A ride without breaks and brakes

When I was talking to my colleague Binayak about my trip to Ladakh, he asked me to visit Tso Moriri lake. I immediately included it in my schedule with full excitement. Already a day’s delay had percolated into our schedule as one of the bikes had developed some serious snag and we had to spend an entire day in Jammu getting it corrected. So instead of 21st May, we headed towards Tso Moriri on 22nd.

As per my earlier understanding, we were all supposed to reach Sarchu from Leh that day. Next day leave from Tso Moriri and come back to Sarchu by evening. But while speaking to a travel agent we got to know that there is no road from Sarchu to Tso Moriri. Either we have to stick to Leh Manali highway and take a deviation to left when Pang camp is about 42km or start from Leh, take a deviation at Upshi towards Chumathang and again take one more deviation near Mahe towards Tso Moriri.

Excitement started to boil in all of us as we thought about the high altitude lake. We had bought two 20 liter cans to fill up petrol. We left Leh at 8:00am. We filled our tanks and the cans completely at Karu (32km from Leh). Our next filling station would be at about 550km. We should manage with this petrol or we should come back to Karu to fill up the tank again. Doing so would make us travel 100km more and lose one full day. We were already short on time. Diwakar, Srikanth and Santosh could get their leaves extended by one day, but extension of one more day could have proven difficult.

Distance Board at Upshi

At Upshi we took the deviation towards Chumatang. Just outside Usphi we were stopped my police to check the permits. After completing the necessary formalities we continued. Tso Moriri on this route is about 230km from Leh. From Srinagar we have been driving on very bad roads. We had expected our average to be at around 20km per hour and according to our calculation we were supposed to reach Tso Moriri by 6:00pm. But to our surprise, the roads were very good (except that they are not completely flat but slightly bumpy). Our hourly average doubled.

70% of the road is along river Indus. I recollected my school days when I learnt about this river and about the great civilizations that developed around this river. The entire road was traffic less except for some three vehicles we passed in 4 hours of the stretch. The eerie silence was replaced by the sound of the river flow. It seemed to me as if the river has witnessed the raise and fall of human development over last thousand years but has chosen to remain silent. All of Punjab’s rivers (Beas, Ravi and Sutlej) and few of Kashmir’s rivers (Chenab) are tributaries of Indus.

After a long ride, we stopped at Chumathang to have a look at the hot spring. Not many people know about this hot spring. When we went to the location, we saw a resort - “Chumathang Hot Spring Resort” which was actually a simple hotel. We went inside the hotel to have some tea and we saw a huge amount of waste (most of which was plastic) dumped by the hotel (and probably tourists) near the hot spring. But the hotel operator was proud to explain the uses of the hot spring such as cooking rice, boiling eggs and vegetables etc for the hotel. The pungent odour of Sulfur permeated the air around the spring. We were now about 100km from Tso Moriri. Since it was about 2:00pm we estimated to reach Tso Moriri by 5:00pm.

Chumatang Hot Spring

We continued our journey along Indus till Mahe. There, after a verification of our permits at the check, we took a right towards Tso Moriri. Now Tso Moriri was less than 60km. The terrain changed completely. Now we were passing along a valley with small streams and pastures. We saw mountain goats and horses grazing happily in the pastures. On our way we spotted is the Kyang, the wild ass of the Ladakh - Tibet plateaux and Marmots. We covered 30km in less than an hour. When Tso-Moriri was 30km the asphalted road ended in a patch of sand. With the hope that crossing it would lead us the good roads, we struggled and moved to the other side of the patch. To our surprise, the rest of the road was full of small stones and in few cases big pebbles. We drove 30km in 2 hours with the fear of getting a flat tyre.

