The Journey Begins

We started our journey on August 24^th from Mumbai by flight to Chandigarh. We were received by cars to take us to Manali. 1-2 days prior the rains have subsided in Manali. And that was one of the first of the good news in weeks. But our bad luck was far from over, as Chandan Sharma alarmed us of situation in Srinagar and urged us to cancel the Kashmir part of our journey and fly directly from Leh to Mumbai via Delhi. So almost the whole of 25^th August in Manali, was utilsed to reorganise the tour plan and preparing for trecarious journey from Manali to Leh. We were all tense as we did not know what we were getting into. Chandan also loaded few oxygen cylinders for and ration in case we get stuck on our way.

We left Manali in the wee hours (5am) of August 26^th and crossed Rohatang pass very easily as there were hardly any tourist in Manali going to Ladakh. We started early, considering the possible delay due to landslides etc.

Our first stop was at Sarchu about 300kms from Manali. Here a self content tent accommodation is available. To reach Sarchu, we passed Keylong, which is 150kms from Manali. The road from Manali to Leh is quite picturesque. We reached Sarchu by evening. This place is at 15000ft, double the height of Manali. I was warned of this place and tried not to include it in my itinerary. But the regular road from Sarchu to Leh was washed out due to floods, there was an addition of 100kms. to our route. And so we had to stay at Sarchu. Suddenly gaining this much height in a day had its implications and most of my group members suffered minor high altitude sickness. But nothing was unmanageable. The service was excellent. We went to bed by 8pm after an early dinner, as the next day was supposed to be more hectic. The temp that night dropped below zero in Sarchu, and we all were merely surviving the cold and high altitude sickness. Everyone was counting hours and minutes at night. All of us were eager to leave this height and come down to relatively low altitude but not before we promised to return next year to spend 2 full moon nights at Sarchu. Whoever could brave the cold and could came out of their tents that night, were awarded by a beautiful moon lit, clear sky laced with numerous stars. A sight I will never forget in my life.

We started from Sarchu by 4.30am on August 27^th, and from here on our way we came across such beautiful landscape, that slowly we forgot the pains of previous night.

The roads all along from Manali were bad and sitting in a car for more than 12 hours was not very easy. The blessing in disguise was that the roads were open for us to move ahead. By God’s grace and blessings of all our friends and family, we did not encounter rains, landslides, roadblocks or traffic jams anywhere from Manali.