Nubra Valley: Camel Humping!

Days 3 and 4: Khardung-La - Onward to Hunder and Deskit


After two days of lazing around, we mustered enough courage and energy to drag our backsides to our ever-ready Qualis to conquer the highest motorable road in the world. Yeah, you read it right, in the WORLD at 18,385 feet (when you realize you are not more than 6 ft tall, imagine where we were headed!) It was a pleasant morning. Slightly cloudy. The guide gazed up at the sky worried, but before he could say anything, I sneezed. If you are the least bit superstitious, you should know it is unlucky. We bundled ourselves in woolens (all the woolens we possessed in our sunny days at Chennai and Bombay!) The Qualis set off. As it wound its way up several mountains inexorably towards Khardungla, one of my friends fell prey to Altitude Sickness. He quickly popped several pills, fell asleep and missed what was to come next. Bad weather? You guessed right. But did you guess SNOW? In July??? Yeah, it snowed so much that we could barely see half a foot ahead of us. The roads were bumpy and not fully laid out either. We prayed to all the Gods, Sub-Gods and even the Asuras. Suddenly in the swirling white mass, the guide announced that we were at the pass. ('La' means 'pass' in Ladakhi. Therefore Khardung-La, and later Chang-La and Tanglang-La) We stumbled outta of the jeep to be hit by a fierce wind whipping off our woolens and chilling our very bones, even our thoughts. We rushed into the vehicle again, only to be assaulted by a wave of breathlessness again. Sped towards our destination.

After an hour, the scenery changed completely. The hills moved from white to brown again, and in the next thirty minutes even to green. The sun rushed out quickly to welcome us to Nubra valley and we gladly stripped outta our top two layers. We stopped at Panamik, where some natural hot springs attract tourists. Had HOT black tea, ah! Ambrosia, after the cold ride. Proceeded to Hunder. To get to Hunder, we drove across a river bed(imagine!) Hunder is the last civilian stop before Siachen glacier. We felt totally patriotic coming this far, almost to the borders. :) I even sang all the national-integrations songs I knew(and that is a good number, I am a Kendriya Vidyalaya alumnus!)

The Hunder area is famous for its sand dunes and Bactrian camels. Sand dunes like the kind you would see on a sea-shore. Geographically, India as a subcontinent moved away from southern landmass called Gondwana to attach itself to Laurasia, squeezing a sea called Tethys in the process. The sea folded up to create Himalayas, and left behind sea-shells in Nubra (amazing, right?) Okay, my facts may be a bit skewed, but was stunned to see the sand dunes in Ladakh (the last time I had uninhibitedly played in similar sand dunes was two decades ago, in my home town Kalpakkam, which boasted of a virgin beach those days) We had the pleasure of riding two humped camels, peculiar to this area. These camels were once part of the great silk route, and originated at Turkistan (now Turkey). Nomads left behind the ailing and old camels, which mated and miraculously thrived in Nubra. Their great-great-great-grandchildren now provided me with the ride of my life!




We stayed overnight at a lovely camp, with a bubbling brook running thro' its boundaries. It was an organic resort with lovely flowers and green veggies. We had the pleasure of meeting and talking with some bikers from Bangalore who literally had to plunge their feet into boiling water to save their toes from frostbite(they had ridden thro' the snowstorm previously described) What was even more pleasant was the presence of a WorldSpace radio. Guiltily ignoring the one non-tam in the group, we tuned into KL Tamil radio and listened to Ilayaraja's hits. Black tea. Tall trees. Bubbling brook. Bliss.



The next morning, we proceeded to Deskit. A lovely monastery with a gory tale. Apparently an intruder's head and arm were chopped off and reposed in a statue of a protector deity. Gory! We saw a unique Tibetan lock for the first time. The lock has an ornate key and has a unique locking mechanism with a piece of metal sliding into close it. Difficult to explain. Figure it out yourselves from the pic!



This time on our way back, in excellent sunny weather, we stopped at the pass. To our relief saw tonnes of army personnel. Jai Jawan! Measured our oxygen levels (mine was low!) Took pics. Bought a souvenir cap. Drank tea. The men peed over the hillside (vicarious pleasures... men!!) Felt 'on top of the world' :) How do firangs keep themselves so fit? I felt like a winner when I managed to walk twenty steps from my jeep on top of the pass without stopping once, only to feel sorely like a BIG loser when I spotted two firangs riding up a bike (I mean a bicycle) They had come all the way from Leh. They stopped on top of the pass for a minute, drank water, gave high-fives to each other and rode back. Well, who wants to dope and ride a bicycle? (yeah, I am maligning them! Sore, oops, sour grapes!)



Drove past the Khardungla frog (a rock shaped like a frog) Returned to our hotel in Leh, happy, satisfied with our first trip, and in hindsight, feeling good about our snowy adventure.

Little did we know about our next adventure to Pangong lake!



In the difficult ride, I remembered all the apologies I hand't made, the loved ones I had lost touch with and cursed my cell phone for no coverage.