"Manali to Leh - A Dream route of every traveler covered!"
Leh bike ride is incomplete without this!
Written on : 18-August-2017
Visted During : July 2017
My Experience and Opinion
A dream, a wish that I made 6 years back finally became reality a month back. We got Leh’d. Sharing experience alone will take an entire blog post. To explain in one paragraph, I am not talented enough. So, I defer sharing the experiences felt.
A detailed blog post describing how we got Leh’d is shared below. Do read, share.
A detailed list of Musts, Dos, Don’ts, preparation etc. is shared in a separate blog post here -
Leh Ladakh Preperations and Checklist
Do read this blog post for more information. For rest, scroll down!
My first visit to Manali was back in 2015 during winter. Manali in my imagination ànd experience was only cold and white with snow covered mountains all around. But, this time we saw a totally different one. Manali was wet and green!
Our only business in Manali was to buy a pair of gum books. In Kullu, we joined the International Youth Club group with whom we teamed up for the ride. We collected the Royal Enfields and we were all geared up with knee, elbow guard and gloves. Only missing gear was gum boots which we bought from Manali. After clicking first photo of the trip with entire group, we started from Kullu.
Manali – Rohtang – Jispa
Distance: 140Kms
Time Taken: 8-9 Hours
Break taken: 1 hour including photography and lunch
Lunch: In Sissu at about 6.00 pm (sic)
Road condition: Moderately difficult.
Scenery: Green, Misty and little bit of Snow during July (Heavily snowy during winter)
We were all geared up, charged and thrilled. Just then Rain god wanted to say, "Wait! Let me challenge you before these mountains do". We stopped by and put on the rain coats. Now we were not looking like that cool riders anymore with raincoats on. Even if it was misty, Manali to Rohtang posed us with some of the spectacular views. Those looked like the ones’ shown in Hollywood movies. Rain had given the áll the huge waterfalls the life again. The humongous mountains look calm while roads built in mountain walls take us up hill.
After covering the misty mountains, now we had bigger dream to reach the clouds. After completing formalities in check post, we started our ride to one of the most celebrated mountain pass of the country – The Rohtang. Weather in Rohtang was very friendly to us. Visibility was poor but we had prepared ourselves for a higher challenge in Rohtang and this one looked easy.
From Rohtang, our journey started towards Jispa where our stay was arranged. It was pitch dark by the time we reached Jispa. It was time to take some rest after a day long ride. We had to wait for 8 more hours to feel how Jispa looked.
Jispa – Barlachla - Sarchu
Distance: 85 Kms
Time Taken: 7 Hours
Break taken: 1 hour including photography and lunch
Road condition: Very bad. Includes water streams, bad roads throughout.
Scenery: Initial feel of no Vegetation land felt. Huge and dry mountains
Jispa is a small village-town with couple of hotels and small restaurants only. After clicking couple of photos in front of the hotel, we put our gears on and started towards Sarchu.
80 kms covered in 6 hours. Now, do I need to explain more about the condition of the road.? But, we had started by 9 and hence reached Sarchu by 3.00pm. The roads were bad, there were water streams to be passed, passes to cross. Overall, a totally different experience gained here.
The only major break we took was of 15 minutes in Barlachla pass. We were a little pissed off with the organizers for not letting us click any picture and complaining getting late because of us. It is little frustrating to see the most scenic beauty in front of you but still not get a chance to click. It then hurts more to reach the destination early and take rest for rest of the day!
We were asked not to even walk much as the oxygen level was very low in Sarchu and any physical activity meant we were in trouble. In spite of that, we ran around and it hit us back badly. Even laughing loud left us gasping for breath. It was one place in entire trip where I personally felt little hard to adjust. Sarchu has multiple delux tents and tents have attached bathroom along with good bed. But, good bed does not guarantee good sleep. We had to struggle to get some sleep. There are no hotels or restaurants for miles together except the temporary delux tents.
Sarchu – Lachungla – Pangla – More Plains – Tanglangla – Karu – Leh
Distance: 250 Kms
Time Taken: 9 Hours
Break taken: 1.5 hour including photography and lunch
Lunch: In Pang. (Small Dhabas available)
Road condition: Moderately difficult to Extremly good roads available.
Scenery: Dry Moutains, River, Plains. This route is a mix of many kinds of sceneries.
Do nothing, but get tired. On top of it, we had a sleepless night. Because of all these, the morning was not pleasing as we were again tired on walking a few steps itself. But, all this tiredness took a back seat once we started our ride to Leh from Sarchu. We knew it was a long ride as it was 250+ kms in a day.
The day long ride had everything in it. It was like a platter with all kinds of dishes. 3 major passes to cross and the More plains (read as moorey) made it a perfect day.
Initial stretch was full of mountains. By now, we were contained of seeing passes as we had already crossed multiple passes in 2 days. Just when we started craving for good roads, we got the more plains. We got to meet some military personal who were kind enough to stop by and speak to us. We clicked some photos and started to feel that beautiful roads of More plains. The straight roads of the plains give you the liberty to throttle based on your capacity. The scene looked as if each one is chasing the bikes in front of them. After riding for a few miles, the mountains were back. Tanglangla pass which is considered the second highest motorable road welcomed us with very mild snow fall. It was the first snow fall I ever witnessed.
