After we all had satiated our quest for photography we saddled up our bikes in order to leave. Veda discovered that he had left his bike keys in the bike the whole night, thankfully we had the bikes parked within the compound of the guesthouse. The cheerful host bid us farewell, not before charging us a very nominal rate for the rooms and a slightly heavy rate for the food. Our plan for now was to head towards the sand dunes of Hunder, but before we were shocked to see a Kendriya Vidyalaya in Diskit village. I remember one of us did click a picture of it, but I can't seem to find it to post it here. As we moved out Diskit, a couple of village kids excited on seeing our bike waved frantically at us.

Hunder is less than 10kms from Diskit and it did not take us more than a few minutes to reach the outskirts of Hunder. We stopped outside of Hunder to admire the sand dunes for a short while. The only other thing that was compelling us to move further was the camels in Hunder, neither of us apart from Amit seemed really interested in see camels of all the places here. So after a brief photo session be turned around to return to the Khalsar junction. We stopped twice before that, again for photos. Once at a place where we could the reflection of the mountain in water and once at the straight patch of road that runs right across the river bed.



We grouped up at the Khalsar junction for a small break. Me and Pranay were especially excited on doin 110'ish on the small straight patch of road just before the junction. In the Nubra valley apart from the sand dunes of Hunder the other attraction that we had heard of were the naturally occurring hot water spring of Panamik. Not that we intended to bathe in the springs but we just needed an excuse to ride further into the Nubra valley. Apart from these two there is of course the more important significance of this place i.e. it leads to Siachen. The road quality was more or less the usual all throughout, I had fun evading the odd pot hole here and there. We rode fast through the route as for quite a bit the roads were arrow straight at places. With hunger knocking around wildly in our stomachs we pulled over at the sign of the first town that we came across, Sumur. Only place was open and they served only hot maggi. We gobbled it down as if it was the tastiest thing in the whole world. Although we did not have much to do, but still we had a timeline to meet and that was to be at Khardung La but 3 PM as we thought that any later and we might not be allowed to pass through! We started from Sumur and soon enough had to stop for another photo break.


Panamik soon came but with the springs no where in sight, I infact ended up crossing the village and going further till I realised that the springs were indeed behind us. It took us numerous stops to ask the exact location of the spring from the villagers. But none of them really told us where exactly the springs were located, they just pointed in the general direction and we had to hunt for it like hounds looking for their prey. It must have taken us almost half an hour of hunt to figure the exact location. The turn to the springs is pretty obscure and the path leading to the spot is even more weird, its almost as the path is fit only for wild animals, but we saw a decent sized dump truck moving on it. It was a moment for us. Excited at the thought of seeing the source of a mountain sping the anticipation just pushed us to walk up the path impatiently....Only to discover this....


The sulphur coated rocks from the hot water springs might have been one of the marvels of nature, but they did not appeal to us. Partly because we had grandiose expectations from the little spring. But this minor disappointment was not a setback of any sort, we had ridden on some beautiful roads scenery around more than made up for it.

We started back towards Khalsar and decide to split up into two groups. One group was of Veda and Amit who were more relaxed riders, me and Pranay formed the other group who would ride fast, stop to take pics and then catch up with the relaxed group. We decided to regroup at Khalsar once.

After crossing the Khalsar village we decided not to stop too often run back to Khardung La. As it was already 1.30 PM and by our time-line we just had an hour and a half to reach back to the top. We stopped at a few places where we had stopped the day before briefly. But the most important stop was for the place where me and Pranay had our small offroading misadventure the earlier day, we wanted to show Amit and Veda what we had been through.


We reached North Pullu checkpost at about 3.15PM. Much later than we had originally planned, but we weren't stopped at there so we proceeded further towards Khardung. We had not eaten any lunch and were hungry as hell, eating in North Pullu would have meant a spending a lot of time here, so we decided to eat on Khardung La instead. Just when we were about to leave a couple guys came asking us for tools, they had a bullet with a flat tyre. Whats more these guys were totally unprepared for the ride, they had just rented these bulls in Leh and ridden it across Khardung La without any spare or tools whatsoever. Brave souls they were ! And incidently they belonged to one of the popular travel forums in India. Amit and Veda pushed ahead of us so that they don't get left behind in the climb. Me and Pranay started a bit later, Pranay's bike had given a starting scare the day before at Khardung La and he as worried about it, so on the climb up he decided not to stop anywhere and pushed up without stopping. I on the other hand took breaks here and there to capture a few pics. It had snowed the earlier night and as I got further up I could feel the cold biting in through my multi-layered thermals. First time on the trip I could get really close to some proper, clean snow. Here are some pics from North Pullu till the climb up.


As we reached the top, the first thing we did is we headed to the canteen. No posing shots today...only food. Finally relaxed after a bowl or two of maggi each and numerous cups of black tea we finally were feeling nice and relaxed. After a few minutes spent in conversation I decided to explore a little bit, I want to climb up till the view point hunt a little above the pass. Pranay who had been there the earlier told me not get worried with the initial breathlessness that will attack me at the start of the climb. This tip really helped me a lot. I took numerous breaks till I reached the hut only to realise that we can climb a lot higher! I felt better acclimatized after the initial few meters and decided to climb further. It was relatively tougher terrain, but I did not feel any AMS related symptoms and was not worried. The view from the top was like reward for all the hard work involved in climbing till that place....This is what I could see from there...




By the time I had finished my adventure we had packed up to leave it was well beyond 5PM. The wind had picked up and the temperatures were dropping rapidly, any part of the skin that was exposed would feel as if there are a 1000 needles pricking it. As usual Amit and Veda left ahead of us, it was a good plan. But they did not know that Pranay's bike would throw its a tantrum at that altitude. No matter how much cranked Pranay's bike it just refused to start, it was clear that the battery was acting up. Dhakka start was the only way to go, at this altitude and temperature dhakka start was a herculean task but we managed. I took a few minutes to get my breath back. My bike luckily started at the first crank itself. As I slowly rolled down still trying to recover from all the pushing of Pranay's bike, I was shocked to see that he had again stopped and was trying to start his bike. It had stalled and shut once again, no problemo exhausted as I was had to push start the bike again. This time it started and Pranay did everything to not make it stop again. This time I needed a longer break to recover from the burst of energy expenditure. After a few minutes I could ride normally with decent amounts of oxygen in my body. I caught up with Pranay who was riding slowly to allow me to catch up. The ride down was super fun, with me and Pranay blasting down the twisties. We did have our scary moments with gravel lining the sides and middle of the road, but by now were used to it and we just floated down all the way till Leh. The sun was started to set as we began our descent, and it was twilight for the final few kilometers.

All in all it was a good 2 days spent towards exploring Nubra valley and crossing Khardung La.....

13. Day 10 : Pangong Tso - Marismek La - Leh