Pangong Lake and Chushul – June 19

[Himyatra – 2018 This is part V of the series. You can read the first part here.]

Today, we would go to Pangong.

We woke up early. Earlier night, we had told the orderly that we would wake up at 6, and so he was ready with a cup of bed tea at 6 AM. Today again, we had a chance to have hot water baths as the guest house had geysers. We had toast and omelette for breakfast again and left the camp by 7 AM.

A little ahead of Durbuk is Tangtse.  As we left Tangatse, we came across this quaint gompa, Tangatse Gompa.

Tangtse Gompa

[You can click on most photos to see a larger photo. Be warned, today is the pictures galore. Lots and lots of photos]

It looks unbelievable. The bridge looks like a typical army construction. But how does one go there?

The rock formations around the gompa were simply amazing.

Rock formations after Tangtse

A little ahead, we hit an interesting contraption, and almost missed it. We had passed it, but actually reversed the car to reach it for a closer look. That was a water driven prayer wheel.

In Tibetan Buddhism a prayer wheel is used similar to how we use japa mala

In Himalayas, pan chakki is quite common, but this was the first time I came across a pan prayer wheel :).

We also spotted some yaks grazing nearby. Yaks are the camels of Himalayas. Like camels in desert, they can be used to do any kind of work.

On the way, we saw a couple of dried lake beds. There was definitely moisture in the ground, as very faint green colour could be seen on the ground. But no water in the lake.

Dried lake bed. You can just about feel the green colour on the ground

Today was a little cooler. And also overcast. It was raining intermittently. Making the Ladakhi landscape even more grey (if it was possible at all).

Wet road and overcast sky on the way to Pangong

On the way, we could feel some tall peaks in the clouds, but could not locate or identify them on the map. They must have been pretty tall.

Tall peaks hidden in the cloud

At around 8.45, we crossed a typical army bridge, on the Pagal Nala.

And soon after crossing the bridge, we were rewarded by the first glimpse of the Pangong Tso. Tso is Ladakhi for lake. And just as I have been using monastery and gompa interchangeably, I will use lake and tso.

This was the second time in my life that I was getting this glimpse. But what I saw now, was very different from what I had seen last time. The colour of the water last time was dark blue, as that day was clear, and there were no clouds in the sky. However, the water today was grey, reflecting the colour of the sky.

Glimpse of Pangong Lake in 2006. It was a clear day.

At 9 AM, we reached Lukung, the first human settlement along Pangong Lake that one comes across. It has a beautiful chorten here. Looks pretty new. Also, there are many tents and some structures that can house the ever increasing number of tourists.

Chorten at lukung

From the chorten, we could see the expanse of the Pangong lake. The vastness and the beauty of the Pangong lake is very humbling.

As per Wikipedia, Pangong lake is 134 km long and 5 km wide at its widest point. It covers an area of 604 km2. It is a brackish water lake. Only one third of the lake is in India and the remaining in China.

Courtesy the final scene from 3 idiots, Pangong lake has now become a huge tourist attraction. One of the reasons why  bollywood films are so popular, is because they depict viewers’ fantasies. And viewers would love to enact those fantasies. And there are entrepreneurs who smell these business opportunities and cater to them.

So there are many yellow scooters, and the girls can get them selves photographed on them in Kareena Kapoor’s costume.

We too had our photos taken in the three idiots style. 🙂

Three idiots at Pangong Lake

There were a lot of bikers at Lukung. On this trip, we might have crossed more than a thousand  bikers, most of them on Royal Enfield bikes. Ladakh in general, and the Manali Leh highway in particular seems have become a haven for the bikers. And the bikers are not just guys, but girls too. We met a group of 12 from Belgaum. Out of the 12, there were 3 husband-wife pairs. They had rented their bikes in Srinagar and had driven them all the way from there to Pangong.

The plan for today was to go along the Pangong lake and reach Chushul by end of the day. We had our maps, and the maps.me app. This app works with offline google maps, that we had already downloaded. So it needs only GPS signal, and no internet. If you are likely to go to a place where you might not have internet connection, this app is a good option.

When we entered the destination as Chushul on maps.me, it started showing us a route going back to Leh and then to Chushul. Obviously, that’s not what we wanted to do. So we decided to follow the road along the lake, hoping that it will take us to Chushul, as that route was shown on the paper maps.

First big camping site that we hit after Lukung was Spangmik. It’s like a tent town. There must be almost a 500 tents for camping. It seemed to be the most favourite place for the tourists.

