Déjà vu- On the Road- Srinagar-Leh

When you're on a road trip, a huge part of your trip is the journey itself. The roads in Ladakh are long, the views are brilliant, and there are plenty of stories to tell. This is one of a few "On the Road" sections of my travelogue. They're named thus, because these are stories, not about place A or place B, but stories of how we got from place A to place B.

As Manav reminds me now, some of us were woken up the next morning by Firdous' love for Bappi Lahiri songs, "yaar beena chain kahaan re" (no peace without one's beloved), in particular. We had all thrown caution to the wind the previous night and slept rather late, so it wasn't much of surprise that it was about 11 am by the time we packed ourselves into Imran's green Sumo, when we had initially planned to leave by 8.30 at the very latest. We were leaving Shagun behind, which wasn't the most pleasant thing, but there was nothing that could be done about it. We bade farewell to Shagun, Roy and Firdous and headed out on to the road into town. There were additional delays as we stopped to buy supplies near Batmaloo. Imran began to play his music collection which, while it seemed rather refreshing when it started, began to go on the loop after about an hour on the road. Soon, we were on National Highway 1-D leading to Kargil and then onward to Leh. Taking the ride along with us for a short while as we drove through its picturesque valley, was the Jhelum river. The sun was out , the sky was blue, and so was the water, so it's needless to say that the drive was quite enjoyable. The fact that we had left late meant that we had to stop for lunch after about two hours on the road. This wasn't such a bad thing though, because we ended up having one of our simplest, yet best meals of the trip. At a small restaurant called "Jai Mata Di Vaishno Dhaba", we had a simple meal of Dal Chawal and the day's veggies, which was also a somewhat welcome change from all the meat-hogging we had been indulging ourselves lately. A few pictures with the Jhelum, and we were well on our way to Sonamarg, another meadow right under the Kolahoi glacier. We took turns to doze off as Imran's music blared on it's third loop of the day. We reached Sonamarg early in the afternoon, where we were advised to move on quickly, so as to avoid an army convoy that was to leave from a nearby army camp very soon. Sonamarg, with vast green meadows and a backdrop of towering mountains is a nice place to visit. Right next to it is Baltal, which is one of the two base camps for the yearly trek to the Amarnath cave at an altitude of about 4000 metres. The Amarnath Yatra hadn't started, so we found Sonamarg free of the usual clog that accompanies the Yatra. Baltal is also the last village before one begins the ascent to Zoji La, the pass that leads into Ladakh at an altitude of 3528 metres.



(Above: Clockwise from top left: The Jhelum and the mountains, at Sonamarg, a thousand feet above Baltal, the Zoji-La zero point)

This is where the road also began to take a turn for the worse. As we ascended slowly towards the pass, we began to deal with a road that was narrow and predominantly unpaved. We were also surrounded by trucks and other tourist vehicles, which made the climb a rather dusty and tiring task. Halfway up the mountain, we were stalled by army-men standing by the road. It turns out that they had received instructions to stop all traffic because the convoy that we had sought to avoid, had left its base. The up-side of the one hour delay we faced as a result of this interruption, was that we sat around on the mountainside that looked over the flat plains of Sonamarg and Baltal. I had crossed this place last time round around sunrise, and in the opposite direction. Looking down into the valley, I noticed the conspicuous absence of the scores of tents that had populated the place last time, owing to the Amarnath yatra. The situation was made a little awkward as Imran and an armyman got into a slight argument over the killing of the child a week ago, but thankfully that did not snowball into something very unpleasant. Finally, the convoy passed us and we found ourselves driving on a very dusty road, inhaling smoke from the scores of army trucks. Soon, we found ourselves driving next to walls of ice on one side, and the beautiful Kolahoi glacier on the other side. A seat change and a couple of stops later, we had crossed Zoji La, and had officially entered Ladakh. A bad road was the least of travellers' worries back in 1947. Zoji La had been a major flashpoint between the Indian army and raiders from Pakistan in the 1947 war, and re-capturing it was a major victory for the Indian army.

About 70 kilometers separate Zoji La and Dras. After crossing the zero-point at Zoji La, we began to descend steadily, and the road began to improve. I felt a surge of excitement as we wheeled into Dras. I had crossed Dras last time in the middle of the night. This time, I saw a board that had an arrow pointing to my left with the words "Tiger Hill" written on it. Sure enough, the moment I got down from the car for some tea, I turned my head and saw that majestic hill, not very far from the town. Tiger Hill was one of the Indian army's major re-captures in the Kargil conflict of 1999. Just eleven years ago, it would be suicidal to stand where I was standing right now. Tiger Hill overlooks the main road leading into Dras and anyone who has control of the top of the hill has the whole town in their direct line of sight. After tea, I spent about twenty minutes loitering around Dras and clicking pictures. Dras is also the second coldest permanently inhabited place in the world. Temperatures have been known to fall below minus 50 during winters. As we drove onward towards Kargil, now 56 kilometers away, we encountered the Dras war memorial, a poignant reminder of the lives lost just over a decade ago.


