Nubra Valley

Day 21 – Leh to Nubra – 14 Sep 2018

On the way food options: Khardung has a small shop, however spending long time on the top is not recommended, atleast by me, especially when traveling with a kid. Please read below for more details. South Pullu, has tea shops where you can get some refreshments and some energy. Khalsar has few restaurants for lunch and we had our lunch at Khalsar. 

Cautions and Road conditions: Information about this route should be available plenty on the internet. The road till Khardung is a very narrow one like all other mountain roads in Ladakh. The roads are well maintained, except for a stretch of 14 kms near Khardung. The road gets worse as you approach the top of Khardung-La. Otherwise, the road is really good. But please be very cautious while driving on these roads. Plan and stop way ahead to give way for heavy vehicles, respect the taxi drivers and let them go ahead of you. A right indicator by a vehicle in front of you means, you can safely overtake them. A left indicator indicates it is not safe to overtake now. When an oncoming vehicle puts the right indicator, he is asking us to go towards him and a left indicator indicates us to stop and he will be coming forward. Follow the rules and everything will be safe 🙂 

All of us woke up so excited for our journey towards the most beautiful valley of Ladakh – The Nubra. Well dressed up with three layers of clothing – including thermals and jackets, sunscreens, sunglasses, gloves and caps, we were all geared up for the adventure. Headaches were all gone, and we ate very light breakfast as we did not want to take any risk on the winding roads to Nubra. We did not take any medication, and decided to take it only if required.

Our car left the noise and crowd of Leh soon, and it just took 15 mins for us to get into the Khardung road and the ascend started immediately. The road is a very narrow one for most of the parts, only one car can go comfortably. So make sure when you drive, you have an extra caution of not speeding. And honk like a honker in all curves, shamelessly. You are gonna see some vehicles coming opposite to you very fast. Also plan yourselves way ahead to find space for two vehicles especially when you have a truck or something huge coming from the other side. And the biggest rule on mountain driving, give way for ascending vehicles applies here very well. So respect it, follow it. Also it’s better to give way for the cabs that are speeding behind you so that they don’t bother you. We drove slow, steady and patient at every curve. 

The drive to Khardung-La is 40kms from Leh. The roads were winding up pretty fast and the ascend was really quick. After traveling 20kms we had climbed up a pretty good height and that is when my daughter started telling she is feeling some irritation in the throat. We ignored it for the first time, but it gave some real nervousness to us as she never told anything similar ever since we left Bangalore. To add to the tension she threw up suddenly which really scared us. We immediately stopped the car and washed her and cleaned up everything. For the first time, we felt a little confused whether we should go back to Leh or continue. I was 90 percent sure that, there is no going back, I looked at my daughter and she looked really weak. I asked my wife and she told, “let us keep going and will return if things go worse”. That was more than enough for me to clear my 10 percent confused brain. We three decided to take avomine tablet for mountain sickness, and continued the drive. 

Few kilometers from there, we reached North Pullu, the place where we should submit our ILP. I got out of the car with the permit, climbed few steps to the police outpost, and I felt myself losing my control. I was going blind and started feeling dizzy. It was only for two seconds and I was fine again. I could feel it very difficult to stand there and I somehow managed to give the permit to the person there and got to the car. So that was my first real experience of altitude sickness. Once i got into the car, I was all fine and normal. I could drive normally. The road from North Pullu to South Pullu was extremely bad and it is definitely going to test your vehicle and driving skills. The road was either slushy or completely broken with rocky patches. Also there are water streams very often because of the melting ice, which makes the road slippery at places. Army stays alert in the area, and keeps cleaning the debris on the roads due to landslides, so that the traffic is not impacted. Always start early from Leh so that you reach the top before the ice melts. Once the ice is melted and streams start flowing, the road becomes a dirt track.

It took really long to reach on top through this bad patch of 14kms. And then finally there we were – The Khardung-La top. And it was snowing there. And that was the very first time, my car temperature ever started showing values below zero degrees and warnings of “possibility of snow”. I couldn’t hold the excitement and jumped out of the car to click pictures. But to my surprise, I couldn’t even really stand properly and felt very unstable. I then got into the car in seconds and told my wife, that I am not able to stand out, and asked her to check if she could manage to click some pictures. She went out and clicked few pictures, even though she was also experiencing a bit difficulty in breathing. My daughter was all tired and had slept off by then, so we couldn’t really click a family picture near the famous sign board of the “highest motorable pass”.

So the ascend to Khardung-La didn’t go upto our expectations. And those who are visiting this place, make sure you don’t spend long time on the top, if you are feeling any difficulties. We just continued again through the next stretch of bad roads until we reached South Pullu. 

During this time, both wife and daughter slept off deeply because of the medication. Even I was feeling very tired and sleepy and as we reached South Pullu, I stepped out to have a tea, which made me feel a lot better. Both of them were still sleeping and I didn’t wake them up until we reached Khalsar and stopped for lunch. After a pretty decent lunch of rice and mixed vegetables, we had a smooth drive later on and the roads were really good. As we climbed down, the fierce Rocky Mountains gave way to patches of greenery, rivers, and pine trees. Soon we entered a long stretch of flat road, with the mysterious valley unfolding before ourselves, with cold sand and yellow flowered cactus spread across the sides of the road!

