DAY 10 – Down & Out! Sept 1st 7:30am
Location: Pangong Tso
Destination: Leh
Route: Lukung – Tangste – Darbuk – Changla – Zingral – Sakti - Leh
No waking up today as I hardly got any sleep after last nights troubles. So as soon as it was 6.30AM I went and knocked at the docs room to see if he has got any medicines to help as the ones I took were not helping. Apparently I was not alone in not getting sleep, Narman & Doc also slept only few hours as they were troubled throughout the night.
Took some medicines and we all decided to leave as early as possible from the lake. In the meantime Manoj, Jaswant, Mohan, Sathya, Hari had gone for an early morning photo shoot near the lake. So we had to go and round them up before departing back to Leh.
Pangong Tso early morning (pic courtesy Narsi/Mohan) Artistic touch by Nariman once again That is the Pangong Inn that we stayed, decent place but during season might be a tad too expensive. More options are present at Spangmik That is the gang enjoying their photo session (pic courtesy Nariman)
Since I was not in a condition to drive, the Manza was handed over to Chandrakant as he drives a Vista in Mumbai. Hopefully he enjoyed the drive in the car. Since we started early from Pangong the drive back did not get any water crossings and reached Changla pretty easily. Did not wait at Changla and quickly climbed down towards Sakti.
The rest of the group had stopped for some tea and momo at Changla. Before the pass doc took one shortcut which almost scared a motorbike fellow as he could see us driving parallel to them but on a different route.
Finally, reached Leh and I quickly took a room at Omasila, ordered for rice & curd and slept. Here I would like to praise the service provided by the Hotel, they did not have curd so one lady went to her house nearby and bought some curd. The rest of the gang it seems had gone down to the market again for lunch.
In the evening I was feeling a little better so came out of the room to see doc & gang near the reception area. So we all sat down there to decide the next course of action. Ultimately it was decided that we are going to do a day trip to Diskit tomorrow and we would only take the Sumo while dumping the sedans. Further, Narsi & Mohan opted out of this trip. The reason for dumping the Sedan was that we were informed that the road conditions in the Khardungla route would be similar to Changla and since, we had to travel far back home, at that time it felt prudent to leave the sedans and hire a taxi.
At night I came to know that taxi was booked, an Innova for the five of us Jaswant, Manoj, Venkat, Hari, and I. Further, we had a situation as the Innova did not have any space left, since one side of the 3rd row would be occupied by our luggage. Now why luggage for a day trip? Well we still were in 2 minds whether to stay in Diskit or do a day trip. So the situation was that it left Sathya out of the equation. He only had an option of driving the Duster alone or hiring a driver.
Distance covered: 155 kms
Time Taken: 6 hrs
So tomorrow we scale the highest motorable road in the world, did we succeed? Find out.