Zanskar and Penzi la

We got up tired and dreary, perhaps due to the treatment meted out to us at Zoji La and the subsequent treacherous ride. Braving the winter and taking a refreshing bath to bring the spirits back to normal, I invited the wrath of the locals who all watched me doing the spectacle. Each one personally advised and warned me of contracting pneumonia. One gentleman went even to the extent of saying, “Listen gentleman! This is not Delhi”. I pleaded guilty and decided not to repeat the ‘misdeed’ :~)).

As per our day’s itinerary, destination was Rangdum Village. After a quick bread-jam-butter breakfast we ‘suru ho gaye’. The Suru River like the Zanskar is a left-bank major tributary of the Indus River and flows from south to north. We encountered it at Kargil where it meets with its own tributary, the Wakha-chhu River, making a broad basin at the confluence point. As we entered the Suru valley, we knew we made a wise decision of including it in our travel plan and are going to have a gala time here. While riding through the valley and up to the Rangdum village, we munched on and assimilated the gradually unfolding panorama of the impressive Himalayan landscape.

A relatively narrow valley, Suru is sandwiched between the Zanskar and the Great Himalayan ranges with the river meandering its way to Kargil through some really sharp bends. Lower Suru valley is a verdant, cultivated, broad expanse of land. ‘Fall’ made it even more beautiful. Vegetation exhibited all hues of yellows in the background of brown-grey dull mountains with glistening freshly and heavily snowed peaks, and gushing cyan-blue Suru itself, providing the contrast. We kept riding towards Sankoo, first major township after Kargil, enjoying the breathtaking scenery. Sankoo, 42km south of Kargil, is the most developed town of the valley and owes that to its proximity to the Kargil. The villagers and the Forest Department have jointly taken up dense plantations of Poplars, Willows, Myricarea and Wild Roses which add forest charm to the bowl shaped valley. Sankoo must be the ideal getaway destination for the Kargil dwellers. Like always, we passed like a phenomenon through the village with every visible cheery face gazing at us and children bidding a very good bye.

As we touched Panikhar, the valley broadened. I entered into a state of trance after viewing majestic Nun peak standing at a formidable 7135 m (23410 feet). The other major peak is the twinlet of Kun (7087 m) in the massif. Like Sankoo, Panikhar too is picturesque village with houses mostly concentrated on both sides of the road and on the left bank of the river. But unlike Sankoo, it has little amenities to boast of. Here, confluence of Suru and Chelong River, its major tributary, has broadened the valley and made the land fertile as evident from the numerous terraced fields in the vicinity.

Army’s presence in the region has eased off the crunch of basic amenities a bit. Army has made camps to provide facilities like first aid, STD/ISD/PCOs, mechanic/repair shops, and even internet. We did not spot any two-wheeler or a mechanic, though. Transport-wise both Suru and Zanskar valleys are not well connected as we spotted only three buses during our stay in the valley.

Riding past Panikhar we bade goodbye to very bad roads. Now all we had was a track, uneven and strewn with boulder-like stones. Surely, difficult accessibility to this region has been one of the main reasons behind its virgin unadulterated beauty. On the darker side, this has also left the region, grossly, under-developed with almost no basic amenities. After Panikhar, the road takes a sharp turn at right-angle towards left, along with the river. It took us an hour and a half to reach a glacial ravine. Under the shadow of Parkachik glacier is situated a tiny hamlet, Parkachik. It is a small Dard settlement in a deep gorge on the bank of Suru and situated right below the Nun peak. From the road, there is a fifteen minute steep descent to the village on an unstepped dirt track along small terraced barley and wheat fields. In fact, at both Panikhar and Parkachik, we found a series of intensively cultivated level stepped plateau from the foothills to the bed of the Suru River. We didn’t spot any wild exotic alpine flora, the Suru valley is famous for, may be because winters had already set in. Parkachik, like Panikhar, is a natural marvel with picture-perfect surroundings and cool environs but, unlike Panikhar, is situated on the right bank of the Suru River. From 12 kms short of Panikhar (Thangbu village) to Parkachik we had a clear glimpse of the Mt. Nun’s peak.

