19th July, 2008.
Route: Udhampur – Pathankot – Delhi.
Distance Covered: ~110km by bike, 476km by train.

The easiest day

There are two routes from Udhampur to reach Pathankot, one via Jammu and another via Surinsar mansar wildlife sanctuary and dayala chak. The other route via Dayala Chak is a short cut, it is not as good as NH1, but still in better condition. The journey from udhampur to pathankot was uneventful. We reached Pathankot somewhere around 12pm, searched for the GATI courier and cargo. Just after reaching Pathankot, my bike’s fuel got empty, the last petrol filled was in Leh, it gave an amazing mileage; from Leh to Pathankot in one full tank. By the time all the formalities are complete, it was around 3.00 pm; we booked train tickets to the Delhi, had late Lunch and back to the station. Tonight was to be spent in the train.

We would be in Delhi tomorrow.

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20th July, 2008.
Route: Delhi – Bangalore.
Distance Covered: 2061km

The last day.

Reached Delhi, First time we were not driving after so many days. Felt nice. Took a metro to Dwarka Sector 9, took cycle rickshaw to reach my sisters place. Spent the afternoon at her place. The flight to Bangalore was at 4.30pm. Sudhakar, Shantanu and Manoj went to a hotel and later they were roaming in and around cannaught place. They managed to miss the flight :) They got another flight back to Bangalore somewhere around 9pm.

Thus the hectic last 16 days came to an end. One has to visit Leh-Laddakh once in his life. It’s very beautiful. The most surprising thing that happened was we never encountered a situation where we were struck; the people are very friendly. We never had a single bike problem, not even a puncture. Most of the people have told us that falling from the bike, burning of the brakes, punctures are a common occurrence but we did not encounter any of it.

If you ride safe and preferably take your own bikes with disk brakes, you would not end up in problems. We met many people who had rented bikes ended up in problems.

We used all possible modes of transport in this trip, flight, train, metro, auto-rickshaw, cycle rickshaw, bikes, public taxi, private tourist vehicle and of course walking.

 

18th July, 2008.
Route: Srinagar – Jawahar Tunnel – Patni Top – Udhampur.
Distance Covered: ~230 km

The relaxed day.

The morning was lazy. We decided to go for sight seeing in Srinagar for the first half of the day, went to Shankaracharya temple. After heavy breakfast, we packed our luggage, and started from Srinagar by 12pm. We were told that the roads are in such a good condition that we could reach jammu by 6 hours, we took another 2 hours as grace period. Idea was to reach Jammu by 8, a distance of around 300km.

The traffic on the Srinagar – Anantnag – Jammu highway is a mess, people do not seem to have sense of when to overtake and when not. Cabs, Bikes, buses, trucks all trying to overtake each other, from our direction and at the same time from other direction. The inter city buses are the worst, they drive right through the center at the slowest speed rarely allowing you to overtake and worst stopping abruptly for some passenger to alight. The truck drivers are next; they will not allow overtaking easily. Often you will end up in race to overtake.

We crossed huge convoy of pilgrims going to Amaranth Yatra on the way. The Jawahar tunnel kept going on and on and on. It is almost 2.4km long; it is unique in way; it has emergency exit gates every 100 mts, and phone booths every 200 meters. The Tunnel is a high security zone; there are check posts before entering the tunnel.

The traffic had stopped some 10kms from Banihal. Initially we thought of some security check post as there were lots of army personal around. Later we realized there had been bomb blast at blast at Banihal. Security guards allowed us to go ahead, all the 4-wheelers were stopped are checked thoroughly.

The highway from Srinagar to jammu is completely a ghat section. Its downhill until we reach jammu. Though road was in good condition, it was clear that we would not be able to reach jammu by night. Somewhere after crossing Patnitop we stopped for a quick tea, and decided to halt at the nearest town Udhampur.

 

17th July, 2008.
Route: Kargil – Drass – Zozila Pass – Sonamarg – Srinagar.
Distance Covered: ~204km.

The day of remembering Kargil war heroes.

We started early morning from Kargil at around 7am; thankfully breakfast was included in the room rent. The plan was to reach Srinagar by evening, considering the road we have had been on the previous day we had no hopes for good road today as well.

The scenery was becoming more and more greener as we were moving further. After crossing Kargil, we saw sign boards on the road that read “Careful, you are under enemy watch” and then at places high walls, made of rocks and secured by metal nets, along the road. We reached place called DRASS, the 2^nd coldest place inhabited in the world. It has Kargil-war memorial. One has to embark upon such journey just to get feel of what cold harsh conditions the solders at the Indian borders might be undergoing; and this was summer. The solders there were eager to show around the war memorial, tell stories of the Kargil War, showed us the famous Tololing Hill, Tiger Hill, Rhino Horn and many more posts of prime importance where India fought war with Pakistan in 1999. The tololing hill is a huge hill and one can see almost 35km of national highway from the top, hence those signs “enemy watch” were put up on the road during the Kargil war to alert army convoys passing through. Few solders were painting letters engraved on a board at the war memorial that told story of the Kargil war; they allowed me to paint few words.

