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The First View of Pangong Tso
The First View of Pangong Tso - The way I saw it Mornings were pretty cold in September there. When the morning alarm went off, if I remember correctly, it was about 5 in the morning and I jumped out of the bed, only to realize that I was not geared to fight the morning cold. Almost in a reflex action I fumbled in the dark for the pullover and jumped into it.
It barely took me about half an hour to get ready and even before I knew it, I was back in the Xylo that I had hired for those 5-days in Leh. We were off to see the colours of pangong Tso.
I was told it takes about 5 hours to reach the lake and so I started as early as possible. The first 3 hours into the journey went off easily while I was busy tapping my foot to some “remixed” Ladakhi numbers. It actually the added to the experience. The near-straight road that cut across the high-altitude barren landscape was balanced well with the typical pahari songs. In fact my cabbie picked up a few new CDs the previous evening since I had already mugged up the one he had been playing for the past 3 days.
I kept watching those snow-capped peaks that kept demanding full potential of my zoom lense in lieu of letting me cover only a quarter of the frame with it. It still wasn’t a bad deal !! It actually was worth it. They almost looked like distant boundary wall, guarding the true blue sky beyond it.
Suddenly, I felt my finger tip was numb and I was not able to press the shutter button of my camera. Oops! Those same mountains, or maybe their cousins, were right in front of the car and staring at me. We were crossing the Chang La now. The third highest motorable road in the world.
Brrrrrr… it was COLD. And it was snowing!!! For the first time in my life I saw how it looks and feels when it is snowing around you. We stopped at a small joint, which of course has a monopoly at the 17,500 feet altitude. The wooden walls were decorated with mountaineering gears on one side and had a shop counter with a few seats strewn around. I stepped out of the door again and tried to brave the snow with my camera hoping to capture a few good shots of the snow, but in vain. I struggled with my camera to hold it still but my rattling teeth and frequent shivers made it impossible to even click at 1/1000s shutter speed.
I went back to our shelter in dismay. My cabbie had ordered for something to eat by then. I almost felt like I was shooting for one of those “Me and Meri Maggi” campaign when my hands took refuge in holding a hot bowl of Maggi. Although my spoon had to scuba dive into hot water to fetch every strand of noodle, I surely did figure how proud Maggi’s brand manager would be to have launched such a great campaign. Was I happy to get that bowl of Maggi there!!
The snow stopped in about 15 mins and we were back on the road. It was about another 2 hours downhill to pangong.
After hurling down innumerable hair-pin bends and getting delayed waiting for BRO (Border Road Organization) to complete their maintenance works at 3 various points, I was starting to get impatient to reach. “How the hell these white-sand dunes could be present at an altitude of 1600 ft” could keep me busy only for a few minutes before my mind went back to “when do I reach the lake” again.
The impatience was boring. The car passed through a few enormous structures of precariously balanced piles of loose bounders that almost hung in thin air, right above the road. The only time I was amused was when I realized that I was very diligently ducking those, every time our car went underneath them.
The sight of the bridge that was washed away in the mud flood the previous year did not really balance the wait for the lake. I just wanted to reach the lake.
I kept asking “is this the lake” every time I spotted some water in the horizon. My cabbie finally stopped answering my questions and perhaps also decided to overrule the sign boards that said “Go slow on my curves”. He really seemed to be in a hurry to reach me to the much awaited lake.
He maneuvered the car through the bends and the curves with inexplicable dexterity and complete silence for about another 15 minutes and then he stopped the car abruptly. He point at a sign board which read “the first view of world famous Pangon Lake”. My eyes changed focus from the board that was just 5 feet away to the distant horizon. Here is it, for you to see...
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