Day 0 - Aug 21st evening
Here I am waiting at Chennai airport to board the Jet Airways flight to Delhi and then to Leh. One useful thing that I did during the wait was to buy a small notepad to take notes of places visited during the trip. Soon I get the message that the rest of the group have already reached Leh and found an accommodation. They had started 2 days earlier on Friday and had taken to fly to Chandigarh and then travelled by bus to Manali and then hired a jeep to Leh. It must have been a tiring journey for them, precisely what I wanted to avoid by fly to Leh. As per the original plan I was supposed to reach earlier and get acclimatised and they would have reached on 22nd evening, but then the plans had changed. I had wanted to visit Ladakh ever since I watched the movie 3 Idiots, but this trip was itself not planned long time back and had only materialised only a month and half back and I was the last guy to join this group. The flight took off on time and reached Delhi airport at 11.15pm and the next flight to Leh was at 5.45AM and so I had to figure out how to spend the next 6 hours of transit time in delhi airport. The Delhi airport was a big one and display boards stated that it was rated the 5th best airport in the world, but to my surprise, there was no lounge area for transit passengers awaiting early morning flights and the check-in counters and boarding area were closed till around 4AM. I tried without luck to find a spot to lie down. In between found a restaurant invitingly named “Vaango” and had a lousy dosa over priced at more than 100 rupees. Around 2am had a coffee at Café Coffee Day (CCD) and finally found a spot to lie down and rest for a while. Around 4am, checked in my baggage and went to the boarding gate and waited. The Leh flight started on time and reached Leh at 7am. The last 20 minutes was quite a unusual flying experience. The plane was flying close to the mountain tops and navigating between sharp and edgy mountains before the landing strip appeared out of nowhere and the pilot brought the plane to a screeching halt…
Day 1 – August 22nd
Day 1 – August 22nd
Took a pre-paid cab from Leh Airport and reached the Skitpo guest house at 8am. Refreshed myself and joined the rest of the gang for breakfast at German bakery. Had a croissant and doughnut and cup of coffee for breakfast and we headed out. The plan was to visit monasteries and palaces around Leh. We visited the Shey Palace, Thiksey Monastery, Hemis Monastery and Stakna palace. For me, it was a bit of overdose of palaces and monasteries. It was quite hot in Leh, which was a surprise. I even thought it was hotter than Chennai! J Sunglass was mandatory and a hat was preferable. The lack of sleep and acclimatization was beginning to show during the afternoon resulting in headache which was a Altitude sickness syndrome. To add to it, I had the worst ever Schezwan Fried Rice for lunch at a restaurant at Thiksey and I was looking forward to returning to the room and taking some rest. Finally I came back to hotel and slept for an hour which made me feel better. We then headed out for dinner. We first tried at a popular restaurant Lamarayu, but it was too crowded. So we looked around and found Sun Beam café which could accommodate the 7 of us. We had roti, dal and subji and it was quite decent I thought, but the rest of the group seemed to really like it. Hit the bed after dinner and had a good sleep which helped cure the altitude sickness to a major extent. For those of you visiting high altitude area, particularly if you are landing there straight from a low altitude area, it is best to take it easy for a day or two to get acclimatized to the conditions. This holds good even if you think you are fit and in good shape.
