Mon, Jul 18

5:27 pm: today we started out from sarchu at 7:30 - today was about all the different kinds of driving terrains we got. First we went ove the nakilla pass (5060 m) and came down to gata - there are 21 simultaneous loops in the road here - you just go round and round till you are done!



That then leads to another pass lichulumbla, again at 5060 m - the pass looks beautiful in the backdrop of snow covered mountains. Driving from here, we reached pang - technically we 'came down' but we were still 4800 m over sea level. Had a quick bite of maggi here when the lady there told us that we are not going to get anything now for next d hours to leh. When we told her we were going to tso moriri and not leh, she just smiled and told us we weren't going to get anything at all on way in that case.



Anyway, we drove on and around 40 km down, the driver took the sumo off road - rest of the way was going to be all kucchha roads. But it wasn't too rough - in fact it brought us to middle of a large field, maybe 20 km each way, absolutely plain - we were told the stretch continues for at least 50 km! You could do an infosys campus (imagine, no attrition!) or a golf course here!


after 20 km or so, the terrain got really rough, and now it looked like a rally. Every now and then, you'd come across some inhabitation - each one of them looked very poor, but had a solar panel outside their tents - high tech meets high altitude - zuzer says the govt has gone out and given these out to people.




After around 2 hrs of this driving, where zuzer drove like a maniac, we came to a lovely lake in the middle of nowhere, and in the backdrop were beautiful ice-capped mountains. We stopped a second for some quick photos, and proceeded.




Tsomoriri wasn't too far ahead - this lake is lovely, absolutely blue and huge. There are lot of camping sites, though it doesn't look like we are getting an attached toilet here :-) instead there is a rear exit which opens into a green enclosure - what is this - a greenhouse!? Hmm, private garden - not bad - they just get more and more innovative... Well, as the evening progressed, it dawned that this might just be another attached toilet - go relieve in the nature in your backyard!

10:42 pm: Its been a hard day and kshitij goes to sleep back again (yes, he slept through most of that martian ride as well) - but the high altitude is beginning to take its toll. We ask ludar for some medicine and he tells us he won't give us any because it only provides temporary relief, so get used to it.

There's this guy 'chotu' at the camp who is always eager to help - and whatever you ask him he first comes back with military style ''Yes Sir'' before answering. So you ask him how many people are staying at the camp and he would go ''Yes Sir, teen log hai Sir'' - otherwise a fine guy - served us well at dinner.

After dinner, we have a nice round of songs before we go to bed. zuzer is going to go back to manali tomorrow and we head to leh.