After passing Rohtang, the trees were sparse. After Jispa, trees totally disappeared. Sarchu had tiny bushes. Now, even small bushes were hard to find. Totally deserted mountains and plains for miles and miles together. There was beauty but no life.
After riding few more miles, we finally saw the first town in 3 days. Karu is a small town 35 kilometers away from Leh which has couple of small restaurants. But, we saw people. We had oxygen to breath, we saw trees and it felt relaxing to see all these. Road from Karu to Leh feels as if you are passing by military campus. Entire stretch is majorly populated by Indian Military vehicles.
After reaching Leh, we finally got the mobile network. The to be married guy in our group got busy with phone. We got a chance to laugh and we laughed without the fear of panting later. There are enough Hotels and other facilities in Leh. Except for Mobile data, everything else is same as rest of the Indian cities. Our hotel in Leh had apple trees planted in front of it. We plucked them at our wish and had them even if they were not ripe. They were sour but the happiness of plucking a fruit from the tree and having it is something special.
Leh – KhardungLa – Nubra
Distance: 130-140Kms
Time Taken: 9-10 Hours
Break taken: 2-3 hours. (KhardungLa + Diskit Monastery visit + Photography)
Lunch: Khalsar
Road condition: Extremly bad in one stretch near KhardungLa.
Scenery: Snow covered moutains + Dry mountains and Desert
After a good night sleep, we headed to the highest motorable pass. Khardugla is around 40 kilometers away from Leh. First 25 kilometers of this stretch was covered in less than 45 minutes and I started feeling that Khardungla is easy stretch to cross. But, soon after South pullu, road condition changed drastically and it felt like we took hours to cross just a couple of miles. The next 13 kilometers took us hours to complete and finally we were in Khardungla and our backs were tired by then. Khardungla has got so much of tourist attention that it took us minutes to get a chance to click a photo of ours next to the board. Khardungla was snow covered in some points but road was clear without snow. The condition of the road is so poor that you start waiting for the stretch to get over. For our luck, the weather was extremely friendly to us. If the weather goes bad, Khardungla can be very challenging one.
We headed towards Nubra Valley after managing to click a photo. We gave a flying visit to Diskit Monastery on the way to Nubra. Nubra is totally different place than all others as it is a sand desert with huge mountains in the background. Double humped camels are the major attraction of the place. After spending sometime in the desert, we went to the stay arranged. Our stay in Nubra was again in delux tents. Places in Leh offer excellent scope for sky watching and we tried some star photography.
Next day was a long one where we went back to Leh from Nubra and then went to Pangong Tso.
Leh – Pangong Tso
Distance: 200 Kms
Time Taken: 8 Hours in Traveler
Break taken: 1 hour
Lunch: Karu
Road condition: Extremly bad throughout except ~50 kms.
Scenery: Challenging moutains, snow covered moutains in some places.
It was a long ride again to Leh via Khardungla. We reached Leh by 1.00 pm and within 1 hour we started our journey to Pangong Tso. This time, it was in a Tempo Traveler. Pangong Tso route is a deviation from Karu and the road condition till Karu is good. From Karu, the mountain roads start and the condition of the road is pathetic. It would have been very challenging to ride all the way from Khardungla to Pangong Tso on same day. Especially, pillion riders would have had extremely tough time if we had to ride. Traveler was a good choice on that day. By the time we reached Pangong, it was already dark and we did not get a chance to see the lake. Our stay was arranged next to lake. There are multiple delux tents available next to the lake which offer good stay.
Pangong as per our imagination and as per images seen in google was totally different than what we saw. It was so disappointing to us to see Pangong lake which is different in color than the vivid blue. Colour of the sky decides colour of the water. Rain and cloud played as a spoiler to us and we had to come back halfhearted feeling that we have not seen the true Pangong Lake.
3 idiots movie has highjacked the location and at one view point, everything is attached with 3 idiots movie in one or the other way. After some photography sessions, we headed back to Leh. On the way back we visited Thiksey Monastery which is located in a beautiful place.
The same evening was dedicated for shopping in the Leh Market. Leh Market is big enough for one to spend couple of hours in the street.
Leh
Final day was dedicated to see places around Leh. We made quick visit to Sangam which is decent enough to visit. Rafting is available here but I would say not to try here there are better options if you try it in Beas river in Kullu itself. On the way to Sangam, we stopped by the Magnetic hill and you can actually feel the phenomenon claimed. On parking the vehicle, you can feel it moving against the slope. (Hundreds of theories available over internet for this phenomenon though.)
We also gave a quick visit to Shantistupa. After all these, we visited the Kargil war memorial in Leh where you can spend hours together provided you are interested in those kinds of stuffs. We spent good amount of time there. A beating retreat is organized by the Indian army there followed by an audio-visual show. There were several goose bumps moments on reading the stories in the war memorial (Or Hall of Fame.)
After spending a week in the Ladhaki ranges, we boarded the flight from Leh Airport. Flying from Leh airport is a different experience in itself. With tall mountains all around, you feel the flight is flying at a low level. With view of mountains disappearing after sometime, memories of trip started flowing in. This dream ride to Leh will remain as one of the special ones forever.
The route we travelled in...
