Not quite Tso Moriri – June 20

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

Warning, this is a long post. Today was a long day. I woke up around 6 AM. Balya had woken up even earlier, and had had his coffee, which he made on a small gas burner and cylinders we were carrying. I made another round of coffee and woke everyone else up.

Along with us, the guesthouse had a couple of PWD employees staying over. One of them was an engineer, in his fifties and the other guy was a dumper driver. They were working on the new road that we had spotted after Maan. The road was still work in progress, and not completed. Boy, we were happy that we did not try to take that road.

Packing done, ready to leave

The engineer was in his early fifties, and quite talkative. We learnt from him that his elder daughter had completed a PhD from Chandigarh. In general, the Ladakhi girls seem to be aspiring for good education, and their families seemed to support them. First, the two girls we met in Leh were all set for their graduation, Jigmet’s wife was a post graduate, so was Padma Tashi’s (The manager at Kartok hotel) wife. In fact Padma Tashi’s wife worked as a full time school teacher in Tangtse, near Durbuk. And here was a girl who had completed her Doctorate.

Today our target was to reach Tso Moriri. But before that we wanted to go to Hanle which has the highest astronomical telescope in India, and the third highest in the world. And we also had to find diesel and send Balya’s article.

We were packed up and ready to leave. However, before we left, we had the “Sticker” ritual to take care of. Balya’s team had got stickers make for all the important places that Himyatra would cover. And after Girija vistied any of these places, we would stick the stickers on both sides of Girija. At Durbuk, we had stuck the stickers for Leh. Today we stuck the stickers for Pangong.

The sky was clouded and as we were leaving, a drizzle started. We were out of the rest house at around 8.15, with our customary chan of “Pundalik varadaa haari vittthal”. Soon we crossed the stream near the chorten, and we were on our way.

Chorten just outside Chushul. You can see the bridge over the stream on right. [You can click on most photos to see an enlarged version of the photo]

In less than 15 minutes, we had reached the Chushul War Memorial Park, in memory of soldiers martyred in the October-November 1962 war of Chushul.

When we got out of the car to take pictures, the drizzle had turned into snow fall. It was a very light snow, but the temperature had dropped, and we quickly got into the car.

An army truck overtook us, and we followed the army truck. We didn’t have to make any effort to follow, as there was only one road on that vast plain and just a single vehicle ahead of us. 🙂 We had left the Chushul oasis behind, and the terrain was as barren as could be.

On our left was a hill with a tiny structure on top and a electric line going from the base, whereas on our left, there were tall, snow-capped mountains with what looked like grazing pastures near the road.

All along the road, we kept seeing the signboards pointing us to the Rezang La war memorial. We reached the war memorial around 9.15 AM.

This memorial is erected in memory of 114 Indian soldiers who fought to the last bullet last man, with the advancing Chinese army on 18^th November, 1962, under the leadership of Major Shaitan Singh. The 1964 bollywood movie “Haqeeqat” was loosely based on this incident.

The black hill seen in the photo above is the place from where the Chinese troops kept pouring. Rezang La is one of the five points where the Indian and Chinese armies have scheduled meetings on regular basis.

Today, some high officials of the Indian army were to visit the war memorial, and hence the site was getting ready for their reception and the ceremony.

For some more time, we continued on the plain ground, following the electric supply line. Then we started climbing up. The scene on the right remained more or less the same as it had been, bare, brown mountains with hardly any vegetation.

From time to time, we could spot some yaks grazing on the shrubs.

The scene on the left started changing. A mass of mountains with a smattering of snow on their heads started showing up.

And soon, those mountains had taken over the entire horizon on the right.

We were heading up the Tsaka La. La in Ladakhi means a mountan  pass that connects two valleys. It’s a pass that connects the Chushul valley to the Tsaka valley. Soon, around 10.15, we were at the Tsaka pass.

The top of the La was quite flat, and we began the gentle descent towards Tsaka Village. Tsaka village had a ITBP traffic check post, and we had to submit our permits.