Shey Palace
Day 2 – August 23rd
Started early at 6am to Pangong Tso lake. It was about 200kms from Leh. Enroute we passed Chang La which was one of the highest passes in the world at 17500 ft. It was quite cold at that point, but otherwise it was quite ok during the journey. Pangong Tso was a very beautiful place and it was very much worth the effort to travel 200kms to see it. Probably pictures would better describe Pangong Tso. Some portion of 3 Idiots movie was shot here. We spent close to 2 hours there. Our driver Musa commented that in his 8 years of experience, this is the most time that his passengers spent here. Usually it is more like 30 minutes, but then we were not regular visitors! We also had some expert photographers who wanted to capture the beauty from all angles! J We then had lunch at a shack there and headed back. We were amused to see a group of guys (dubbed Oorka Boyz) who had driven from AP and who busy eating rice mixed with 3 big jars of pickles they had brought with them. On way back visited the Shanti Stupa. Had a good view of the Leh town and Leh Palace from the stupa. While walking back to hotel, we stopped by at a good cafeteria for a cup of coffee/tea. Dinner was again at Sun Beam Café which was becoming our favourite dinner spot , but I decided that I should try something other than a roti today. Scanning the menu, I found that they serve sizzlers and so it was a veggie sizzler for me. It came out quite good. Today was Kannan’s birthday and the dinner was on him J
Pangong Tso
Day 3 – August 24th
We checked out of the guest house and headed out to Nubra Valley with the plan to visit Hunder and Disket, which were about 125kms from Leh. Enroute we had to climb upto to 18360 feet and pass the Khardung La pass, credited to be the world’s highest motorable road. We stopped there and posed for a group picture and had hot ginger lemon tea at worlds highest cafetria!!! Compared to Chang La, it was not that cold in Khardung La. The roads became bad after that point and it was a bumpy uncomfortable ride for about 15kms. The dry scenery and hot sun did not help either. The only good thing was that along the way we stopped for lunch at the road side place, where we had the best lunch in 3 days. It was a simple rajma dal, chaval and gobi/spinach subji meal, but was very good. As we neared our destination, we visited a few places along the way. Hot springs was the first stop. The government has constructed a building with lot of bathrooms for people to take bath in hot spring water. We then went to the wish pond and then to Samtonling monastery. By now, I had developed a fatigue for monasteries have seen quite a few in the last few days. It was getting late evening and we planned to end the day at a hotel in Disket., but we soon found out that good accomodations were already booked and so Musa bhai took us to a guest house in nearby Hunder, which were run by people known to him (as he is from that area). The Galaxy guest house was quite decent and cheap @Rs 600/room. We had the whole guest house for ourselves. The dinner prepared at the guest house was quite good and the best thing was the vegetables were freshly plucked from the garden and cooked! It was a good day food-wise!
Samtonling Monastery
Day 4 – August 25th
Had breakfast and then headed to turtuk, which was about 80 -90kms from Hunder. Musabhai seemed to know a lot of people in the area and he kept saying “Juley” (meaning Hello) to a lot of people along the way. The weather was pleasant and made for good journey. Turtuk village has supposedly not changed for 500 years. It was with Pakistan till 1971 war and became part of India after that. Since it was close to the border, army had a big presence all along the way. Pretty much all the infrastructure, including schools were run by the army. Reached Turtuk and went to the village. It was very nice with stone houses, fields and fruit bearing trees. Had apricots for the first time in my life and that too fresh of the tree. It was like shake the tree and a lot if apricots fall down and you take it and eat it. I thought apricots had to eaten fresh of the tree, else it gets spoiled quickly. Other option is it had to be dried and then had. Also for the first time had tiny fruit called seebukthon, which has bittersweet taste. The people of Turtuk were very fair and good looking and looked very different from an typical Indian look. They had more like a Persian look. The children were photogenic and good looking. I noticed that women folk did a lot of hard work including carrying some heaving items, while men folk were either chatting or generally not to be found. Also noticed that men folk wore modern dresses like pants/shirts while women folk wore more traditional dresses. Seemed the mindset has not changed as well. Heard there were about 600 families living in the village. Finally came out of the village and had lunch at a local eatery. It was chowmein for lunch today. It was a bit overcooked, but not bad. As we headed back, we had two choices, either do the camel ride or visit Disket monastery. We choose the camel ride. It is unbelieveable till you actually see that there could a desert at above 12000 feet and you could have a camel ride. Back to the guest house and relaxed for a while. We had juice/beer and snacks followed by dinner and the group indulged in some heated debate over contemporary political situation in the living room (the owners must have been alarmed at the rising decibel levels) before going to bed…
Hunder – Nubra Valley
Day 5 – August 26th
Checked out of the guest house after breakfast and headed for Disket. Galaxy guest house had been a nice stay with good food. First we visited the giant Buddha statue and then visited the Disket monastery, which was one of the important monasteries in Ladakh. I liked the Disket monastery of all the monasteries I visited during this trip. From the monastery it was quite a view to see the buddha statue rising up in the desert. We then started towards to Leh. Once in Leh, we stopped at a monastery, but I did not get in. We then headed to Leh Palace. The Archeological Society of India (ASI) is taken over the palace and is doing restoration. Otherwise nothing much in that place except for a good view of the Leh town from there. Checked in back to Skitpo guest house and after refreshing, went out for coffee and a bit of shopping. We ordered customised T-Shirts for the group and I picked a couple more for myself. We had dinner at Le Pizzeria, which was supposed to be the best Italian eatery in town. The thin crusted pizzas were quite good. Generally we observed that foreigners were getting better service than fellow countrymen in some of the restaurants in Leh. It is not that the foreigners are spending generously. Rather as far as I could see, many of them seemed to be staying in Leh for a long time and seem to be budget. So it is mostly the skin color and colonial mindset thing I suppose.