Parkachik onwards, it is a remote land and human sightings were on the wane, exponentially. It almost turned into a ghost country, with little marmots to scare us every now & then. Ever-worsening road conditions coupled with extreme cold made us long for a break but mind severed off any connections with the body except our eyes which kept soaking in the beauty of the glacial countryside. We both were actually spellbound, unaware of what treatment our bodies and the bike were receiving on that bumpy, boulder-strewn, uneven, muddy and narrow track. Melted snow made the ride even more difficult with balance going for a toss and loads of mud sticking to wheels and mudguards. Manish, being pillion, took the maximum punishment as he later discovered strange maps on his butt. Resolute we just carried on and on. Seeing a glimpse of Rangdum was the top thought in the quarry of our minds. It took us two hours of a ‘struggle ride’ to cover around 40 km section beyond Parkachik. Then the valley started broadening with Suru River becoming multi-streamed leaving small grassy islands in-between. The narrow track gave way to a wide track and gradually broadening valley widened to appear as a vast meadow. To our utmost delight we were touching Rangdum, as the last landmark informed us. Confirming our destination, we rode past the prayer flags, chortens and a mani wall, the signs of Buddhism. We could clearly see the setting sun spotlit Rangdum Gompa on the other end of the valley perched scarily on a small steep hillock though the aerial distance from our position should have been more than four kilometers. Rangdum apart from being the gateway to Zanskar valley is quite a destination in itself. Please keep aside the ‘smooth’ approach ‘road’ for a moment and then imagine an elliptical stream-strewn meadow valley centered by the Rangdum village and flanked by towering mountains snowed in up to their base on one side and tall barren rocky ones on the other. Don’t forget to freeze with the cold and also please don’t step on the snowed grassland. Dear friend you are standing at an altitude of 3657m and the place is inhabited!

Coming back to reality, we quickly negotiated a few freezing streams made by the melting snow and reached Rangdum village at around 5.00 pm. Village comprises a few double and single storied houses, elaborately painted in the ‘Laddakhi’ style and having a small ground left to each one of them before the boundary wall. Residents there were not much bothered by our arrival while we kept looking for a place to camp. Due to snow all around we couldn’t find a suitably dry place to camp. I particularly insisted on a water source to be comfortably near to the camp. Not finding any good place we rode a little further from the village and crossed a bridge over a tributary of Suru to reach a now-extinct Suru river bed patch of land. Here the valley was widest and interestingly was not snowed due to its proximity to the snowless rocky and barren mountains. Here we had the water source comfortably near in the form of the tributary stream of the Suru River and wind speed was also relatively less intimidating. Contemplating on our campsite, we melted into nature’s marvels so generously on offer. Without a second thought, we offtracked a little inside on the riverbed and then pitched our tent. Pitching tent ate up our precious 40 minutes as we were breathing heavily due to rarity of air, our fingers were near-numb and notably we had no prior experience of pitching a tent. I am sure you must be murmuring by now, “These guys are crazy…..how could they never find time to at least first try pitching a bloody tent.” You can spare us by acknowledging that we wanted to pitch our first tent at 4000 meters. Crazy nah? That camping night is indelibly etched in my memory.

The setting looked fabulous. The Sun was already down and under the fast-fading daylight and all-encompassing cold we braved the mind-numbing winds to soak in even more of our adventure. We were super delighted to see our erected ‘ashiana’ for that night. Pebble strewn river bed far stretched to the Gompa hillock at a distance and snowy peaks filled rest of the backdrop. We rambled to our water source and filled up two buckets we had for the spare fuel. Suru tributary was already frozen on the banks. “What’s on the menu today?” I asked Manish to get an almost instant response, “Paneer, of course!”

Worth mentioning over here is the cooking problem that we faced. After arranging everything I tried lighting up the fuel cake in vain. Our lighter never lighted up. My dissonant late advice to Manish to at least have checked the lighter was just a spontaneous but useless eruption. There we were, ditched and distressed! Poor hungry souls…..watching the uncooked Paneer lying on the ground. “No worry, I have the matchbox”, I said to Manish. Chill of the wind that we were enjoying a few moments earlier turned into our most hostile nemesis, not allowing us to light a matchstick. Mercury was constantly dipping as we both were shivering outside our tent badly in the want of fire and food. Finally, we both stood in the way of the wind and used our hands as windshield and a matchstick lit up. Igniting those cold fuel cakes took almost fifteen minutes and more than fifteen matchsticks. Next few moments we both watched our boiling ‘paneer’ without uttering a single word. I must tell you that I don’t like ‘paneer’ so much but that night it became my favorite. ‘Paneer’ at 4000 meters, sure it tasted better. We both ate to the capacity and the residue was licked from the utensil. We will never ever forget the taste of the food we had that night, shivering but still eating like beasts. Although, it wasn’t moonlit that moment but we could clearly see our surroundings. That day we discovered that even bright shining stars impart enough light to light up the surroundings sufficiently. And did I tell you about the sky? Man! Studded it was….with diamond like stars shining in all their glory.

