Pangong Tso again!
Late September last year I visited Ladakh over a weekend with my friend Peter. I wrote about that trip here. It was obviously a spectacular weekend trip. However, the trip didn't do proper justice to the place. I thought at the time about doing three things:
- I have to bring my family here, soon
- I must do a longer trip, at least 6-7 days
- I must stay in Leh longer to help with acclimatization
Pangong Lake near Spangmik, where the movie 3-Idiot's final scene was shot
You will see a lot of Indian Flag in this area, place is 15km from Chinese border, so govt. and people both like to show off their nationalism
So I acted on all three this summer. Our family takes at least 3 weeks off during summer. Typically we do a big trip and a small one. This time we decided that we will visit India to see family and during that trip, we will do a trip inside a trip. We will fly to Ladakh and spend a week there.
Indus river valley near Thiksey, outskirts of Leh
Capital of Ladakh is Leh, and it is easily accessable from New Delhi Airport. It is a 1 hr flight and there are multiple carriers serve this route. If you go there, I strongly suggest taking the flight, and NOT do the 400+ km road trip from Manali or similar distance from Kargil or Srinagar.
The only downside of taking the flight is acclimatization. As you get from 700 ft (New Delhi) to 11,500 ft (Leh) in one hour. However, this can be easily mitigated by staying 2 nights at Leh. Staying 2 nights at Leh has many other perks. Leh is a beautiful clean mountain town, with many places of interest nearby. It is possible to spend 2 weeks staying in Leh alone, visiting surrounding areas for day trips. Bottomline, you won't get bored in Leh for 2 nights.
The easiest way to get to Pangong Tso is to take a car for hire with driver for a few days. The road over Chang La is currently beautifully paved and the drive is about 4 hours. Unfortunately we got there on a cloudy day, so that partucular aquamarine blue that Pangong Lake is famous for, we didn't get. Refer to my old post to see the 'correct' color. I put this image above unedited so that you have the right idea that Pangong is not always aquamarine! This might save you from dissapoitment.
The other thing to write about is the commercialization of this area. Pangong is still remote, but the bollywood movies 3-idiot and Jab tak hai jaan, which were shot here, put this place on 'ultra-tourism' map of India. Post-Covid, there is onset of 'revenge travel'; and believe it or not in India it is still going strong. This place is the victim of over-tourism.
Thankfully, we manage to hit this area on a relatively quiet day, and since we were staying at a little cottage by the lake, we did manage to stay by the lakeshore fairly late in the day.
Lots of people do this trip on motorbikes like this one. This is a 'thing' in India right now. Bikers travelling to Leh-Khardung La-Pangong! I have a lot of thoughts about this 'bike travel bonanza', I will do that on a future post.
Please tell me you had scooter races on the beach!
Looks like a legit place, I'd love to plant an Australian flag there to piss off the Chinese!
Here you go: as shown in the movie! Your guessed it right; obviously I am too old for this I think :)
Should work on YouTube
And yeah flags; they are obsessed with flags over there! Leaving nothing to imagination; if you catch my drift.
I get it...got to show the other side who's boss huh?
That's a spectacular landscape. A friend went on an organised motorbike trip (on Enfields) around the Himalayas and I think it was somewhere near there. I don't think I've ever been that high up without being in a plane.
It must be there. 90% of organized bike trips happen in that region.
AZ that's an amazing trip and quite an impressive landscape!
I am so glad you had the chance to spend the time with your family doing something incredible like this!
I can't wait to travel again, it's going to be amazing to take an adventure soon!
Thank you so much for sharing :)
It was something I wanted to do just before my surgery. I am unsure when I can go back to this place again at my current health.
I heard about your surgery but I hope you have a speedy recovery!
Hopefully it wasn't too serious - if you ever care to chat about that, or life in general, my Discord is always open :)
You can look at it here :)
https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@azircon/bionic-oilman
It looks like a really beautiful area! We went from about 500 feet above sea level to something like 7000 in one day. Then the next day we traveled to about 12,000 in the Rockies. I think the driving gave us time to get used to it. There were others who got altitude sickness.
Yeah, you can look up Ladakh on the map, its beyond Himalayas.
:) I thought 13,000 was pretty high, then I was looking at Everest the other day and I realized it's more than twice that high! Yikes!
we crossed two motorable pass: Khardung-La = 18,582 ft and Chang-La 17,688
Wow! That's impressive. I was just talking to someone on Hive a couple of weeks ago who said a friend of theirs did the motorbike through one of those passes in India I think. It looks amazing!
Bloody heck that is high up. Lovely though. Looks definitely worth a longer visit!
Wouldn't fancy some long distance biking, some people must have quite the constitution to do that!
A hell lot of dirt roads there....Let me show you something :)
What if your bike dies? There is no service station for miles in every directions :)
Yikes, that is a frightening thought. Although if you have a buddy to tow you then not quite so bad 😀
In reality it was quite comical, although I shouldn't laugh :)
The guy getting pulled had no clue how to steer and consistently stay on his bike.
That's the thing with scooters and bikes, often the people riding them have little idea about anything to do with controlling them on the road!
Looks really awesome , India and now this spot is on my list for countries I would like to see.
If you ever decide to visit let me know :)
Will do for sure.
Looks like a very beautiful and peaceful place to spend some time to relax! Doing it as a motorbike travel could be interesting. Can't pack up much though lol
Yeah it is thing in India. I prefer SUV if you ask me :)
Thats a huge rise in altitude and pressure....
Looks like a lovely place too... Quite rare to see such a lake in the mountains ✨
Yeah, this is the highest I have ever been
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That place will be fun to visit. The bike rides must be fun…
Really nice pictures. From the different motorbikes I can see that they are really capitalizing on the tourist boom. I guess seeing those doing the bike travel also makes people want to ride them even more.
It is a bit of a shame about the cloudy day and not seeing the aquamarine blue lake, but I think the clouds made for a good backdrop of the photos. It gave some of the pictures a surreal and mysterious look.