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Tuesday, 29th September, 2009 – DAY 8 – Khardung La, Mulbekh


Another D-Day. Today we will be conquering the highest motorable road in the world. Excited? Yes. But a little disappointed as well. Due to the time crunch we had to miss Pangong Tso Lake and Nubra Valley. This was a big blow to me. I was really waiting to make it to the lake and camp there. But I consoled myself for having one more reason to make it to Leh another time.
We started our ride to Khardung La at about 8:30 in the morning. We left the luggage back at the hotel and it felt really light to travel without all those bulky baggage behind you.



As usual, we had long photography breaks in between.






Khardung la was not as difficult as Tanglang La. The roads were also much better. But this may not also be true as for Khradung la, we were travelling light and fresh.



Leh is at an altitude of around 11,000 feet above sea level, while Khardung La which is 40 kms from Leh, is around 18,000 ft. Throughout the route one can feel the increase in altitude rapidly.

On the way, the guy from a check post stopped us and asked for the permit. I told him that many of the locals said that we do not require a permit to Khardung la. But he doesn’t seem to agree. He showed the permit letters of others and Khardung La was clearly mentioned in it. Damn! Skipping the visit to the permit office turned out to be a bad gamble. After nearly 15 minutes of negotiation, the guy agreed to take our pan card and driving license as proofs and decided to let us through.

Phew. But that didn’t spoil the excitement and the rush. We rode on and on and after a couple of hours, our mission was accomplished.




We met a Kiwi friend enroute and he also reached Khardung La almost at the same time.



We decided we’ll do something different at the highest pass and that thought led to Golf. Ram brought his mini golf kit and thus we had our record breaking attempt. Are the Guinness people watching?






Then came the funniest part for me and the saddest part for Ram. Our new found Kiwi friend also wanted to share the record and gave it a try. We forgot to tell him that this is not a proper metal putter. This is an executive mini golf putter made of wood. Apparently he didn’t notice that and swung hard to hit the snow ball. The ball did go high but along with it the bottom part of the putter flew. That’s 6000 bucks gone with the wind. Lol… you should see the look in Ram’s face. Poor guy.

Some rest, few snaps and we started our ride back to the hotel.



By around 2 P.M we were back in our hotel at Leh and we quickly got ready to leave Leh. Clock was against us as we planned to reach Kargil by today. And thus began our second leg of the journey from Leh back to Delhi Through Srinagar and Amristar.



I managed to click some beautiful scenery before the sun went down enroute Kargil. Soon it was dark and we were riding all alone on the muddy road to Kargil. We didn’t stop much on the way to save some time, but seemed to be not enough to reach Kargil. By the time we reached Mulbekh we were worn out and so decided to call it a day.
We stopped at the J&K tourism guest house at Mulbekh which was a pretty decent option for 300 bucks a night.






The Journey Begins

Day(-1),0

Day 1,2

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Day 4

Day 5

Day 6

Day 7

Day 8<<<<

Day 9

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

The Journey Ends