Come, hear me!

We had a long, solid view on the Tsomoriri in the morning and started our journey to Manali. (Btw, the pic on left is not the Tsomoriri, but the small lake I mentioned before.)

 

We drove along the famous salt water lake, Tsokar. We could see salt depositions many kilometers before Tsokar; at places we could not see the road though.

 

 

  Tsokar also seemed to have receded quite a bit. Getting near the lake was quite tricky because of the marshes.

 

 

 

We caught up with the Leh-Manali highway and yes, I admit it: there were some of the most spectacular landscapes on the way, specially the areas around Moore plains and the Baralacha La.

 

We had the taste of the “adventurous” Leh Manali highway, when our car got stuck in one the high make-shift bridges made by the army, over a very swift stream. We managed to create atleast 3 km long traffic jam on both sides.

   

Situation got so scary and confusing, that I didn’t even take a snap! With the help of atleast 50 truck drivers and some army jawans, we repaired that bridge with help of some GI sheets lying nearby and only then were able to move forward. 

 

We didn’t halt at Sarchu, as is the norm, but moved forward and decided to stay at Jispa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

As I had mentioned before, Leh is becoming green, as is quite evident by these pictures. I took these pictures, near Leh on the Manali road. We started our trip to Tsomoriri on Day 5 morning. I had seen some pictures of the famous lake on the Internet, but never could have imagined how beautiful and surreal it looked. Even the journey provided some of the most spectacular views. Now I’d better shut up and let the pics do the talking.

 

 

 

Small lake on the right is not the Tsmoriri, but Thag Sang Karu, as shown in the road map I had.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ten lane superhighway to Tsomoriri…

 

 

 

Lo and behold! The Tsomoriri.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I had seen this pic on Wikipedia. Since then, I have been mesmerized with and wanted to see Tsomoriri. At last, I was able to take the same shot, but not as colourful.

Speaking of  colours, we were able to catch the festival at local monastry. Costumes were interesting, the dance and music were not.

They went on and on repeatedly for quite some time, when we got fed up and went back to the lake.

In the meantime, Tsomoriri’s water had changed its colour. We could see shades of green too now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sun, shadows of clouds and the mountain behind us, created cool effects.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Locals are  fearing that the water level in the lake is receding year by year!I don’t know what can be done about it. If this is truly the case, it is really, really sad!

Now that S’s eye had started improving and the doc had given us the “clean chit” to continue with our trip, we crossed the highest motorable pass, Khardung La today and moved further to Nubra valley. it was snowing at the La. It became even heavier while  our return.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

Nubra valley has the most colourful mountains I have ever seen. Shades of blue, brown, gray, red, green and millions of other colours seemed painted and streaks flew across the Karakoram.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

               

 

 

 

 

 

 

it had vast expanses of flat areas, almost like Moore’s but quite rocky.

 

 

 

 

Can you spot the road, in the picture on the left?

 

 

 

 

And, there were sand dunes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our plan of staying the night had to be put off, as we had gone a day short.

 

 

 

Today, that we had to go to the hospital, we dropped our prior plan of going for an excursion to Nubra valley and thought of further exploring regions around Leh, such as Thiksey, Shey etc. The day proved to be quite an eye-opener, as I  described in my last post.
People of Leh are trying hard to get some greenery in their cold desert. One can see stark boundaries at places.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   Early morning, we left our ultra sh**ty Shamba-la Hotel, and headed for Pangong Tso. We passed the third highest motorable pass, Chang La, drinking the awesome “complementary” Masala Chai, courtesy the Indian Army (Thank you guys!)

The landscaping was awesome, all along the way.

In this picture on the right, can you spot the road?

 

 

 

 

Pangong Tso, one the largest HALs. Alas, it was quite overcast, not the best day for photography.    

Plug for Jimmy (I promised and I owe him): Quite an awesome guy, driver, Sumo Grande owner. You want to move around Ladakh, you want to move with Jimmy (or Zimmet, I think, his real Buddhist name). I can give you his contact, if you are interested.