It was 9:30 pm and washing the utensils meant putting hands into the ice. We opted to enter the tent instead. I have a torch which has a thermometer attached to it. It can show the temperature up to minus seven degree Celsius. Temperature at that moment was 3 degree Celsius. Cool…..No problem. Soon we switched to the rest mode ensconced inside our sleeping bags. Wind kept knocking on the tent while we tried our best to sleep. Manish was more comfortable due to his heavier sleeping bag but I was grossly cold and felt the need of some extra clothing. So I got up, wore leather jacket and then again tried to warm up in the sleeping bag. Still the cold was overpowering and I couldn’t sleep at all. It was 12:00 am and I thought it is a good idea to take a look at the temperature. It was zero degrees. “Gosh! If it is so inside the tent…….No no! I should better think about sleeping”, I told to myself. Then perhaps I dozed off for an hour only to be woken up by the gradually percolating cold. I was very uncomfortable with my head out on a ‘merry-go-round’. At 3 am when I rechecked the temperature, it was at its best…..at the base…..minus seven degrees. May be less but my device was incapable of recording lower than that. The fragile tent jostled hard against the wind-attacks and appeared mere a symbolic protection and so did the sleeping bag. Mind already out and body aching for the want of rest I suffered that night. ‘Like it or lump it’ but the night (mare) was to be passed. Icing on the cake was the water droplets dripping on us in the morning. The vapor from our breath condensed at the ceiling and gradually turned into ice in the night. With the morning sun again raising the mercury to rather comfortable levels, the ice thawed down on us. We both never ever experienced sub-zero temperature, forget about the magnitude. Manish gathering some strength made the first step out of the tent. It was pleasant outside and he asked me to try outside. Torpidity of my body disallowed any movement but I soldiered to win a hard-fought battle. Indeed, it was much better, as I came out with a heavy head and in an extremely irritated mood. It was 11:30 am and thus the morning chores were completed in the noon. Feces on ice looked great but camera was at the tent. Yuck!

Summing up our camping experience, I must say that we were very lucky to get a sunny day following nights freeze but unfortunate to miss the dawn. But we had a sumptuous taste of camping. Notably, we then could never muster courage to camp during rest of our ride-tour as you will read further.

Manish could discern my condition and suggested that I should better have some more rest in the tent. Manish is a hardy fellow and never shies away from the most obvious sign of trouble. But this time lack of rest and extreme cold got us. Actually we were a little scared of the cold and ice by that time. But I had Penzi La and Zanskar in my mind, the purpose for why we were putting much of that effort. So mustering strength we had, we were back on the job. Breakfast was laid in the form of bread-butter-jam. Fuel cake ignition exercise did not take much effort due to the bright sunshine, I guess. At 1:00 pm we started and were almost four hours behind the schedule. Deciding to visit the Gompa during the return journey we rode past and were galloping towards Penzi La. It is indeed a strenuous ride and takes quite an effort and skill to negotiate the track. And in that frame of mind it became all the more difficult for us. On the brighter side, the Strain, tension and shiver were suitably and amply compensated with the stunning views of the landscape.

What we saw was never reported to us earlier. The scenery was just superb. A Large expanse of virgin marshy plain surrounded by multicolored and spectacular permafrost mountain peaks snowed in till the base looked like a wonderland. Valley intermittently is as narrow as the river itself with a small mountain section left for track. Clouds resisted the sunlight to ultimately create a ‘shadow dance’ on the snow clad mountains while the otherwise verdant grass-cover down in the valley displayed all hues of the ‘yellow’. After riding for about 12 kilometers, a steep climb ensued. A few kilometers further we luckily found three trucks and followed them. Not only overtaking was impossible but we were actually benefited by trailing them. The wide tires of the trucks were cutting the snow and making a way for us to ride on. In the final three kilometers, an already steep climb became almost vertical. Trucks now were moving very slowly. It became difficult to ride and balance on the snow. So we honked them for the way. To our benefit a stretch of steep hairpin bends came. All three of them halted there to cool off the engine a bit. I revved the bike in first gear but it seemed insufficient. I asked Manish to get down but then thought to give it another final try. Holding the bike tight I stood on both legs freeing my weight on the bike and revved it hard. Off we were and bike generated some acceleration. On the track, all that a rough muddy stretch could offer was there – slush and more of it. Ride was made even more challenging by the hidden ice at the hairpin bends. Loosing balance became the riding way on this extremely tortuous route but luckily we managed to escape without a fall. Final 200 meters were done in a cinch and there we were at the Penzi La top (4450 m). The word ‘Ecstasy’ seems inadequate to define the feeling we had at the top. In our rapturous outburst, we gestured WHOOPEE!

