We came up to a road block, I poke my head out and ask the guys with an earth mover if it would take time. In my mind, I was calculating an hour delay, the guy thinks a bit and replies, ” yeah a little bit of time”. I turn off the car and set myself up for a little rest, and then it goes BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. The whole mountain shakes and I am almost shitting in my pants scanning the side of the mountain for stones that might come rolling down, thankfully they don’t, at least not yet!
The previous posts on this topic
Going back to the Kyagar, they were kind enough to give us an early breakfast at 6:30 AM. A large breakfast spread later, we had hit the road and were headed to Pangong Tso with the hopes to beat the mad cab rush that starts around 8 AM in the morning. The roads were narrow but mostly well laid. The scenery on this section of the road is simply amazing, you drive along the river and then go up into the mountains come back into a desert and then head back to the river bank, a must drive route for anyone who likes to drive!
You would either need to backup or drop two wheels off the tarmac if there is an oncoming vehicles, patience is a virtue on these roads and its better to stop at a wider section and allow the oncoming vehicles to pass through. Unfortunately not everyone thinks the same way and they end up creating a grid lock and sometimes end up reversing all the way!
Leaving early usually means you can beat most of the oncoming traffic and on some of the wider sections you can bring that boyhood racer out and pick your lines through the corners and have some fun, best to be careful though its a long way down if you make a mistake. With the AWD system it was not possible to even get a squeal out of the tires so you really need to be doing silly speeds with this car to loose control.
Agham village has a good cafe and with clean washrooms for anyone who wants to stop for breakfast, you come to an intersection here with one road heading towards Wari La and another one towards Shyok and Pangong. We headed towards Pangong and reached the beautiful lake by 11:30 AM.
The lake is a major tourist destination and its hard to find a peaceful place with tourists but you can drive along the new road towards Man/Merak in the hope of finding some peace and quiet. The lake itself is as amazing as always, crystal clear water with mountains all around, some of them with snow and some without. There are just some photos that your mind takes a photo of and it remains in your memory forever, this is one of those locations.
Keep a watch-out as you drive from Pangong to Durbuk and you might get a chance to spot these cute fellows, I suggest not feeding them even though they look so incredibly cute!
You have many places to eat but surprisingly not many places which have water bottles, your 1 litre bottles out here cost 50 bucks so make sure you have enough bottles of water. We wanted to stock up on water since we had Chang La to deal with in the evening.
Going back 8 years, we were heading back from Pangong to Leh. The water crossings on this stretch were now deeper in the evening and it was starting to get dark, not much traffic on the roads now. We stopped an oncoming pickup and asked him how the roads on the top of the pass was, we had some snowfall when we did the pass earlier in the day. He gave me one look and then looked at my car again and gave me a look that said “these crazy city bums think they can do anything”. Although he didn’t say that aloud he did tell me “Go fast but go slow”, this was enough of a warning to scare me. The roads weren’t great back then, sorry correction there were no roads back then. We made our way through to ChangLa top and it was absolutely deserted. The wife went to Chang La baba to pay her respects but given that it was well below zero now and snowing she couldn’t make it all the way up the steps, for those of you who don’t know, Chang La stands proudly at 18000 feet and is another pass which manages to mostly have bad weather when you don’t expect it!
Photos from our last trip on top of Chang La
We had snow, ice on the road and to make matters worse there was now a thick fog, there aren’t any guard rails and making even the slightest of mistakes will make sure you see your maker. 8 years back we didn’t have any google maps so I was driving and making turns based on what I was seeing on my trusted Garmin. A short distance later, I saw a dim outline of something in front and was relived to see a BRO truck in front of me, I thought to myself these guys do this stretch everyday and all I need to do now is follow him. To my utter disbelief the truck driver goes to the side of the road and allows me to pass him, looking back I realise this guy is driving with only one light. He wants to follow us since he could see nothing! We make our way gingerly down and thankfully with nightfall the visibility improved and we had finally caught up with some other traffic!
The drive down Chang La I don’t think I am going to forget in a hurry!
Back to the present day, with my history with Chang La and the news coming out most vlogs and blogs that the roads up Chang La are bad I wanted to avoid it by all means. The entire plan was to go to Tso Moriri from Pangong but with that now cancelled it was time once again to pay our respects to ChangLa Baba!