Pangong did not prove to be very lucky for bro. There is a small Himalayan bee, which when comes in contact with human eye, lays eggs in it. This time, it found S’s eye as its nest. We immediately turned back to Leh, which was a good 5 hours away. On the way, in a military first aid camp on Chang La, the doctor told us that the situation is serious, and we should hurry to Leh. Jimmy increased his speed, but along the way infection spread to S’s ear too and it started paining a lot. Hearing this, Jimmy really stepped on it, and made it to Leh in almost record time.

Now hear this: Eye doc’s time was till 6. We reached his clinic after 6:15. He had almost locked the door, on his way out. Seeing the emergency, he opened up, spent an hour with S and managed to get most of the eggs out, using various eye scraping tools, water syringes etc. At the end of this active session, he flatly refused to accept any fee, citing that he works in the govt hospital during the day and that salary was enough for him.

As if this was not enough, the next day, he called us for a re-inspection in his office in the Leh Hospital.  He also wanted us to consult an ENT specialist for the pain in the ear.

When we reached hospital the next day, S’s pain had increased tremendously again. We were shocked to see that whole hospital was on strike, asking for 6th pay commission salaries. Obviously chamber of Dr. Angchuk was locked. Jimmy was with us. He told us not to worry and after some searching and enquiries, he was able to determine that doctor was sitting in Suptd’s office. We went there. As soon as doc saw us, he immediately asked us what was S’s situation. Hearing that it is not good, he asked us to reach his room. By the time we reached there, already 4 nurses had started preparations for a minor procedure. Doc later told us that some small eggs had been left the evening before and now they had grown. Doc and his nurses worked again actively, and this time were able to give the eye a very good clean-up, as the instruments in the hospital were much better than in his clinic. Now the doc was satisfied that there are no more eggs left.

When we reminded him that he had asked us to consult an ENT doc too, he asked us to wait and disappeared. Within no time, he was back with his ENT friend and both of them again conducted a thorough examination of S. Again these specialists took no fees. They were on strike!

I was flabbergasted. In any of the cities down south, such attention is not paid even in good private hospitals, if we ignore the extremely expensive ones like Max, leave aside Government hospitals. The service provided by on strike docs and nurses were stupendous and I bow to them.

At that moment, I felt, (very selfishly) it is good that Leh remains cut off from rest of India for major part of the year. Here, people still know the meaning of service and humanity.

We had been planning this trip for so long, that I can’t even remember who had earlier proposed it. Not that it matters. For all I remember, I was vehemently against going to Leh by air, as I thought that it would ruin the whole journey. I wanted to experience the famous Manali-Leh highway.

However, inspite of all our plans, this trip came upon us quite unexpectedly. Less than a month back, when dad asked me whether I was interested for a trip, I said yes, only on the condition that we would go to Leh and that too by road. If he was game, I am too. At that time, he said yes, and so our trip was on. But I knew he didn’t want to take the usual route: Go Manali-> Leh by the road and come back by air.

So the next evening, both of us sat down and charted a different course altogether. This proved out to be one of the most enthralling trips of my life and the people who know me, know that I have travelled quite a bit, specially among Himalayas. Here, I would be giving a brief description of the tour. I am a man of less words, so I would let my pictures say the thousand words.

On Day 1 (21/7), we took the early morning Kingfisher flight from IGI ND to Leh.

The less said about this flight the better. The ‘Aloo Puri’ breakfast of the flight was stale, airhostesses looked like characters from ‘The Ghost Bride’ ( I think you can guess whose side they belonged to.)

Anyways, the plane was quite clean and I think that was the saving grace.

The weather was quite cloudy and views of Leh were scarce. After an uneventful flight, we landed safely on the irregular, jerky Leh runway.

After a bit of rest and ignoring warnings about AMS, we went to the market to hire ride for our charted plan, had a good lunch and went around Leh for some local sightseeing.

    Disclaimer (for all articles in the series): All photographs have been shot by me and are my property. If you find them objectionable, please look elsewhere. If you think know, I have shot something which I didn’t have the right to shoot, I have done so in complete innocence. Please let me know, I will remove the snaps immediately and delete them from my computer too. Thanks!