Panggong Sidetrip

We're back in Leh after a beautiful but strenuous trip out to Panggong Lake. It took us 2.5 days of hard riding to get to the lake, and 2 days to get back, leaving only one afternoon and one morning camped beside this gorgeous salt lake, but I think all the hard pedalling was worth it.

There is a bit of history to my interest in the lake. In 1998, during our Pakistan-Mt. Kailash bike trip, Audie, Saakje and I cycled past the eastern end of the lake, and were so struck by its stark beauty that we cut short the day's cycling and spent the afternoon swimming and lounging by the lakeshore. It's a long (115 km long), narrow (4 km wide) lake that is shared, none too happily, by India and China. It's a salt lake; you can see that at the western end, where we just visited, the lake must at one time have flowed out into the Tangtse Valley, but no longer. This results in the eastern (Chinese) end of the lake, with all its inflow, being fresh water, while the western (Indian) end is very salty, to the extent that even the groundwater from deep wells around the lake comes up brackish.

We rode out of Leh on Saturday, zipping along the flat, broad, desert Indus Valley for 35 km to the military camp at Karu, and then starting the nearly 2000-metre climb to the Chang La pass (5330 m). We made it about halfway up the 43-km road, found a nice riverside campground and collapsed into our tents, very legsore.

The following morning, refreshed, we finished the climb around noon, took a few celebratory snaps and then started the descent. We have no decent maps, but I had had a look at a good map that another tourist was carrying, and it seemed to show a continuous downhill for 75 km to the lake. Imagine our distress when, after a fast zip downhill, we realized that in fact we had to climb 30 km upstream along a river to get to the lake. This sapped our will, and we settled in for a dreadful meal of chow mien at the village of Tangtse before camping at a beautiful riverside spot.

The next day, the climb to the lake was gentle, along a vast, stark, beautiful valley lined by glaciated peaks, with a narrow strip of riverside meadow dotted with yaks, donkeys and horses. By noon we were at the lake, where we camped on the shore, swam (turning our skin into salty pachyderm flesh), played guitar and watched the sun play on the desert peaks on the opposite shore. It looked a lot like the Saudi shore of the Red Sea as seen from Dahab, on the Sinai Peninsula, if you ignored the occasional white patch of glacier peeking out. The saltiness of the water, though, didn't do our bodies much good, and we woke up with very sticky, salty mouths.

The ride back was a bit more fun than the outward leg, as we knew exactly what climbs and descents were coming. The climb towards the pass was steep and exhausted us, but we were revived by a great macaroni and cheese supper created by Saakje in our lakeside campsite. We spotted hoopoes, marmots and mouse hares as we ground uphill.

The final day, we crossed the pass in fine form by noon, took some pictures (it was sunny, this time) and then set off for an adrenaline-filled 43-km descent. Once we got clear of the bad road near the pass summit, we averaged 35 km/h as we flew downhill in an hour the road that it had taken us an entire day to climb. We lunched beside the Indus, then battled headwinds back to a massive (and well-earned) supper of pizza and beer in Leh.

Our plans have changed a bit because of time pressure; it looks as though we will not trek back to Manali, but will instead ride to Srinagar and fly from there to Delhi. It will be a good idea, I think, given our slow speed and the bother of dealing with our bikes while trekking. It will also allow us to see another corner of India that we haven't seen yet.

Hope that everyone's having a great summer. Talk to everyone soon.

Graydon