(Above: Left to right: Tiger hill, the rendezvous with Khalid; the mountains in the background in the right picture are under Pakistani control)

It was late in the evening as we snaked within three kilometers of the Line of Control, and accidentally spotted our friend Khalid waiting on the side of the road, looking rather forlorn. As it turns out, our various delays had caused Khalid to wait at that very spot for about three hours. A rather flustered Khalid pointed towards a nearby mountain range and told us, rather comically, that he'd been in the sights of the Pakistani border force for about three hours. We followed Khalid into Kargil town, where a traffic jam just before entering the town ensured that we reached as late as 9pm. We were housed at the local tourist bungalow where we bid farewell to Imran and that faithful Sumo which had been with us for a week now, and paid a visit to Khalid's house for dinner, giving us our first taste of Ladakhi hospitality. Khalid began to discuss life in a town that has been war-torn for several years a time. He also promised that next morning he would show me some of the artillery shells that had landed in his yard years ago. At this point Khalid made an offer that Mohsin and I would find hard to refuse. He asked us to give up the idea of the trek we had planned to take around Leh, and return to Kargil, after which we would take a camping trip to Zanskar.

Tired as we were, we retired early that night, only to wake up to a very sunny morning. We finally began to feel the characteristically sharp Ladakh sun. We went down to Khalid's house for what he called a "not-lavish" breakfast (which was enough to feed an army of elephants, really), after which he also showed me the shell that had landed on his house. Mohsin and I had decided to take up Khalid's offer, and we were going to return to Kargil soon, so I'll refrain from a detailed discussion on Kargil just yet. So it suffices to say that soon we had hired ourselves a brand new vehicle with a brand new driver and had left Kargil behind, and were headed towards Mulbekh, where we encountered two things- one, was a beautiful Chamba(rock-carving) of Buddha Maitreya(Right) (one of three in the region) alongside the cave dwellings of ancient monks dug into the mountainside, and two, was the concept of a "hole-in-the-ground toilet" (a concept that we found is very popular in this arid region). Before we knew it, we were snaking our way up the mountains towards Namika La, the first pass on the Kargil-Leh road at an altitude of 3700 metres. Surrounding us, for the first time in broad daylight, were the beautiful, barren mountains of the Ladakh region, quite in contrast with the greenery of the Kashmir valley.


(Above: Left to right: The shell in Khalid's house, a "not-lavish" breakfast)

At Namika La, some from our group had their first encounter with altitude discomfort, and by the time we had hit Fotu La, the highest point on the Srinagar-Leh road at 4128 metres, a whole bunch was either sleeping, or feeling dizzy and irritable, or had a mild headache. This is also the point in my story where I warn everyone of Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS), something Ruchira had had a tryst with, and Shao was about to have an unpleasant encounter with. Most of us feel that AMS is one of those illnesses only foreigners can catch, but the absence of adequate amounts of oxygen can play very dirty tricks with you. So whenever you go beyond 10,000 feet, whether by air or by road, please be prepared for AMS- drink lots of water, and carry a strip of paracetamol and some anti-nausea drugs. That being said, the mild-headache gang had some time to get out of the car and click some nice photographs. (Below: The view from Fotu La)



The nice thing about the Kargil-Leh stretch, is that one keeps encountering small towns in short intervals. After Fotu La, we first crossed the beautiful monastery of Lamayuru, and after about an hour's drive from there we finally crossed the Indus at Khaltse, where we stopped for a mandatory security check, and perhaps an even more essential lunch. The road from Kargil to Leh had been very pleasant the last time I had visited this region. However, in recent times, the Border Roads Organization has taken to widening the road, which has ground road quality to dust and pebbles for long stretches in between. So, it wasn't until we reached the village of Nimmoo (after having crossed Nurla and Saspol en route), that the road began to look up. Of course, once it looked up, it was like driving on an airport runway. At Nimmoo, we encountered a beautiful sight- the confluence of the green Indus river, with the muddy Zanskar river. We moved on, after a quick photo stop and carried on past Magnetic Hill, where our driver very kindly shut off the car's engine to make us experience the powerful magnetic force of the hill, which dragged the car uphill without any effort from the engines! The final thirty-odd kilometers from Nimmoo to Leh were quite a breeze, and soon we were on the final straightaway, at the end of which I could see that town that I loved so much. We drove alongside the Indus, and past the airport. Just after the airport, we met my friend Salim, who was waiting to take us to our hotel.



(Above: Clockwise from top left: Lamayuru Gompa, after Khaltse, the confluence at Nimmoo and the final approach into Leh)

The name of this series of posts struck me when we reached our hotel, because as it turns out, I wasn't just staying in the same hotel, I was also staying in the same room as the last time I visited Leh. It was encouraging to see that nothing had changed; the people were just as nice, the view from my room just as great. Salim informed me that the weather had been really violent the week before our arrival and had just cleared up, so we could expect to find snow pretty much everywhere we went; ice-ing on the cake, I say.

So there we were, after a journey that spanned two days, in the beautiful little town of Leh. All of us, with the exception of Shao, who wasn't feeling very well, went out to explore town, to take in the sights, sounds and flavours of Leh. It was a very satisfied lot that slept that night, following a beautiful, yet tiring road journey; a lot that was eager to bathe in the glory of Leh and its surroundings, beginning the next morning.