(From top) The bikers at Pagal Slide; a view of Sonmarg; the Betab valley and the trek to Pangong Tso

(Continued from last week)

Day 5: The next day, though we initially thought we’d rest, we left for Pangong Tso, tso meaning lake. And this one was said to be the world’s highest salt-water lake.

We had to take a turn from Karu, so everyone stopped for breakfast at Karu itself. The roads initially were really good, but later on as we got nearer the destination, they deteriorated.

We then reached a stream, known as the Pagla Naala, the strength of which kept increasing as the day progressed and the sun melted the snow.

Creating a human chain of sorts we parked our bikes and crossed the stream on foot, trying our best not to fall. Once on the other side, we trekked an amazing desertscape, while sidestepping patches of quicksand, to reach our destination, the beautiful lake.

We rented a tent for the princely sum of Rs 150 per person, dumped our luggage there, took a huge flask full of coffee and sat by the crystal clear waters staring at the setting sun.

As the sun set and people rushed to their tents to escape the ice-cold wind, we sat watching the sky. While in the city you see half a dozen stars scattered in the sky, here it was full of a billion stars and more.

You could see the sudden movement of a shooting star every few seconds or follow the movement of a satellite halfway across the globe.

Day 6: Though the others were too knocked out by the previous day, I managed to get up and see the most beautiful sunrise in the world. Sushil, meanwhile, had managed to drop a few names to the Army guys and get a boat ride on the lake. We saw a few Chinese ducks and also found the spots where the lake water was sweet while the rest of it was salty.

We hitched a ride back on an Army supplies truck till the stream, which actually was a really small brook that we could just jump over around this time of day. Took our bikes and headed back to Leh, but only after stopping at a monastery, Thiksey, and a palace, Shey, along the way.

Day 7: Though it dawned on us only in the morning but we’d signed up for a bicycle trip to the highest motorable road in the world. We left in a Tata Sumo with the bikes on top.

Kahrdung La, as the pass is called, is actually the world’s highest motorable road and we felt quite a sense of achievement on having travelled there.

Upon reaching the top though, it was extremely cold, and we immediately started to roll down on the bikes. It took us a couple of hours to get back to Leh, and this excursion was a welcome change from the bass thud of the Bullet to the super silent cruising of the Firefox.

Day 8: Do you think it’s possible to be absolutely mesmerised by a place and still yearn for home? Well, such was our state. We thought maybe all this was because we’d stayed in Leh too long. So this day we decided to leave for Srinagar, via the Leh-Srinagar highway, which was supposed to be much better maintained than the Manali-Leh one. This was an entirely different length of a highway but much better maintained and lots more greenery, which was a welcome change. The conjunction of the Indus and the Zanskar rivers made for a lovely view. We then moved to Lamayuru, famous for two things, one for its centuries old monastery with its mask dance festivals, and the other for its terrain resembling the moon. With huge craters, undulating land and a serpentine highway cut through them it was quite a sight. We stayed the night at Bodhkarbu, which has another beautiful gompa.

Day 9: From the start we were moving full speed towards Srinagar. Our first major stop though was Kargil, where the population was almost entirely Muslim, and was made famous by the war. We’d also stopped at the Dras War Memorial.

We reached Dras, which proudly claimed to be the second coldest inhabited place on earth, and where the temperature had touched -60 degrees.

Sonmarg was the next major town, and it really was the golden path, as its name suggests. The only time reality strikes hard is when you see a soldier at each crossing standing guard with an AK.

Much as we wanted we couldn’t stop there for long as we had to reach Srinagar before dark. There we booked ourselves into a houseboat.

We did the regular shopping and sightseeing and before the end of the day, left for a nearby town called Pehelgam. By the way, now it was only two bikes, as Sushil had to catch a flight as his eye infection left him immobile. When we reached Pehelgam it was midnight and we were escorted by the CRPF jawans to fairly decent accommodation.

Day 10: We woke up in Pehelgam to see hordes of Amarnath Yatris. We left Pehelgam by the evening for another place called Patnitop, which we reached around midnight.

Day 11: We left Patnitop as we had a long way to go to reach Chandigarh, return the bikes, get to Delhi on a bus and return back home. All of it in that one day.

Day 12: This was the last day of the biking till around 8am, when we crossed the J & K and Punjab border at Lakhanpur and rode into Chandigarh.

Pictures courtesy : Calcutta Walks