In about half hour, the road started turning right, away from the mountains and then we encountered a stream in front of us. On investigating with our maps, and maps.me, we realized that it was the Indus river, the Sindhu, that had just entered India from China. The Indus river flows from here to Leh and then Kargil, before it gets into Pakistan.

Amit, Balya and I on the banks of the Sindhu.

Along the Indus, there were some amazing mountain formation. Somewhere, they looked like made of pure loose sand.

Whereas at other places, they seemed to be made of hardened sandstone.

And the clear blue sky and white clouds were spinning their own magic. The Indus

A little distance ahead from here would be Loma bend. Here, if we crossed the Indus by taking a left turn, we would be heading to Hanley.  And if we took right, we would be heading to Nyoma and Mahe bridge, which will eventually lead to Tso Moriri. Our immediate target was the Hanle observatory, and hence we decided to take the left and reach Rhongo village. At Rhongo, we were planning to check for Internet connection and diesel.

There was an ITBP traffic check post at Loma bend, and the officer checking papers was a lady in uniform. It was heartening to see a lady officer in ITBP.

As soon as we entered Rhongo around noon, we met Tashi, an affable old man of around 70. He confirmed that he was 73. We asked him if he would serve us tea and some food. He gladly took us to his home. There we met Dolma, his wife.

They were a very sweet couple. They had two sons and a daughter. The sons had left Rhongo long ago, and daughter was married. Her husband worked in the Hanle Observatory. Like any other old couple, they missed their children, but had learnt to live by themselves. Tashi worked on their farm and Dolma looked after the house and visitors like us. Dolma made tea and Maggi for us. As we were eating, we asked Tashi if he had any diesel. We turned out to be lucky. He had 20 litre, and so we bought all of it from him. Though we proved lucky with diesel, there was no luck with internet. Rhongo had no mobile network. 😦

The observatory is known as Tara Mandal to the locals. When we told Dolma that we were heading to Tara Mandal, she asked us to meet her son-in-law there.

At around 12.40, we left from Rhongo to go to Hanley. As we were leaving, the kids playing in the street outside Dolma & Tashi’s hous bid us farewell, a la military style.

The road going to Hanle passed thru a fairly flat and wide valley, with a stream flowing all along, with a few herds of sheep grazing in the valley.

And soon, we saw the Hanley Monastery.  On top of a dark mountain, in the middle of nowhere, It looked surreal.

As we rounded the mountain, we came across a traffic check point.  At this point, we had to submit our permits again. And as we cleared the checkpoint, we got our first glimpse of the observatory.

The Observatory is on top of this hill, which in the middle of what seems like a vast dried up lake. The shining point on top of the hill is the dome of the telescope.

The observatory is on top of a hill, about 1000 feet above the valley floor. The valley looks as if there was a lake here that has long since dried, giving rise to some vegetation and place for a town to come up.

The Hanle town seems to have quite a large number of home stays. A lot of people must be visiting Hanle and staying over.

From the Wikipedia article on the Observatory, The Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO), is located near Leh in Ladakh, India, has one of the world’s highest sites for optical, infrared and gamma-ray telescopes. It is operated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore. It is currently the third (see List of highest astronomical observatories) highest optical telescope in the world, situated at an elevation of 4,500 meters (14,764 ft).

There are some new facilities being created by TIFR and BARC at the site, but they are yet to be commissioned.

You can see the new facilities being created by BARC and TIFR. There seems to be a large bank of Solar Panels to power these facilities.

The vehicles have to be parked about a 100 ft below the facility. We climbed up to the telescope, and were welcomed inside the telescope. The actual telescope is about 5 or six stories high.

We were given a tour of the telescope.

These are panels of the dome that can be opened.

The entire dome is on rails and it can be rotated to point the telescope anywhere.

This is the actual telescope

There is a small team of technicians at Hanle. There are no scientists stationed here. The telescope and actual observations are controlled from Bangalore through a satellite  link.

For those of you who are interested, here is a video about the telescope.

We enquired about Dolma’s son in law. He was not on duty, as today he was working some other shift. So, we couldn’t meet him.