Disket Monastery
Day 6 – August 27th
At around 7.15am, Disney, Kannan and myself set out to have some coffee. Our usual coffee hangout, the German Bakery was not open yet. So we headed out in search of some place which is open. Soon we found ourselves at one end of town without any success. So we retraced our steps and after some time we found ourselves in the other end of town with no coffee shop in sight. Without losing hope, we kept trying and finally found a tibetian café which was open. On enquiring, we found that there was some bandh and shops will open only at 2pm in the afternoon. Luckily this café was open and we had toast and poached eggs and coffee. The service was good as well. It made all the walking in search of coffee worthwhile. Went back to hotel and checked out and started to Lake Tsomoriri. While packing, realized that I had lost my sunglasses the evening before. Tried without luck in the cafeteria that I had been to. It will be difficult without sunglasses. So during the food stop on way, got a cheap sunglass @150 bucks. It was only one piece available and as I didn’t have a choice, bought it as something was better than nothing and fortunately it lasted till the end of next day! The drive to Tsomoriri was good with pleasant weather and nice scenery. The roads were generally good. We mistook the first but smaller lake we encountered as Tsomoriri. Even that was beautiful. Soon we could see Tsomoriri from a distance and as we neared it, we could even see some structures, but it took some time to figure out the route to reach it. We got into a home stay type accommodation there. It was 1000 rs for 8, while the deluxe tents a few meters away were 3500 for 2! We then headed to the lakeside to take pictures. It was beautiful. There were no one else in the lakeside unlike Pangong Tso. Apparently it was open to public only a year back or so. It was also getting a bit cold, probably for the first time in the trip and so we came back to the room. Some of the guys got Military Rum from the army post near by and drinks party was on. I tasted rum a bit. Dinner was decent, but I didn’t have a good appetite.
Tsomoriri
Day 7 – August 28th
I went to lakeside again in the morning and spent some time watching the lake, mountains and the rising sun. I also sat down and wrote some trip notes. Back to the room , breakfast and we were headed to lake Tsokar. Tsokar was not as big and beautiful as Tsomoriri. It had salt deposits on its shore. After some pictures, we were on way to Leh. We took a different route on way back and merged to the Manali – Leh route. We passed Tanglang La, which was one of the highest passes at over 17500 feet. We finally reached Leh and checked in to Skitpo. The trip was almost ending for me as I and Mahendra were flying back the next day morning, while the rest of the group are heading to Kargil and then to Srinagar before returning. Took a short break in guest house and went to German bakery for coffee then followed by some assorted shopping like getting some dried apricots and nuts. Picked up the ordered T-shirts and managed to get back my lost sunglass as well. The final dinner was again on Sun beam café. Did the necessary packing before hitting the bed.
Day 8 – August 29th
Woke up early to get ready and Musa picked us and dropped in airport at around 5.45am. Leh airport had tight security procedures because of the army presence. Reached Delhi around 8.15 and had breakfast at Vaango despite my earlier bad experience to check if it was a one off thing. It only validated my earlier finding except that after a week of no south Indian food, the Vaango dosa did not taste as bad as the week before, but still bad enough. Finally reached Chennai at 1.30pm and reached home at 2.45pm after an exciting and eventful Leh trip.
