In Leh there is a popular saying: ‘Only truest of friends and fiercest of enemies come to Leh’. When I went for an adventurous biking trip to Leh five years back, I could establish the raison d'être of the saying. At first glance Leh is like any other hill-station of India; it has its Mall Road, Tibetan Market, food-joints, hotels and chaos, so familiar to any other tourist destination in India. Its disparity lies in its remoteness. It’s no breeze to reach Leh. After all it takes one to surmount the road of world’s highest passes and deadliest traps to reach here.
It’s one of those regions on earth where nature still reigns supreme and its blatant authority holds strong against man’s inherent capacity to control. Some place where a person can die of hypothermia and heat-stroke at the same time Leh is an out and out case of nature’s dark sarcasm. Sitting at about 475 Kilometres from Manali, it takes one through a heroic journey to finally reach at Leh. The road is glutted with mountain chippings and streams replenished with icy water from the melting glaciers. As one advances through the rigours of serpentine turns of the hair pin curves trumping one pass after another, a sense of pride and ecstasy seeps in.
Road to Leh, with its stock of nerve-racking stretches and unfettered dynamics, tests one’s ability to stay poised in apparently precarious situations and persevere against all the odds. There would be many occasions when a first-timer would be tempted to return, assuming the staring pitfall to be his nemesis, but if one can keep his nerve and muster self-belief he can emerge as a winner. Paucity of oxygen in the barren landscape at impossible altitude is another major deterrent that takes the ‘survival of the fittest’ phrase to another level. It takes time to acclimatise to the savagery of the land and often taking medication at the army camps for the feeling of nausea and breathlessness becomes absolute necessary. It takes two days to reach Leh by bike but an extra cautious rider or the one enthralled by the cocktail of fearsome and panoramic marvels of the journey might take three days.
There are very few stopovers in the entire stretch to break the journey which makes planning for the journey extremely important. It is not advisable to ride after the sunset so it’s necessary to reach the stopover within the time constraint. The stopovers are the only places of inhabitation on the road, just few camps raised by the distant villagers during the tourist season. Darcha, Sarchu and Pang are notable among the stopovers. Another striking feature of the journey is the lack of modern-day sanitation structure and unless one is a control-freak he will have to take the nature’s call in the open devoid of the amenities he has grown up on assuming them to be customary and thankless framework. No other renowned hill-station in India is as difficult to reach by road, the fact that gives one an immense sense of achievement and fulfilment to be there.
Leh’s other special feature is its sang-froid. Juxtaposed with Kashmir, a violent hill-station in J&K, Leh’s calmness provides solace; a sense of semblance that not everything is lost. Its social fabric has always been intact, never provoked by the perennial tension in its neighbourhood. The people here seem to be at peace with themselves and complacent with their positioning. Having made to Leh once, one is always inspired to return. So, when an unprecedented cloud-burst struck Leh on that woebegone night and instigated the competitive frenzy among our soi-distant media to be the first to break the news of resultant destruction in an otherwise inconspicuous land nestled unpretentiously by mighty Himalayas, cloaked conveniently from the in-your-face media glare, the memories of my daredevil journey resurfaced.
In a span of few crazy minutes Leh was lost, its once vibrant elements flummoxed by the maddening intensity of slimy torrent that engulfed everything that came its way. Death toll has been on the rise ever since and rescue operations are at par with war. It would take weeks to evacuate the trapped people and might take years to rebuild Leh. The magnitude of disruption that nature has evoked within a blink is far greater than what Kashmir had to sustain in decades. And perhaps in nature’s fury lies our lesson.
We don’t need to foster enmity and hostility against each other to gain control on Kashmir, for nature could do so quite easily with its masterstroke. Who knows that while we kept baying for each others’ blood to lay claim on Kashmir, nature’s evil eye befell on it and by the time we woke up from our inordinate sleep, we realise that Kashmir now belongs to neither India nor Pakistan. Kashmir belongs to dead all around. Nature is our common enemy and we have reasons to fight as long as it lies dormant. We might lose those reasons tomorrow. Nature is our provider, but once in her elements, she can wreak havoc in a flash. So, let’s come together for once and pray to God to keep its forces in check. We have already got enough problems, self-induced though, to take care of.
