A deserted paradise: Cycling on the world’s highest highway
By: Akshit Seth
Tags: Bikepacking, Mountains, Outdoors, Adventure, Cycling

A deserted paradise: Cycling on the world’s highest highway

When I noticed that the jarring sound of something stuck in my bike’s tire was the only thing to be heard in all of the infinite emptiness that surrounded me, it hit me. That something which has led sadhus to fast for eons on riverbanks or inside dark mountain caves. To catch it is like swimming. To just get a glimpse is to float.

The ancient Tibetan master Padmasambhava’s secretive work The Tibetan Book of the Dead details the journey after death that takes the good souls to paradisaical lands and the wicked ones are left to languish and rot. There are six primary realms of existence in the Bardo. Vampires are made of those that enter a buried body. Of all the possible outcomes, the one which entails a soul to be ever trapped inside this intermediate state which is neither life nor death is the scariest one. Every oldie in Ladakh will swear by the veracity of this journey - “Invest in good karma and you wouldn’t be roasted in hell”.

To fight mild depression in 2017, I took to long-distance cycling in Ladakh. The initial few rides earnestly felt like I was torturing myself. The hungry ghost Bardo state of ever reaching out for something more that you have achieved thus far comes to mind.

But once the desire-filled demons are calmed, a state of flow is entered. That you could be happy just being present and not doing anything is finally felt.

Growing up on heavily mathematical books as a child, I was always up for creatively fulfilling projects. But when it came to earning a living in a dog-eat-dog economy, I was lagging behind my peers who could suck up to a system that treats them like machines. Ladakh happened to me in July 2017 when I decided to take a break from my academic research on asteroids at the prestigious IIT-Kanpur and signed up for a cycling trip organised by YHAI. A fortnight into the experience, I did not want to go back. Before making a non-trivial contact with the Buddhist world, it was the deserted, quiet landscapes that rescued me from months of depression and aimlessness. To feel the winds blow against your face as you cycle on dark roads with no one to save you, that was the contact with Nature I was longing for.

Artwork made by my student Padma Thinles.

Day 1 — Leh to Upshi

While most people would usually do it the other way round, I started from the Ladakhi capital of Leh. My student, Padma, let me stay over for a few days while I taught him a bit of Plane Trigonometry.

Starting out in the morning, the plan was to reach Upshi (50 kms from Leh) by the evening and pitch my tent somewhere behind the village. I had cycled to Upshi before on one occasion and knew that it’d be a really easy ride. The road is well-constructed and plain, and without major uphill climbs. There are a few shelters along the way where I rested for a bit. I reached Upshi by around 4 pm and had an early dinner.

On the way to Upshi with my amateurish set-up.

I pitched my tent somewhere behind the village and happily went to sleep. But my sleeping bag, meant for 15 degrees Celsius could not hold up to the cold. I had a very rough night.

Day 2 — Upshi to Rumtse

Having not slept well at all, I decided against attempting the high-altitude pass Stak-Lang La. The village, Rumtse, about 30 kms from Upshi, and 14000 ft in altitude, seemed like the ideal spot for a night halt. Rumtse is supposedly one of the coldest villages in this part of Ladakh. Last time when I came here for a ride, back in November 2017, the night temperature was about -10 degrees. I was accompanied then by the jovial government school English teacher Sonam Rinchen who would sing Urdu songs perfectly to keep us entertained and high on spirits.

I started riding about 8 am in the morning. It was noticeably hard to ride today as I was feeling feverish and weak. The sleeping bag dangling from my seat wasn’t helping my case either.

Moving towards Rumtse as the landscape changes totally

Strange rock deity on the way to Rumtse

I reached Rumtse by around 4 pm, after a lazy afternoon nap set me back. Far from recovered, I felt quite when I reached. So, I decided to not move an inch from Rumtse the next day. In Rumtse, I stayed at a home-stay run by a lady with two kids who go to the primary school in the neighborhood. I knew I would have to come up with ways to keep them away from my cycle. Distracting them with a cricket match worked really well.

Day 3 — Rest

I woke up really late, but started feeling better after sleeping in the home-stay. The kids had gone to school by the time and I was left to myself. I decided to walk up to the army camp 2 kilometers away from the village. I’d forgotten completely about buying ORS packs from Leh and these army camps usually have medical units brimming with them.

So, I walked to the army camp, chit-chatted with the medical officer who was from Darjeeling and even had lunch there before leaving for Rumtse. I now had enough ORS packs for the entire trip.

Getting back to Rumtse, I had nothing to do. The kids were not back yet. So, I entertained myself doing some off-road cycling. When the kids got back, I played some more with them. The kids surprised me with the fluency with which they spoke Hindi(all from watching cartoons on TV). I bid the family good night and prepared to leave by 5 am the next morning as I had a pass to climb.

