists in this uninhabited paradise. I am not a tea person... but we were freezing our butts off, we would take anything we got. The tea slightly warmed us up, enough to get some selfie-s with the snowy peaks in background. In about 10 minutes, we resumed our journey, this time downwards.
The sun was getting warmer, making us feel quite comfortable even at this altitude. Thank God for summer! The driver stopped at another tourist stop, where people crowded in to get their hands on Yak milk & cheese. We were in empty stomach, plus our tendency to fall sick in mountain passes, stopped us from going crazy. But we didn't miss the opportunity to get friendly with the Yaks, at least as much as they let us.
We were going further down and habitations started appearing again. Somewhere near Durbuk, we stopped for a good breakfast. It was quite sunny now, so we sat outside and took the sun in as much as possible, before starting again. The road ahead was getting prettier every second. The dusty & rocky texture of the way up was now gone. Instead, we were amidst a much greener view. We stopped near an army base to get our passes, as Pangong Tso was right at Indo-China border.
We still had a long way to go - at least about an hour. But the constantly changing view kept us engaged. Every few minute a different coloured mountain came up... followed by a completely different terrain, grass meadows with strolling horses, colourful rocky plateau with pleasant streams, huge & inviting white sand beaches... and what not. It was true feast for our eyes.
And then we saw it... the first glance of the heavenly blue Pangong Tso. Whatever exhaustion had started taking over our body, disappeared in a flash. We were familiar with the lake from multiple Bollywood blockbusters, e.g. 3 Idiots, Jab Tak Hai Jaan etc. But seeing it with our naked eyes was something else. (cover image at the top)
As our Innova made way through the army checkpoint and stopped by the lake, we realized how giant the lake was. The lake wasn’t wide, but rather long… however far we could see towards the Chinese border, there was no end to the lake. We quickly jumped down from our car and walked towards the lake.
There is something about water, that I cannot explain… it pulls me towards itself with an inexplicable power, and I follow as if in trance, even though I don’t know swimming. We started walking by the less populated parts, as various tourist groups had occupied the more popular and scenic parts.
A part of the beach goes deeper inside the lake, as if poking it, and has the best views and photographic potential – that’s where most of the crowd gathers up. A few stock photographers roam around asking to take people’s pictures, with movie backgrounds such as the iconic yellow scooter from 3 idiots climax sequence.
With a large number of tourists, one of the downsides is always cleanliness – which had started affecting Pangong as well. We saw empty packets of chips lying right by the lake’s edge, dipping in its water, starting to put black spots in Pangong’s pristine beauty.
We walked over to the popular point in the sandy beach, passing through the yellow scooters and photographers as we had no interest in conventional things. The deepest end of the beach had a large group of people as well, trying to get the best pictures of themselves. Locals had put up a rope at the far end with colourful Buddhist flags, that was giving a beautiful background for selfie-s – and we didn’t miss that. But what attracted me the most, was a little stone shrine, built a few feet inside the lake, in knee-deep water.
People were going in there and from an angle it looked like they were deep inside the lake, surrounded by the soothing blue water. I wanted to try it myself, so in I went. The water was bone-chilling, in a few seconds my limbs almost went numb, kept barely awake by the poking pebbles at every step of the way… but, boy, was it refreshing! I reached the shrine and lingered there for some time, enjoying the sight of water all around me, while Bhavna quickly captured the moments.
Once outside, we sat there for some more time, slightly away from the crowd, relishing the serenity, whatever still remained. It was noon and hunger had really caught up with us, so we went towards one of the cleverly named restaurants a little away from the beach, where we met another obnoxious pair of tourists. These 2 men had ordered for Maggi – easy-cook noodles – and the moment the chef-lady kept the food in front of them, they loudly commented what the hell it was, not pleased with the un-sophistication of it.
In this uninhabited place, at a height of 14,000 ft, just a few miles away from Chinese border, we were thankful that at least a few choices of warm & familiar food were available! But those men were probably hoping for Michelin star restaurants to be built in every faraway tourist spot they fancied visiting. Tough luck for them!
We spent about 30 to 40 more minutes enjoying the chilly breeze of Pangong, before starting back. It was 4-5 hours journey, so we couldn’t afford to be too late to start. The vibrant terrains kept our eyes soothed, as we drove back towards Leh. After passing through the army base where we got our passes, our car took a detour through a rougher road as landslides had blocked a portion of the standard route. This is where I started feeling sick and forced myself to sleep for the rest of the drive.
We reached our hotel by evening, after which I started feeling better. We spent the rest of the Day 3, resting up and watching TV.