Atul Kapoor is a debutant author of a novel ‘Incredible High’. His book is about an adventurous road trip of five friends to Ladakh on bike. Ladakh, the land of high passes, boasts of world’s highest traversable road and is inundated with deadly traps and vicious curves. He is an avid traveler who has trekked to places as far-off as ‘Gangotri’ and been to a biking expedition all the way to ‘Ladakh’ (core of his novel). Read about his book here.
It’s one of those regions on earth where nature still reigns supreme and its blatant authority holds strong against man’s inherent capacity to control. Some place where a person can die of hypothermia and heat-stroke at the same time Leh is an out and out case of nature’s dark sarcasm. Sitting at about 475 Kilometres from Manali, it takes one through a heroic journey to finally reach at Leh. The road is glutted with mountain chippings and streams replenished with icy water from the melting glaciers. As one advances through the rigours of serpentine turns of the hair pin curves trumping one pass after another, a sense of pride and ecstasy seeps in.
Road to Leh, with its stock of nerve-racking stretches and unfettered dynamics, tests one’s ability to stay poised in apparently precarious situations and persevere against all the odds. There would be many occasions when a first-timer would be tempted to return, assuming the staring pitfall to be his nemesis, but if one can keep his nerve and muster self-belief he can emerge as a winner. Paucity of oxygen in the barren landscape at impossible altitude is another major deterrent that takes the ‘survival of the fittest’ phrase to another level. It takes time to acclimatise to the savagery of the land and often taking medication at the army camps for the feeling of nausea and breathlessness becomes absolute necessary. It takes two days to reach Leh by bike but an extra cautious rider or the one enthralled by the cocktail of fearsome and panoramic marvels of the journey might take three days.
There are very few stopovers in the entire stretch to break the journey which makes planning for the journey extremely important. It is not advisable to ride after the sunset so it’s necessary to reach the stopover within the time constraint. The stopovers are the only places of inhabitation on the road, just few camps raised by the distant villagers during the tourist season. Darcha, Sarchu and Pang are notable among the stopovers. Another striking feature of the journey is the lack of modern-day sanitation structure and unless one is a control-freak he will have to take the nature’s call in the open devoid of the amenities he has grown up on assuming them to be customary and thankless framework. No other renowned hill-station in India is as difficult to reach by road, the fact that gives one an immense sense of achievement and fulfilment to be there.
Leh’s other special feature is its sang-froid. Juxtaposed with Kashmir, a violent hill-station in J&K, Leh’s calmness provides solace; a sense of semblance that not everything is lost. Its social fabric has always been intact, never provoked by the perennial tension in its neighbourhood. The people here seem to be at peace with themselves and complacent with their positioning. Having made to Leh once, one is always inspired to return. So, when an unprecedented cloud-burst struck Leh on that woebegone night and instigated the competitive frenzy among our soi-distant media to be the first to break the news of resultant destruction in an otherwise inconspicuous land nestled unpretentiously by mighty Himalayas, cloaked conveniently from the in-your-face media glare, the memories of my daredevil journey resurfaced.
In a span of few crazy minutes Leh was lost, its once vibrant elements flummoxed by the maddening intensity of slimy torrent that engulfed everything that came its way. Death toll has been on the rise ever since and rescue operations are at par with war. It would take weeks to evacuate the trapped people and might take years to rebuild Leh. The magnitude of disruption that nature has evoked within a blink is far greater than what Kashmir had to sustain in decades. And perhaps in nature’s fury lies our lesson.
We don’t need to foster enmity and hostility against each other to gain control on Kashmir, for nature could do so quite easily with its masterstroke. Who knows that while we kept baying for each others’ blood to lay claim on Kashmir, nature’s evil eye befell on it and by the time we woke up from our inordinate sleep, we realise that Kashmir now belongs to neither India nor Pakistan. Kashmir belongs to dead all around. Nature is our common enemy and we have reasons to fight as long as it lies dormant. We might lose those reasons tomorrow. Nature is our provider, but once in her elements, she can wreak havoc in a flash. So, let’s come together for once and pray to God to keep its forces in check. We have already got enough problems, self-induced though, to take care of.
Atul Kapoor is a debutant author of a novel ‘Incredible High’. His book is about an adventurous road trip of five friends to Ladakh on bike. Ladakh, the land of high passes, boasts of world’s highest traversable road and is inundated with deadly traps and vicious curves. He is an avid traveler who has trekked to places as far-off as ‘Gangotri’ and been to a biking expedition all the way to ‘Ladakh’ (core of his novel). Read about his book here.
