This is one of the many road signs installed by BRO (Border Roads Organisation), we had spotted during our trip to Ladakh. But this one really touched my heart - I thought I should share it in the opening post.
On the Independence Day this year, my good friend and colleague Krishnamoorthy (fondly referred to as Moorthy/Kichy) and I, set out on a road trip to Ladakh in my Polo GT TDI. We drove through 8 states covering 5543 km over 13 days and we had an
A-M-A-Z-I-N-G time! We returned home with a lot of memories - something we are going to cherish for a lifetime.
I am not sure if this travelogue will meet the expectations of the readers and do justice to what we experienced up there but I’ll try my best regardless.
Prelude:
I don’t exactly recall when was the first time I had heard of Ladakh. Perhaps it was during the '99 Kargil war when I was in my 8th grade. Not too sure about that but not much was known of this place to me until I read through the many travelogues documented on the forum and from a couple of my former colleagues, who had visited the place during their graduation days. I had registered on T-BHP during April 2013 and used to read the travelogues with great interest. And every time a travelogue on Ladakh popped up on the forum, the urge to visit this place intensified! The roads laden with snow, the notorious high passes with almost no roads, the spectacular Pangong Tso lake with the calm waters and the blue sky above it with the scattered clouds, the dreaded water crossings, the historic Buddhist monasteries perched atop a hill with the murals, prayer wheels and the colorful prayer flags faintly waving in the subtle breeze, the Kargil War Memorial en route to Leh, the Magnetic Hill and the theories that surround it among several others. One colleague flew to Ladakh during winter last year and witnessed a completely frozen Pangong Tso! But the inspiration to take up this trip in the own car definitely was Team BHP and the travelogues posted here - I can pretty much say that.
And Ladakh is one of those places one cannot plan and visit in haste. The geographical location, the harsh road conditions, the unforgiving weather at the high altitudes, the fatigue that sets in while driving the long distances, limited mobile network coverage, unknown lands, unknown people, the fear of our car breaking down in the middle of nowhere and a whole lot of other factors made us think twice before attempting to plan. As a result, we ended up shelving the plans year after year. Come October 2013, I bought my first car - a monster of a diesel engine in a hatchback perfect for those long highway drives. But will it be able to tame the high passes in Ladakh? Will the underbody scrape every time it crossed a water stream laden with rocks and boulders? Only time would tell.
Last year, I was craving for a long road trip in the car (who wouldn’t!) and the wedding was scheduled for September 2014. I drove to my hometown Palakkad, Kerala from Surat, Gujarat. It was one heck of a trip! We drove through Maharashtra, Karnataka and across Kerala and Tamilnadu, visited Munnar, Thekkady, Alleppey, Guruvayur, Cochin, Malappuram, Calicut, Palani and Madurai. I loved the trip to bits! After all, it was my first long drive in the car and had my wife in tow. Here’s the
short travelogue in case you missed it. This year, we wanted to do another one but not down south. There were several options - Sikkim? The seven sisters? A GQ drive? Leh-Ladakh?! Ladakh sounds fun and was in the cards for long. About time we did it this year and be done with it for a while. So well, Ladakh it was. But there were several roadblocks that lay ahead of us!
21st December 2015, 23:36
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