With sun going down, we set off to the unbeaten path.
I had taken me almost a month to research this route.
Part of the route I knew was doable, till Punguk that is, as Gaurav Jani had gone to Chumur on his enfield in "riding solo to the top of the world".
As for Kyun Tso, I had just one clue.
A photo taken from far away, from the top of a mountain in somebody's gallery.
there were no route maps, and even google arial photographs did not help, as the resolution is less, and its difficult to separate a dirt track/trail from the landscape in the desert, esp when its less used.
All I had was satellite image of 2 lakes, some 40kms as the crow flies from hanle. I drew a track by hand, and thats what was loaded into the GPS.
But white elephant does not fly, and I figured it was 60kms from Hanle.
From Nyoma its was 30kms as the crow flies, so I reckon 50kms.
That gave us a journey of 110+kms to Nyoma, 20 more than by the normal route.
But as I mentioned earlier, kms are just numbers. It took us little over 2 hours to do hanle from Nyoma, inspite of 20kms of bad roads because the rain ensured little photography breaks on the tarmac section, and the high speed compensated for those slow 20kms.
If this 110kms was a trail, it may take 5-6 hours or even more.
SO today evening, we planned to do around 5-6kms to get a feel of the track, and how it feels on my back.
Another objective was to find the elusive crane, whose haunting cries had reached a cresendo.
As soon as we hit the road, if you can call it a road, the answer was clear. Its no cakewalk.
Long time ago ladakh had dirt trails. You go slowly on a bumpy road anf get to a village.
Now in the name of building roads, trucks come and dump small stones on the trail,so it does not get washed out.
So it becomes a rocky path, and the vibrations and bumps can make your teeth fall out.
This was such a path. Atleast till Punguk, it would be light this.
At some places we could see where vehicles had taken the off road path to avoid the jarring ride, but 3 days of rains had covered those parts with water.
We had to go dug dug dug dug wham wham wham
The elusive crane was also hiding
All we saw was the Kiang
The light was not condusive enough to take out a non stabilized telephoto, so 55mm will have to do fine.
This is the road, or whatever. Slush, stones, sand all in one go.
Transmission on 4H, wheels spinning now and then, as agonizingly moved forward. The decision was almost made. This is not the correct way to go to Kyun Tso.
And then we came to a lovely sight
What reflections!
This was the place which reinforced our decision to turn back.
You see, this lovely water body was not just on the side, but also on the road, with no track visible.
So I could go forward, and land up in some ditch also.
As we stand there scratching our heads to where did the track go, a local comes on Hamara Bajaj, and crosses the water at a really shallow part.
We stop him. His hindi is weak but from whatever he told us I could make out that there are lot of places where water covers the actual track, and since they use this track everyday, they know where the track is even when its submurged.
Well we do not. If we attempt this route tomorrow, we may end up in some ditch. Even if we reach after using shovel again and again to guage the depth, it will take 10 hours of driving, and most probably it will wreck my back, which after a long time had started feeling better.
Guess we go back from here, to the Observatory guest house
But not before clicking the Kiangs
Its past sunset when we reach the observatory. There is internet connection, and a visiting scientist posted down south(but belonging to Calcutta) has also come down. Tonight there will be no star gazing, so the scientists will rest.
This is really unfortunate, I was hoping for some real long exposure night shots... but fate is fate!
TO BE CONT............