The roads now are much broader or are being made a proper two lane road close to Chang La top and this time the drive up Chang La was not as daunting since we were stuck in never ending queues of traffic. How things change! We realised that in our cheer terror the last time we did not even notice a couple of beautiful water bodies near the top of Chang La. We had a leisurely drive up to Chang La top and the wife again attempted to walk up to Chang La baba and pay her respects, she did it this time and I dutifully acknowledged my limitations and stayed put clicking a photo of JC at the same location we stopped our Linea!
Although the roads were bad due to broadening activity in progress, JC made short work of most of this stretch and without the drama of snow, ice and fog we were making our way down. But Chang La can never be without drama – we came to a road block and we saw a couple of BRO guys with an earth mover. I ask him if it would take time and he says a bit, I turn off the car and settle in for a wait, the peace and quiet is shattered with he three loud BOOM’s that go off! The car shakes and you feel the ground below you vibrate, your mind knows they are blasting rocks but your mind also knows these mountains are nothing but rubble and I was back to being petrified on Chang La,I was looking through the sunroof to spot any rocks that were rolling down the mountain.
These three guys with the earth mover now move in front and I don’t waste any time in following them as I did not want to be standing still in case the stones above our head decide to grace us with their presence, within 10 mins these guys had cleared whatever rocks had been blasted and was blocking the road now. As we were waiting, we heard an ambulance. I always wondered what would happen if there is an ambulance up here in the mountains and to my absolute amazement every cab driver moved to the side of the mountain to give way to the ambulance and it was only the private vehicles that needed to be told to move to the side by some army officers. The road cleared up in another minute and the ambulance made its way out first, I would assume it was a case of AMS and I hope the person felt better soon.
We hit tarmac roads which were nice and broad once again and I did have some fun taking corners at speeds we should not be talking about. We reached Shakti in no time and managed to find our way to Fanaa resort. I would highly recommend this resort since its priced sensibly and has great rooms and service.
They offered us an early breakfast by 5:30 AM this time and were on our way to Leh the next morning by 6:30 AM. The target was Manali but before that we had to head some ways back to tank up in Karu for our drive today. This time round we were no familiar with the terrain and made quick progress past Upshi and reached the base of Tangalangala pass, just when you think it ain’t going to be so bad – we saw dark clouds on the horizon and we made our way up and being early in the day, all the massive craters were filled with ice and the area around it was a mix of slush and snow. This is the first time I saw the traction control light up as it cut power momentarily, so I switched over to Snow/Ice mode which turned off traction control – there I was wondering “is that correct?” But who was I to argue with Jeep, we carefully made our way to the top of Tangalangala this time – no drama. Although I did see some two wheel drive vehicles playing a game of ice skating.
We hit the Moore plains and I had to do another throwback photo
One just needs to be watchful of the speed when you near the end of Moore plains and you head down to Pang. The right hand turn is quite sharp, if your not slow enough you will find yourself going down a shortcut! Having said that one can easily touch and maintain triple digit speeds on Moore plains now.
We stopped in Pang this time and for some snacks and fresh oxygen before heading into the next two passes and Gata loops, Sarchu was a dust bowl with all the road work going on and JC changed colour by the time we stopped for lunch.
Post Baralachala pass there were plenty of tourists and Pagal Nallah was doing its best to scare them away. A lot of pushing and shoving later the sedans that were stuck at Pagal Nullah finally made way for the rest of the traffic and we reached Manali at 5:30 PM. Almost a cannon ball run this time between Leh and Manali. The moment you hit Atal Tunnel you know you’re going to miss the views!
The rest of the trip back was the same route Manali – Agra – Nagpur and Bangalore, a couple of quick points not the remainder of the drive
- Swarghat is an absolute mess and a pain to drive in with all the slow moving truck traffic, the tunnel and new road can’t come sooner.
- We managed to leave Manali at 8:00 AM and reached Agra by 11 PM in the night
- The last leg of the journey from Nagpur to Bangalore we only stopped once in the entire 1100kms for a combined fuel and lunch stop.
We did stop in Agra for a day to see the Taj Mahal, we visited it at 8 AM and it was a pleasant 38 degrees in the morning. It truly is something special when you look at it the first time, you don’t expect to be blown away by it since you have seen so many pictures of it. A magnificent moment!
Thank you for the patient read and hope you enjoyed the journey as much as we did!
Musings of a wanderer 
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