Exploring Ladakh (Leh - Part II)

First part of my travelogue reaching Leh from Manali by Enfield motorcycle can be found at: http://shantagunny.blogspot.in/2015/08/gunny-motorcycle-diaries-manali-to-leh.html

Suggestions

• If you are traveling in Leh during the non-peak season, you get easily get 25-30% discount on the published taxi rates.  Take a look at the published taxi rates and calculate how much the published fare for your trip would be.  This knowledge will help you to negotiate better.  Before start negotiating, take a look at the vehicle first and make sure that you are happy with that.
• Every destination in Ladakh area may or may not be beautiful but the journey to those places will be definitely awesome.
• There are a lot of guest houses and hotels close to the old town
  
  
  near the palace area.
• The share taxi stand is now moved to a new place (polo ground) that’s located in the Manali highway beginning area.  If you are planning to take share taxi to Manali or Kargil or Srinagar, you need to have patience and belief that you would get there.  The people in the taxi stand are very helpful and will let you know which taxi will leave first to your destination and you have to wait til the taxi get full, it may take 30 minutes or two hours.
• Instead of booking separate taxi rides, e.g. Leh to Nubra valley
  
  or Leh to Pongong, etc., have an itinerary and book as a 3 or 4 day trip, you will be able to get deep discounts.
• If there’s no major floods or landslides, you will be able to go to Pongong from Nubra Valley without coming to Leh, when you book multi day tours, you will be able to save time.
• If you are planning to go to Tso Moriri from Pangong lake using backroads, you need to get the inner line permit and plan to get it a week or earlier.  
• Not many people venture to the Tso Moriri because of its remoteness that is one of the reasons why you should visit.  
  
  There’s limited accommodations near the lake, so as soon as you arrive there, book a place before you go out to enjoy the views.

Getting the Discount

Before going to the taxi stand, we talked to the receptionist about the taxi, our plan and asked for his suggestions.  With the help of the published taxi fare booklet, we calculated different fares for different plans and finalized on a less expensive plan for four days.  To cover the places that we wanted to cover, the published taxi fare has price for five days so right away we knew that we could easily get 20% discount and after negotiation we were able to get 30% discount with the first driver that we talked to.  We left to Nubra valley around 1030pm because we need to cross the check post before certain time.  

Khardungla

We saw a lot bicyclists on the way to the Khardungla pass and view of himalayas in the background of Leh was pretty awesome.  The road was dusty but well maintained.  There’s an oxygen station run by army and a cafeteria at the 18380 feet level.  It was not as cold as what we expected.  We spent about 15-20 minutes walked around taking a lot pictures and testing my endurance by doing pushups at the high altitude, we continued our journey to Nubra valley.   After coming down from the Khardungla pass, we took a break at the Khardung village for lunch and tea, if you want to enjoy the food at the military canteen, it is available there. 

Orchard of Ladakh

The Shyhok river and the valley is very beautiful with a lot of

vegetation, since the climate in the valley is mild at the 10,100 ft level, people were able to do farming there.  Even on the side of the roads, there are a lot of lavender plants.  This area is called "Orchard of Ladakh”.  We decided to visit the Diskit monastery before continuing to the Hunder, and climbing the stairs to the top of the monastery was really tiresome but it is worth time and it is a such a peaceful place.   In contrast to this 14th 

century monastery, there’s a new and modern monastery with 14meter statue of buddha is close by.  You can go there to have a good view of the Nubra Valley and I didn’t find that monastery interesting.

Sand Dunes

The main attractions in the Nubra valley are the sand dunes and Bactrian camels (two hump backs).  Diskit is the government center in the valley so it is a little bigger town than Hunder.  We reached Hunder around 5pm, while my friends were taking the ride on the

camel, I was walking around the sand dunes enjoying the beautiful scenery.  Compared to the sand dunes in Rajasthan or any other desert area, it is not huge but the location of it between the mountain ranges is the beauty.  The whole place shuts down once

the sun goes down.  We wished that we went to Turtuk which is very close to the Pakistan border which became accessible only after 2010, but no time.  There are a number of tourists visit Nubra Valley for camping but majority of them are just to just a day visit to see the sand dunes.  More than the scenery of the sand dunes, the scenery along the way is very beautiful

Road to Pangong Tso

We really wanted to take the road through Warsi La to Pongong but due to the latest cloudburst and bad weather, that road was closed

so we had to go through Leh. We took the road through Changla, which is the third highest motorable pass in the world (17,688 ft), to Pangong.  As expected, the scenery is very dramatic with the views of monasteries, yaks and himalayan marmots.  It is depressing to see most of the tourists getting very close to the marmots and in some cases feeding them to take pictures.  

