Pangong Tso Lake: SURE SHOT HEAVENLY VIEW This article was pending for a while now. And I am still struggling to draw words from that nature’s best painted canvas! Someone said it- Our God is an Artist. I saw this place, and the first feeling which came to me was this, He must have sent the best of gods to paint this place. This is Pangong Lake! Geographically, it’s one of the last points in India as its Indo- China border area. The lake is around 150 Kms from Leh and even though the Sea levels of Leh and Pangong are similar, i.e. 13500 ft but temperatures are extremely different. To reach the lake there is the 2nd highest highway of India- Chang la Pass which is at 17800 Ft from sea level. It was 4 in the evening when we touch down at this place. This was an achievement to reach here! We started from Delhi 4 days back, 1792 Kms travelled, 3 halts in Himalayas, at Udhampur, Sonamarg and Leh and we finally reached here in our Maruti Suzuki Swift Dzire (Highly avoidable for such terrains). Hint: In case you planning, plan well. If the lake matters to you the most, take a flight till Leh and Land in the world’s highest Airport. Take a day rest at Leh and 2nd day go for the Lake. And In Case you are an adventure junkie and you own a Karizma or a Bullet, take a trip of 11-12 Days minimum, as you will be on the road for 8 days for sure, if you start from Delhi. And in case you take a vehicle- go for Xylo/ Thar- it’s even better than Innova in these places. As soon as we hit the place we started realising all our mistakes we made in our journey preps. The decision of bringing Swift Dzire certainly put us behind schedule by 4-5 Hours in our 48 hours drive in these First 4 days of the journey. One of our team members did not bring heavy jackets, as he misread the temperatures of Leh and thought Pangong will be similar. Only to face that, Pangong was good 20 Degree colder, than Leh. We didn’t carry dry fruits for energy as we felt, we are naturally fit and in prime of our youth, no nature can challenge us! We were wrong- Chang La almost got us fainted as the air pressure at 18000 Ft is really low. And finally the decision to not take a proper halt at Leh was a mistake and we thought we can do it easily, well we were wrong! The temperature in day time of the lake may rise up to 15 degrees and at night we faced around -10 Degrees as told by some locals and our Samsung app. The day temperature is accompanied with a skin burning and eye dazzling- Sun! And the evenings and the nights are often comes with icy freezing wind! The face will turn pale, and the cheeks will dry out within half an hour and if you don’t take a little precaution, the nose will start bleeding too! Run for some 50 mts and you will literally crave for oxygen! So, I think this much of explanations is enough to rethink about visiting the place! A place which tests your body and hurts you almost everywhere with its hostility, why visit there? Right! Well- Wrong! Coming back to that 4 pm when we first saw the view of the lake. We have already travelled 1792 Kms in 4 days. Body has started to tire up and mind started questioning – How much far more is this damn Lake! And the very first view of lake put a little bit of life and excitement in us. We saw the lake from a fair distance. May be 20 kms away; and we still had to make a steep decent down the road to reach the lake! We were excited and we stopped to car to have a selfie. Wind was at its peak and within seconds out hands froze. And needless to say- we ran inside the car without the picture and the excitement to see the lake froze- quite literally. While going to the lake we saw numerous little ditches and puddles with frozen white ice on the surface. Now we knew what could be the temperature here. I decided to check- what’s the temperature outside? Inside the car it was good 25 degrees! I kept my hand outside the car with the mobile. The moving car and the snowy wind could not show any temperature difference in the first go. The second time however, the temperature dropped rapidly. 25….17…14…10…9…8…5…3…1 And in 15 seconds my hands froze and in fear of losing the mobile in my experiment, I decided to take my hand in. quite certainly, temperature must have been minus 5 in that snowy breeze. Head was dizzy, as the body was still to adapt to low oxygen atmosphere and the energy in body came from Snickers. Yeah, those extra sweet nutty chocolate bars, we all must have had 4-5 in the span of 2 hours; such was the need to energy! Finally when we reached lake, clouds and misty atmosphere destroyed the scenes a bit, and also dampened our spirit. We finally found a camp to stay as we had no pre-reservations which are hugely costly at 4000-5000 per tent, which is available on direct deals at 2000-2500 per tent. But much to our surprise the clouds cleared out in moments and sun was shining in the late once again. And the temperatures improved immediately. A little warmth of sunlight felt nice on fingers and face. And for the first time, we saw the lake