Lunar landscape of Hanle as seen from the top of the hill. You can see the Hanle town in the distance. Also notice the serpentine road climbing the hill

We started back from Hanle around 2.30. The plan was to go back to Rhongo, have tea at Tashi’s place and then push towards Tso Moriri. A rising concern was about the internet connection. The deadline for Balya’s article was yesterday. We were hoping that we would get the connection at Nyoma, or Mahe Bridge, and if so, we would stay there for the night.

We left Rhongo around 3.45 after a much needed, refreshing cup of tea and went back to the Loma bend. The same lady officer confronted us again. However, since our papers were checked on the same day, we were just waved across the check point. We were now  following the Indus to go to Nyoma.

Immediately after Loma bend check point, the Indus takes a sharp, 90 degrees turn towards right. That’s probably why the place is called Loma Bend. The river bed is very wide here, but the flow of river is narrow and keeps meandering through the river bed. The river bed has a lot of grass like a pasture, and one can spot a lot of goat herds grazing on this grass.

Wide river bed of the Indus

Another view of the wide river bed, with an army camp in the distance at the base of a hill.

And then we came across a very strange sight. A cricket tournament being held in the river bed. We confirmed with one of the onlookers, and it was a tournament where teams from across the Ladakh had participated.

A little further, we were presented with a beautiful view of the Nyoma Gompa.

All this while, we were continuously checking for availability of internet connection, but without any luck. So we decided to not stay at Nyoma, but to push ahead to Mahe bridge.

Just before the Mahe bridge, we saw a sight which hardly any civilian would have the fortune to witness. An Indian army tank crossing the Indus.

We saw not one, but two tanks crossing. The valley that you see in the picture above leads to Tsomoriri, and the Mahe bridge is just about 100 meters along the river.

At Mahe bridge, there is a home stay. However, that junction has a lot of traffic going to Leh and Tsomoriri. Also, there was no network. Here, our permits were checked again. And the officer checking the papers told us, that if we go a little ahead, towards Tsomoriri, we will get a good homestay at Sumdo Gongma. So we decided to push further.

Unlike the valleys we had travelled through so far, the valley after Mahe bridge was much too narrow. It also had a lot of vegetation inside.

We pushed on thru the valley, and around 6.30, we came across a fork at Sumdo that the officer had told us about. The left here will take us towards Tsomoriri, and the straight/right would take us towards Manali. On the way back from Tsomoriri, we would be taking that route. Right now, we turned left.

At the fork, in Sumdo, we met a very large contingent of Mahindra vehicles going towards Tsomoriri. They were part of the Mahindra Adventure Monastery Escape 2018.

At the fork, in Sumdo, we met a very large contingent of Mahindra vehicles going towards Tsomoriri. They were part of the Mahindra Adventure Monastery Escape 2018.

Around 6.30 PM, we reached this home stay at Sumdo Gongma, and decided to spend the night here.

Even at Sumdo Gongma, there was no internet connection. There was a satellite phone. So one of the ideas that came up was whether Balya should read out the entire article on phone and it be recorded as a voice call at the other end on a mobile. That didn’t seem feasible. So Balya made a call to Pune and conveyed that it was not possible to send the article that day. That the article was ready, and we will somehow reach the article to Pune or Lokmmat tomorrow.

A Husband Wife team, Tsering and Tsoma, ran the homestay. They had a very active and friendly daughter. Her name was jimmy. She was very playful. As we started unpacking Girija, she wanted to be a part. And she participated with us, without knowing anyone of us.  She became very good friends with us. She had three canine friends, and she would talk to them all the time.

The homestay had three rooms with three beds each. Initially, she asked all four of us to stay in a single room. This would have been uncomfortable. So we negotiated with her for two rooms. After some amount of persuasion, and meeting her demand for the rent, we were game for the stay.

The rooms proved pretty comfortable, The temperature in the evening was about 3 degrees centigrade.  During the night, it must have gone down to sub=zero, around -2 or -4, but we were comfortably accommodated.

It had been a long day. So soon after the dinner of Roti, Chawal and Subji, which was included in the room rent, we went to sleep. Still worried about the cell network.