Rigzin from Rumtse

Day 4 — Rumtse to Pang

After the slow start( having covered only 70 kms in 3 days), I decided now to pick up speed. Stak-Lang La is an easy pass to climb. The road is smooth and the incline gradual as we climb about 3000 ft. over 30 kms starting from Rumtse. Although I started at about 5 am, I got into trouble by 9 am as the sun got intense. I had to cover my face completely with my balaclava. It was the only thing I could do to save my facial skin, which is very prone to sun-damage. By 10:30, I got the first glimpse of the rock face which marks the pass. My guess is that it’s this rock, shaped like a tiger’s face, that they used to derive the name. Stak means tiger and lang means face in Tibetan language. But my guess could be wrong. The civilisation is over a thousand years old and geological forms may have undergone changes. Almost all places in Ladakh have names hinting at some geological or cultural feature, however.

Tiger-faced rock

I reached the top around noon. Not attuned to slow-paced cycling yet, I wasn’t satisfied with the climb at all. I took some tea at the top and the customary picture of the pass signpost with my cycle. Stak-Lang La is much easier to climb compared to the other motorable passes in this altitude range like Chang La and Khardong La. The steepness also tapers off as we approach the top, a situation that we encounter a lot in the weathered mountains of Ladakh.

I didn’t spend a long time at the top as I had to reach Pang by the evening. A relaxed descent took me to Debring in about an hour’s time. I rested there and had some lunch. Debring is one of those seasonal hotspots that spring up on the Leh-Manali road during the summer months. It marks the entry to Morey plains, the desolate 45 kms of flat stretch to Pang. I got careless while talking to a restaurant owner from Jammu and left Debring by 4:30, very late. The road from Debring to Pang is completely deserted, flat and without much vegetation. Large sand dunes are visible on either side. Apart from some nomadic tents a few kilometers off Debring, I didn’t see anything. Talking to Ladakhi nomads is always a treat.

Morey plains

By 7, darkness had started to set in. I was all by myself on the road, and a bit vulnerable. I had started fearing attacks from dogs. Pang was still some 14 kilometers away. The wind was blowing strongly against me and it was nearly impossible to ride. So, I took support from a motorcycle group from Punjab. I held on to one of the guy’s hands as they rode on. I reached Pang at around 8 pm. A Ladakhi lady was shouting ‘Room, room, room.’ so I decided to take up accommodation and food in their place. The evening in Pang was not so eventful, I met a young guy who was going to Canada for his studies. His friends were all boisterous Punjabi guys who were teasing him to death just because he left them for a bit to have a chat with me. Another lady who ran an eating place let me use her pulse meter for free. It’s funny how my pulse is never high even as my saturated oxygen levels go low. Pang is really high in terms of altitude and a lot of tourists fell sick that night.

I slept comfortably in the tent and my spirits were high. I must have covered around 90 kilometers that day.

Day 5 — Pang to Sarchu

Another big day with two high-altitude passes to cover- Lachung La and Namik La. The road to Lachung La from Pang is long and treacherous. My scholarly friend from Ladakh tells me that Lachung corresponds to ‘little pass’ in their language. However, from this side, it is not a little pass at all. No climb whatsoever, but a long road from Pang.

I reached the top around 11:30, I think. I stayed there for a bit to click a few pictures. Some vehicles passed and I got some mineral water from them. This pass was considerably harder than Stak-Lang La, the road was really bad in places.

I descended to Whiskey Nala on the other side of the pass. Why it is named so still escapes me. The place has a few dhabas and I had my standard lunch of boiled dal and rice in one of these. I was sitting next to one of those bickering motorcycle couples that made lunch really entertaining for me.

The next pass to climb was Nam-i-ka La, not very far from Whiskey Nala. This was the easiest pass on the entire highway (not so easy from the Manali side, though). Nam means sky and ka means pillar. I reached the top by 5 pm, and didn’t stop for long as I had to reach Sarchu before dark. It gets dark very late in Ladakh, with an amazingly long photo-period from 5 am to 7:30 pm. In a visit to Defense Institute of High-Altitude Research, they told me that this long period of sunlight allows vegetables to grow to huge proportions.

After Namika La, I descended through a series of loops known as Gata Loops. The road bends really sharply on the turns and I had to be careful not to let my speed go too high here. I met a stranded Sikh truck driver whose truck had been damaged near the place attributed to the ghost of Gata Loops. Strangely, the spirit of the conductor still resides in the place and asks for water. I saw a lot of water bottles on the side of the road to mark the place. The Sikh truck driver who told me of the story also picked up a few bottles from the collection to satiate his own thirst.