The top has a very small structure dedicated to ‘Penzila baba’ but was unapproachable due to snow. Landscape was white due to the total region covered with a thick sheet of snow and the only other colors were brown for the unsnowed section of the mountains and the rich blue of the sky. The view of the Drang-drung glacier at a Yak’s spit distance is breathtaking from the pass. We could clearly view the Penzi La watershed separating the basins of Suru River towards north and Stot River towards south. In fact, the glacial consolidation at Penzi La is the source of these two rivers.

I was willing to celebrate our ‘victory’ over Penzi La at Padum and Zangla but Manish was of the opinion to return back. He mentioned his unwillingness for Padum right there at the campsite. Despite the fact that if Penzi La gets snowed heavily our tour will go for a toss, I proceeded towards Padum. But I was in a dilemma. Getting stuck at Padum or before Penzi La will mean ‘tour de finish’. I stopped the bike and looked at the snow again. We both never saw that much of snow ever in our lives. Obviously overwhelmed, I popped that damn question to Manish, “Chalein kya! Wapis chalein?”. With his positive nod coming in before the sentence completed, I took a U-turn. Zanskar kept beckoning but I engaged the ear plugs. As I am narrating this to you, I must share that the ‘call’ has not faded. And as and when it rings, a feeling of guilt engulfs me…..Why did I take a U-turn?

High altitude sickness and lack of sleep both were playing a major role in our decisions and affecting our confidence level. With no respite from extreme cold and gushy wind, we skipped climbing the hillock of Rangdum Gompa but soldiered on to Parkachik. Parkachik was an ideal location for night halt for we were not only accompanied by the famous Nun cliff and the vast glacial cover but also by the famous Dard inhabitants of the Suru valley. We soaked up the view and heard about the area’s famous cultural heritage from the caretaker of the rest house. Although, the Kargil region is known to be the only region of India with ‘Shi’ia’ Muslim majority but the Dards, an indo-aryan race which migrated here from down the Indus, strangely comprise both muslims as well as Buddhists. In fact, the Dards inhabited the valley before Buddhism and Islam arrived there. Since the regions of Dardistan and Baltistan are sandwiched between the Muslim west and Buddhist east, they are culturally enriched with both kinds of traditions, customs and practices. Parkachik is essentially a muslim inhabitation and signifies the easternmost extension of Islam in the Himalayan region. Dard folk looked simple, pleasant, smiling and laborious. In fact, the Dards only have brought irrigation and agriculture to the valley, thus appropriately utilizing the resource-rich strata for livelihood and sustenance. In fact, the valley serves as Ladakh’s granary. This is quite evident by the intense agriculture taken up at each inhabited place. However, Suru inhabitants are not all happy about the current situation in the valley. The caretaker of PWD Rest House, Mr. Mohammed and his friend informed us that their language, Dardi, is gradually becoming extinct and very few people use it for communication. More so, the young Dardis are migrating to other areas in search of employment.

Proper food and rest at Parkachik revitalized our languid bodies enabling us to regain our expended energies and the jollity continued. We had a quick breakfast and started on the return journey to Kargil. Destination, though, was surreally picked as Leh despite knowing that we won’t be able to reach Leh before sunset.

But before proceeding further, I would like to sum up my experience of Suru valley by stating that if you want to see one of the most exotic locations, virgin but inhabited at the same time, across the world, then head for Suru & Zanskar valleys. Access to the valley is certainly not easy as the frequency of state transport buses in the valley is minimal and we spotted only a few trucks engaged in the road construction work and a few 4x4 jeeps of the locals during our entire ride, to & fro from Kargil. So, please be advised, you and mobike should be in top condition to endure the rough terrain, extreme cold, loads of mud and vagaries of nature. There are no on-the-way/mid-way human settlements or roadside shelters. In case of a breakdown trust me, you will have a sky…..studded with diamond-like stars, roaring Suru forming the steady background score, piercing wind and biting cold chilling your bones.

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