Tourists on the banks of Pangong near Spangmik

As per the map, the next prominent camping site / home stay on our path to Chushul was Maan. We continued driving forth. The route was very picturesque. The lake on our left, very close, some times almost touching the lake. At times, slightly above the lake, but still closely hugging the lake.

But not a soul in sight!

We are on our own. Nobody around.

On this stretch, we actually spotted a bird swimming in the lake. Probably, Brahmini Duck.

Brahmini Duck

And then, after some time, some distance before Maan, a new road started showing up on the mountain on our right at a higher level. But we were not sure where it was going. We didn’t know whether to take that road, or continue on the lower road. And maps.me was still telling us to go back to Leh to go to Chushul!!!

You can see the road that emerged and confused us.

The road on our right seemed very well defined whereas the road that we were following just looked like a dirt track.

Another car, a toyota innova, was following us. Hoping that they could be of any help, we stopped and talked to them. They were a group of school teachers from Punjab. They too were equally confused. And their plan was even more ambitious. They wanted to reach Tso Moriri that day. Ultimately, we decided to follow the lower road.

As you can see here, the scenery was beautiful. Many crescent shaped turns, clear water and the play of the clouds. It was so beautiful.

On the right bank, you can see the road. We were going this close to the lake.

We continued on the lower path and at around 1 PM met a ladakhi shepherd with his goats. He confirmed that we were at Merak, and we were relieved. He invited us to his home-stay, but we declined.

The shepherd at Merak

Shortly after that, we reached Peaceful Homestay. Its is an establishment run by a Rinchen Dolkar and his wife. They had a few Japanese guests staying with them. We had a lunch of Maggi and Tea and left from there around 2 PM.

Peaceful Homestay. Image borrowd from their website.

Now, we were at a point where we had to turn our backs to Pangong Lake and turn right to go to Chushul. We looked at the lake one last time and bid it goodbye. The lake will live in me forever.

Last sight of the Pangong Lake

Now there were mountains between us and the Pangong lake. The landscape was typical Ladakh, with yellowish / brown soil and some greenish vegetation. The road climbed for some time, and then started descending. It looked as if we were heading towards a dried lake bed and and in the distance, we started seeing a lot of vegetation and some signs of population.

Chushul from distance

Around 3.50 PM, we took a right turn, entered a village dotted with houses and a lot of vegetation, climbed a hill, and stopped in front of a police station. We had reached Chushul.

Chushul is an Oasis. With a water stream flowing through the village and lots of greenery.

Right in front of the police station, there was a restaurant. It was just a very simple affair. He offered tea, soft drinks, Maggi etc. The normal fare. He told us that Chushul has a PWD guest house, and we could stay there.

PWD guesthouse at Chushul

The chowkidar was nowhere to be seen. The restaurateur called him up, and told us that the chowkidar is on his way. So we settled to hang out. As we were waiting, the punjabi teacher party arrived. After cordially greeting us, they pushed off for Tso Moriri.

The chowkidar arrived and allowed us to stay in the rest house, but he won’t open the VIP rooms for us. He also insisted that we go to the police station and submit our permits, which we promptly did.

Soon the sun was setting, playing with colours and the shadows. The scenery was fantastic.

Sun playing the lights and shadow game

Chushul village gets electricity from a generator set, that starts at 7 PM. And it stays for three hours. As we were to discover, that is a common feature in most remote villages in Ladakh.

Ladakh is so beautiful, that it converts any novice photographer like me, with an ordinary mobile phone camera, into an outstanding photographer.

Balya has been writing a series in Lokmat publications about Himyatra. He has been working on the next article, about the week six of Himyatra, since we were in Saboo. He had decided to finish his article today, and hence got down to the task.

While he was working on the article, Ajit, Amit and I were working on preparing the dinner. The Menu was simple. KBR (Kanda Batata Rassa with Capsicum) and Bread. So KBR was what we were working on.

Balya finished the article before the dinner, and then read it aloud to all of us. Balya writes very well, but listening to him read his own writing is a treat. The article had come out great. We felt certain that the readers will appreciate it. There was only one glitch! How do we reach the article to the publisher? Chushul has no Internet connection! In fact we haven’t been able to get an internet connection, even on the BSNL phone, since we left Saboo. We decided to find an internet connection somewhere tomorrow and send the article.

We were looking at another possible problem. We had not seen a petrol pump since we left Leh. We had 40 litres of diesel in our jerry cans at the back of Girija, and the tank was about half full. But we needed to get the diesel fast.

We had our dinner around 9.30 PM and went to sleep soon after hoping to get internet and diesel tomorrow.