We reached our stay in Nubra by 3.15pm. Though there were tents, we had opted for a regular accommodation, which looks like the prefect decision now, considering the previous experiences! As soon as we checked-in to the room, all I remember is me falling on the bed and sleeping off and I woke up only after 2 hours. Avomine was pretty effective. So after a nervous and confused start, we have finally reached the cold desert of Nubra. Nubra was such a remote place, that wife exclaimed she has seen similar flora only in the old table calendars which her uncle brought from Saudi Arabia. This high altitude desert with patches of greenery and only thorny bushes here and there, made us wonder about the hardships of common people living there. When we were planning our trip, I had read mixed reviews of Nubra, where many people told that there is not much to see in this place and is not worth the drive. For us, drive to Nubra, was a lifetime experience, and this feel of scary loneliness and biting cold weather, you are not going to get anywhere else in the world.

Once I got up from my sleep, we went for a walk around our stay.  It was all sandy outside, and we couldn’t go farther. Also, Hunder was pretty far from the place we stayed and hence we postponed all sight seeing to the next day morning.

Electricity is very restricted in these areas, hardly few hours a day.There was nothing much to do in the night. Also there was no signs of mobile network even for the BSNL sim. It got pretty cold in the night, and as we were having dinner at the open restaurant of our hotel, we were mesmerised at the sight of the bright starry sky which was crystal clear ! The vastness of the cold desert looked wrapped in a starry blanket at that moment!

Day 22 – Nubra to Leh – 15 Sep 2018

It took 1.5 hours to reach the Hunder sand dunes from our stay. This was the most breathtaking of all the landscapes we have seen so far. Straight roads through the desert with miles of visibility, scarce vegetation, vast stretches of sand dunes with ice-cold weather – the combination seemed impractical.

Hunder village looked like an oasis amidst the cold desert of Nubra! The fruitless landscape so far just turned into a serene abode of the famous double humped camels. Sand dunes, green trees, shayok river flowing by and mighty barren mountains in the background – the picture seemed so perfect!

It was time to hop on to one of those double humped camels also known as Bactrian Camels. These camels are such a surprising species that they can eat any kind of food for survival and can survive without food for days. Wife already did not enjoy the camel ride in Jaisalmer, and hence offered to click pictures for us this time, and just walked alongside the camels.

The place was crowded with several tourists, and we saw a bunch of kids from an army school picnic swimming and playing in the ice-cold water of the river. Daughter spent some time sitting on a small wooden bridge across the shallow river stream, hanging her tiny feet in the cold water. After spending some relaxed time embracing the amazing panoramic views, we decided to head back to Leh!

On the way back, we saw locals plucking and collecting some small yellow berries which looked like fruits with medicinal values. Later on reading, we came to know that those were “Leh-berries” rich in vitamins and nutritive properties used in several therapeutic treatments. As we moved ahead, we had our first sight at the Diskit Monastery from the main road, where the architecture looked as if it is etched onto the mighty barren mountains. Even though it was getting late for us to head back, we took a diversion from the main road to climb up all the way to have a quick visit to the milky white monastery. 

It was already 12.30pm and we have a long way back to Leh. We stopped at the same restaurant in Khalsar for lunch, for a dose of Maggie and tea.  This time as we started the ascend to the Khardung La pass, things were all fine. All three of us were really comfortable. We stopped few kms after South Pullu as my daughter wanted to feel the snow, and it was her all-time dream to make a snowman, and that was the only thing which she had demanded when we started the journey from Bangalore. As things did not favour us the previous day during the onward journey, we thought that will remain just as a dream! However this time she did go out, played in the snow, and even tried making a snowman.

And few kms from there, we were at Khardung La once again, this time in a much better situation to enjoy the place. We spent 10 minutes there, and clicked enough pictures as we wanted.

It was already 5pm and going to get dark soon. However, we could keep upto our plan of covering the bad stretch of road in the daylight. Our stay was 13kms away from Leh on the Leh-Manali highway, which is going to help us for our trip to Pangong lake. Wife was not much happy, as this was going to be yet another tent stay! It was really dark as we passed Leh, and the road to our stay was such an off-roading experience. The roads were very bad, and it was really scary with strange animal sounds around, we even felt we lost our way and got trapped in some jungle! Finally we were so relieved to reach an exquisite property on the banks of the Indus River! A good warmup before the drive on the Leh-Manali highway.  Even though the stay was far better than the previous tent experiences, there were scary sounds created by the strong winds hitting the walls of the tent, all through the night! As we were too tired from a hectic drive, we soon slept off after a heavy dinner!

Day 23 – Leh – 16 Sep 2018

This was a complete rest day for us. From last one week it has been continuous travel and we really needed some rest. 

We spent this day just relaxing at the stay, writing the blog, washing the car, and playing games with our daughter. As the accommodation had really spacious lawns outside, we washed our clothes and hung for drying. Unfortunately there was no hot water in the bathroom, and we ended up bathing in ice-cold water which was a very tough task! We met a couple who were yet to goto Nubra, and spent good amount of time with them explaining about the road conditions and precautions to be taken!

In the evening, we walked to the banks of nearby Indus river and had an amazing time there watching the sunset. Serenity and peace. 

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