The roads were never better, somewhere during noon we reached Zoji La Pass, at an altitude of 11570 ft (not much compared to the previous passes we had crossed so far) this pass was unique. On one side was the high mountain carrying the narrow road that brings one to this pass, other side was a deep valley. There were huge green mountains of Sonamarg on the other side. The most beautiful mountain range and scenery we had seen so far on a mountain pass. We realized why Kashmir is called “Heaven on the Earth”. Sonamarg is an amazing place, Himalayan scenery at its best. The roads are narrow that trucks go in only one direction in the morning and another direction in afternoon. Zozi La Pass has the steepest and the worst descent I had seen so far. The road had already disappeared; the gravel and loose sand coupled with uneven rocky patches had taken its place. To add to the difficulties, we had to ride in 1^st gear, no accelerator and with continuous brake applied. The 8km descent of Zoji La ranked worst of all passes on Manali-Leh-Kargil-Srinagar route. One slight mistake and you are 1000’s ft down in the valley; there is absolutely nothing between.

Descent from Zozi La brought us into the Kashmir valley. Sonamarg was the most beautiful town I had ever seen, huge mountains, greenery all over the place, river flowing in the valley, clouds hanging in the air, mist and snow capped peaks. Almost everything an artist/painter could imagine. We took a short informal break just to look at the scenery, forgot about all problems Zoji La posed during the descent. From the Zoji La top we had seen colourful tents in the valley, many, in fact the valley was completely filled with tents; later we realized Sonamarg is the base camp, and these tents were for the pilgrims, of the Amarnath Yatra. We stopped at Sonamarg for Lunch. It was around 2.30pm.

Driving from Sonamarg was a breeze, it continued for the remaining distance. We reached Srinagar by 5pm. We settled into a house boat in Dal Lake. It was the most luxurious stay of our trip and of-course the costliest as well, roamed in Dal Lake on shikara. Ever since we left from Kargil there had been steady security along the road, it increased as we entered Kashmir valley and in Srinagar there was a CRFP or J&K Police was standing guard every 50 steps. The plans to start early tomorrow were abandoned; the trip was coming to an end. Today was the evening to relax, the first after many days.

 

15th July, 2008.
Route: Hunder – Diskit – Khardung La – Leh.
Distance Covered: ~126km.

The day of camel safari.

After another lazy start to the morning, we were at the Dosa Corner canteen operational in the Army base at Hunder. Had a round of Dosa’s and Idli’s after so many days of eating Butter-Toast, Maggy and Parathas.

Hunder, a small village in Nubra Valley, is the last point in Nubra Valley where tourists or visitors are permitted. Beyond this point is the army area, the valley further leads to Siachen, the world’s costliest and highest battlefield. Hundar is one of those rare places on earth where you can see in one place the splendid beauty of a desert with Bactrian camels (two-humped), sand dunes, rolling mountains and snow peaks. We reached hunder by 9.00 am; spent some time took some snaps and then it was time to move on. All of us except Madhavi took camel safari. Madhavi wanted to have her snap taken riding a camel but before she could seat on the camel properly, mary, the camel got up; madhavi had a mild fall. My camel called dum-dum was the laziest camel while mary, the only female Bactrian camel, was always in the hurry. The day and experience ranked one of the best in the trip.

When we were returning from the Diskit monastery, we saw a kid dancing on some laddakhi song and a person video recording it. The plan was to reach Leh as soon as possible and ride non-stop, except lunch break. We were riding at much higher speeds, partly we had seen all these roads while coming to Hunder and partly the weather was too hot today. Somewhere on the way a guy riding a scooter overtook all of us; but more or less remained in reach with the group; we were surprised to see somebody riding scooter so fast on such roads. Scooter is the most preferred 2-wheeler of the people around the Leh region(because of stepney).

The check posts at Khardung La are called North Pullu and South Pullu. The climb to the Khardung La, while returning from Hunder is from the North side, we reached Khardung village and decided to stop for lunch. The guy, riding scooter along with us, also stopped, later, after introductions, we realized that the guy is actually a lyricist, singer, music director, music video director, and producer of Laddakhi songs called Thinless Dorjai. Later he took few video shoots of us riding on Khardung La.

The climb this time was little difficult as the road from the north side is worst and to complicate matters further we met the army convoy coming from Leh. As if this was not enough we met another army convoy after crossing the one coming from Leh, this going towards Leh. It meant riding behind the Convoy on the watery roads (result of melted ice because of hot day) of climb to Khardung La pass. Riding behind the slow moving, thick smoke emitting army convoy is not easy. Though army people had been helpful through out the tour so far, when it comes to convoys they do not give side to overtake so easily on the mountain routes. We managed to cross convoy at the top and started immediately, without spending much time at the top, as it would have meant riding behind the convoy again; anyway's we had to again overtake nearly 20 more army trucks on the downward journey to Leh. We directly stopped at a place 8-10km from Leh where an army truck had fallen in the valley few hours before. The way that truck was crushed, it was a horrifying site. We reached guest house at Leh by 5pm.

After evening snacks at the German Bakery, roamed in the Leh market, Sudhakar and Manoj did last minute shopping and returned to the guest house.

Tomorrow would be the day of return journey.