Plastic water bottles as offering

It took me a while to descend the Gata Loops and, just like yesterday, it was getting dark. Sarchu is far from the base of Namika La. There was little wind, however. I reached the campsite when darkness had set in. I had to use my phone’s torch in order to see things in front of me. But, it was an indescribably beautiful experience. The landscape changes after the Namika La pass and I think this is where the Zangskar region starts. When I reached Sarchu campsite, the staff there confirmed the story of the ghost. The campsite was run by guys from Himachal and they charged me some 500 bucks for a night stay with food. Sarchu is supposedly the coldest place on the route. It’s a proper valley and the Sun is obscured for an hour more than other places. I had some dinner and some chhang and quickly went to sleep.

Day 6 — Sarchu to ZingZingBar

I started out from Sarchu a bit later than I had planned. The weather was great again. But my energy levels were lower today than the last two days. So I decided to curtail my ambition to reach Keylong by the evening and settled for ZingZingBar as the day’s target. The pass that I would be crossing today is called Bara-La-Tse. My Ladakhi friend was at a loss to translate it completely. Baralacha La is a picturesque pass that helps us cross over from Zangskar to Lahaul. Lahaul is a really interesting Buddhist trans-Himalayan region, quite distinct from Zangskar and Kullu. Its green pastures make it a paradise for nomadic people.

So I did some relaxed cycling from Sarchu. I made a call home near the border checkpost because I hadn’t told my family I’m safe from the point I left Rumtse. I reached Baralacha La post-lunch and stayed there to make a time-lapse video.

When I started descending from Baralacha La, it turned really quiet on the road. All my thoughts also came to a standstill. Sharada was making a weird sort of vibrating noise commensurate with the rolling frequency which I could not point to. The Leh-Manali highway also veers around Suraj Taal, a high-altitude lake at the base of Baralacha La, which is said to be the third-highest lake in India. The highest lakes, I believe, are in Sikkim.

We can see the landscape slowly changing as we reach ZingZing Bar. The people who run the camps here are also Lahaulis, their degree of avarice much lesser than Ladakhis of today. The dialect they speak is again derived from classical Tibetan, but quite distinct from Ladakhi. I was surprised to note how they had no accent to the way they spoke Hindi too, but this is because Himachal has compulsory Hindi education. I played cricket here with some local youths and Nepali construction workers. A group of motorcyclists also joined in. The beauty of the mountains is that the class divisions that we see in cities vanish here without resistance. Everyone becomes friendly and helpful, from truck drivers to corporate bosses.The sunset at ZingZing Bar was another treat, watching the clouds slowly turn red as dusk approached.

Day 7 — ZingZingBar to Keylong

My energy levels were really high as I woke up and I planned to reach Khoksar (at the base of Rohtang La) by the evening, but something made me stop at Keylong even as I reached there around noon. The way to Keylong is really very picturesque. The landscape has sharp, green mountain faces with a good number of snow-fed streams.

Lahauli nomadic life

The road is mostly downhill to Keylong, with a village called Darcha coming on the way. Darcha to Padum is a very popular cycling route which I will attempt one day. Having reached Keylong, I rested in a dorm where I met a set of diverse personalities. There was a soft-spoken British guy who agreed to volunteer as a shepherd in Ladakh with me, he was going to Tajikistan in some days. I also met a Ladakhi from Nubra who was getting his son admitted in a famous Delhi school and a perpetually drunk middle-aged Punjabi man. What I enjoyed the most in Keylong was getting to taste fruits after such a long time. That really gave me a boost.

I slept nicely in the dorm and was woken up at 5 by the man from Nubra trying to wake up the drunkard, “O Bhaisahab! Jana nahi hai kya?”. The Ladakhi was of a fidgety and timid disposition and kept on repeating some precepts from Buddhism which he himself found very hard to follow. The Punjabi was quite the opposite. He had planned to go to Pangong lake on his own and get drunk like mad. Anyhow, it was funny to see that they were sharing seats on the bus from Keylong to Leh.

Day 8 — Keylong to Manali

I left from Keylong at 8 am after having a good breakfast of fruits and milk. I didn’t feel like clicking any pictures today. The road from Keylong is quite gentle until Khoksar which is at the base of the Rohtang pass. The Rohtang pass is the steepest pass on the entire Leh-Manali stretch, and I felt it to be the toughest too. I met a large group of cyclists coming from the other side of the road who were all through YHAI. I intersected them while climbing the Rohtang pass. I waved at nearly everyone, customarily. But my concentration was on the pass which grew increasingly steeper with the ascent. This is what makes the mountains here different from Ladakh, they are very sharp near their tops. The Ladakhi mountains are much more weathered. I reached Rohtang top by around 4:45 and didn’t stop for pictures. I continued cycling until Manali which was 50 kms of relaxed downhill from the top. I covered more than 100 kms in the day but it did not feel like a lot. As I finished the trip, my favourite Ladakhi song took over my mind.