It was late in the evening and we could not get a good glimpse of Tso-Moriri. We stayed at a hotel in Korzok village (Rs.250 for a double bed room). I heard that Korzok monastery is one of the oldest settlements in the world. It is the only permanent settlement while the region is inhabited by Chang-Pa herdspeople. Even today there is no electricity in the village. Everyone has solar powered lights (Rs.15000 for a set of three lights and it runs for about 5 hours). The nearest petrol bunk is 200km away and majority of the population depends on livestock farming. The day ended with dinner and we all crashed into our beds.

En route to Tso Moriri
Next day we packed all our luggage and ended up at the lake at 8:00am. The lake was half frozen towards the southern portion. I saw three big heaps of plastic and other garbage trawled from the lake and near by areas. It was clear that most people who visited the place rarely understood the importance of the lake or the region.

Tso-Moriri is a high altitude lake located at around 16000ft above sea level. The snow that falls on the mountains in the region melts in summer and flows into the lake. The lake has not slope to send the water out on a regular basis. The constant evaporation and additional of new water has turned the water brackish. The lake is breeding ground for numerous bird species including bar-headed goose. the Brahmini duck (ruddy sheldrake) and the black-necked crane.

Tso Moriri

We filled all our tanks from the petrol cans. The next filling station was about 330km from Tso Moriri (at Tandi). We decided to have breakfast on our way somewhere. Later we realized that it was a very bad decision. We took 2 hours again to cross the sand patch. We did not go back to Mahe but took a deviation at Sumdo to save 100km distance and one day of travel. Since there we no places (actually there were no habitations around) to eat, we requested a shepherd at Sumdo to prepare some instant noodles for us. It was around 1:00pm when we left Sumdo. After 80km we would hit Leh-Manali highway. The idea was to travel for as many kilometers as possible till the day falls.

The road was same as the last 30km stretch to Tso-Moriri. I should say that there were no roads but some faint tracks. We started to ride on stones and pebbles praying the lord to save us from flat tyres. We passed Puga hot spring (again polluted with plastic), sandy patches, slopes (in few cases even the rider had to get down to push the bike). The ordeal continued for 4 hours and we crossed Tsokar and Thukje settlement.

Sandy Patches

We were very happy to see Leh-Manali highway. The distance board quoted 42km to Pang. We were enthralled by the colour of the asphalt (black is now my favourite colour). We opened our throttles to reach 50km. Since morning we had not crossed 3rd gear and the speedometer needle had not crossed 25km. Though 50km was not a great speed, for us it was sheer excitement to ride in 5th gear. The next distance board said 39km to Pang. I was happily riding on the bumpy road and all of a sudden I could feel that something was touching the rear wheel.

I stopped and checked - my Ladakh career was broken Now all my luggage was on roads - three big bags, 2 small bags, tripod and other stuff weighing as much as 50kgs. The worst part was that the left portion of the carrier had bent the rear brake. Santosh and Priya had passed us by then. Fortunately Diwakar and Srikanth were riding behind us. With their help I straightened the carrier. But we could not save the rear brake Fortunately a Scorpio stopped by and the couple (Major Vikram Gulia and Neelam Gulia) offered us help. Since it was 5:30pm we put all the luggage into the Scorpio and sent Silje along with them. We later met them at Pang Camp and stopped our journey there as it was 6:45pm. I had to drive till Pang (almost 40km) just to find out that there was no-one to fix the brakes and the next mechanic was available only after 160km.

The entire day we had driven without breaks (as I said, there were no hotels to even drink. We survived on a pack of instant noodles till we reached camps at Pang) and then I had to ride 200km in snow clad mountains without rear brakes. Keylong is where we had some hope for the brakes and petrol. We requested the couple to carry our luggage with them and that we would collect them all from their house in Gurgaon.

A view 5km before Pang Camp

I realized that - Mountains are dangerous, but the people traveling around these regions are very helpful. As the couple said - mountains don’t give you second chance.

GPS Track of Day 1 (Leh to Tso Moriri)
Day 27 at EveryTrail

GPS Track of Day 2 (Tso Moriri to Pang Camp)
Day 28 at EveryTrail