as it’s shown in pics in Google images. A bright dark poster blue was painted over the lake. The lake had shades, when I was seeing from a height. The shades of brownish blue and light ocean green color came from parts which were shallow. The lake has a sand beach, a proper beach like sea. I stood there, and the beauty of the place struck me slowly and glided down to the deepest parts of my hearts. What I saw was literally unbelievable. I am philosophical at heart, but this place, can make any damn person in this world a philosopher. And my imaginations took wings but even with wings to fly it sat down near the lake and bathed in the views. Sun was setting in front of me. The bare brown mountains looked as if the earth is naked in these parts. This bareness made her beautiful. The brown mountains in bright sunshine looked fair and from brown they appeared beige. The mountains on the far side of the lake had snowy peaks and looked like Himalayas at its best. Below the mountains the lake stayed there. It was not flowing in any direction; however the length of the lake will not end, till your eyes can see. The water just formed shapes as the breeze touches it on the surface. The deep Prussian blue was limited to the edges of the lake on the other side of the beach; the breath of the lake must be 4 to 5 kms. The bright poster blue was in the centre of the lake which I could not imagine, is it the reflection of the sky or the minerals in the water; And on the sides with shallow, water sported a strange ocean green color tint. I could see, only vegetation which was alive was immediately close to the lake beach. Shrubs have started to grow as the summer was coming with bright green color leaves. The stem of trees looked grey, more than usual browns. And on my left side, I have a bright wheatish colored beach. The sky was blue over me and had spots of harmless white softballs as clouds. On the far side, the night has started setting with a dark navy blue and purple shade started to spread its wings over the clear blue sky. And on the other side, sun was setting with a million colors. I have painted 4 years in my drawing school and never ever could gather the courage to play with such bright colors in the landscape. Not that I never wished for but my drawing master made me realise, the perspective should be real so use the color which looks natural. I was so surprised that god really experimented with all bright colors he could find in his palate tray! The browns and the beige, orange and reds of sunset to dark purple night sky-The poster blue water, take a brave color of Prussian Blue at some places and becomes sea green at others. The views sunk in my eyes and occupied one of the safest places in my brain. I clicked pics of those places, which no mobile camera can capture completely (DSLR would have helped). I am sure, even if I lose memory; these memories will be one of the last ones to leave my mind. I spoke to a few locals and they told me, that in winters the lake freezes and they can walk all these 4 kms on ice to go to other side to get burning wood. The other side of the lake is the Indian Border. And the lake is around 134 kms long and 4 kms wide! Major part of lake is in Tibet and is the border of India. The views changed and as soon as sunlight vanished, the ice cold wind took over; and the temperature of the nights are in minus in May. The hot plain food in the camp was nice. Needless to say- night was extremely chilly. If you can convince your Girl to accompany, nothing like it. The morning view, of sunlight on the water was again nothing less than magic. The lake froze on the sides of the beaches. However the fun was killed, when we found out that that diesel in our car has froze in night. The locals helped in getting the car started again. We left the Pangong lake early in the morning at 9 am. Well, we should have stayed a couple of hours more, but our bodies and the journey of past 5 days and immense cold of last night has started to take a toll on body and it was best if we head back to Leh. This lake is certainly no heaven! Not a single fish lives in lake as most part of year, the lake is extremely hostile. Heavens can’t be this tough to live for sure, from what I have heard. This place is just too beautiful for Hell. Not possible. One view and you will believe, no way it is hell. But the hostility of environment makes it no less than one! So where do we put this place? Quite certainly can’t say that I will make a cozy bunglow here to live my rest of my life. I have always had secretly romanticised death. You know, this is a place where I would like to die. A last wish cannot be any more beautiful than this view! This is that kind of place where if you go to heaven after dying, seeing heaven won’t b much different! And If you go to Hell- Feeling Hell, wont be much different. Sunil Chandra Saha 14th Aug- 2014 4.04 am
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 22:47:54 +0000
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