Pangong Tso

As with any tourist place in India, Pangong was crowded and the signs about “no motor vehicles beyond this point” or “no camping

allowed” do not have respect, saw people riding their motorcycles/cars very close to the lake and also saw a person camped closer to the lake.  As usual, I could see beer bottles and other trash thrown around the lake which is depressing.  Ignoring all these, if you look at the scenery it is mesmerizing and couldn’t find anyone getting in the water for swim.  Guess what, no one is willing to do it, i was dumb enough to do it, so got in to the water and ready to take a dip but at last minute afraid of

getting arrested for swimming there (this lake is considered as one of the sacred lakes), got out of it just standing in the water for sometime.  The water was not that cold but very clear and nice.  It is one of the largest (83 miles long) high elevation  (about 14,000 ft) lakes that’s shared between India and Tibet(China).  The view of the clear blue water surrounded by mountains is very beautiful.

There are a lot of tent sites as well as concrete buildings available to stay in Spangmik, which is the name of the village on the shores of the Pangong Tso.  Surprisingly, it was not very cold at night and I could get out of the room around 5 am to see the sunrise without much winter cloths.  We decided to wake up early the next day to drive to Tso Moriri.

Drive to Tso Mirori

This is one of the remotest and beautiful landscape that I have seen,

this drive is the best of the best.  We drove up to the Merek village and the drive is so beautiful.  Most of the tourist don’t go beyond Spangmik but you need a four wheel drive to go to Merek.  On the way to the lake, we saw a number of Brahmini ducks, Tibetan Asses (Kiangs) and nomads setting up their tents in remote areas grazing their goats.  This is also one of

the high altitude lakes (14,500 ft) and at night this place gets really cold.  We met a group of people travelled from Mumbai wearing no shoes/socks and cotton cloths freezing in the dining area, because they had been told by their tour operator it won’t be cold.  I really wanted to see the night sky but didn’t bother to fight the freezing weather so slept well.

Adventure (almost) gone Bad

We stopped briefly for tea near Tso Kar (white lake) and didn’t find a lot tourists staying here.  Due to the high salt content, this lake

looks white from far so the name Tso Kar.  Also on the way, we passed through sulphur lake and a water spring.  Since there’re not many tourists traveling here, you could enjoy quite, calm and remoteness, that is hard to find in India, here.  Once you reach the Manali Leh highway, you will see a lot of traffic.  We stopped at the Taglangla pass for some time and the driver wanted to make our trip interesting so he took on the

off road to cut 5 km of travel through the winding road, it was like rolling down from 17,000 ft.  It was fun for 5 minutes before car

got stuck in the mud.  We tried hard to move the vehicle but no luck, but we were lucky to get stuck near a place some people were working laying cable for the BRO.  Five of us managed to push the car out of mud after trying different tricks for about 45 minutes and continued our journey to Leh.

Last Minute Things

We reached Leh around 4pm and decided to take the motorcycle to the mechanic to take a look at it for the long ride the next day.

 Since one of the riders was having hand pain, we decided to leave one motorbike in Leh and take only one bike back to Manali.  I decided to go to Srinagar and fly out of Srinagar to Chennai.  There’s a long line of people checking and running their bikes, so by the time we got our bike it was dark.  We decided to look for the share taxi stand and the exact location of it was not found by the time we went back to the room because different opinions/directions provided by others.  We packed the stuff for the riders and put them in the bike before went to sleep.

Conclusion

I wish that we rode the bike to Nubra valley, Pangong lake and Moriri lake areas, but it needs a lot of time and planning that we didn’t have in this trip.  May be next time.  It is one the best trips of my lifetime.