All exception to a rule is like the proverbial twist in the tale as far as travel goes. The rule of thumb in the high Himalayas is that routes open in summer and close down in winter.
The melting of snow is what drives this activity across the ranges—when the snow that fell in winter melts, roads and trails open up for travelling to and fro.
But there is an exception to this taken-for-granted rule in the highlands of Ladakh. Here is a road that opens in winter and is closed in summer; and the exception exists because of the same reason—the melting of snow.
But, more on this later. For the lack of any official name, it is locally known as the Shyok Road and takes one from the Nubra Valley to Pangong Lake without crossing a high pass. It is called Shyok Road for it snakes along the Shyok River from Nubra Valley till the point the river takes a virtual U-turn—in fact, the alignment of the Shyok River is very unusual: originating from the Rimo glacier, it flows in a southeasterly direction and as it joins the Pangong range, it takes a northwestern turn, flowing parallel to its previous path.
This change in direction is quite similar to another river in the Nubra Valley: the Nubra or the Siachen River flows south-east as it originates from the Siachen glacier and then shifts direction to the north-east as soon as it meets Shyok River near Diskit town. Geological fault-lines at work, apparently!
I heard about the Shyok Road during a trip to Nubra in November last year. It was my guide-cum-driver—and now a friend—Mohammad Jamshed Iqbal (you can read more about him in this issue’s column by Sohail Hashmi). We were talking about alternate routes to Nubra across the Ladakh range apart from the usual Khardung La. He listed two more routes, one across another pass called Wari La and the other being the Shyok Road towards Pangong and then across Chang La.
“Can we take one of these routes when we go back to Leh,” I asked.
“Wari La is closed,” he said, “it’ll only open in June.”
“What about the Shyok Road?” I asked, “Is Chang La closed too?”
“No, Chang La is open, but it is a very long route and you don’t have that much time,” he replied, knowing my itinerary well by then. Iqbal promised me that during my next visit—that was to be in March—we’ll be able to do the route.
“Though Wari La will be closed, the Shyok Road will still be do-able, though doing it in March will be cutting it a little fine,” he added intriguingly.
To be frank, I was flummoxed. If we could go via this route in November, we could then go through it in March and surely later, during the peak summer season!
“No, sir,” Iqbal said, “the road closes by April-May.”
“But Chang La is open in the season,” I ventured, still not getting the point.
“Chang La is open,” he agreed, “but this road closes as summer approaches.”
Iqbal read the incomprehension writ large on my face and started explaining: “As the snow melts, the volume of water in the Shyok River increases. And as the road virtually runs on the riverbed, it comes under water and closes during summers.”
So, while the snowmelt opened the passes, it increased the volume of water in the river, which then starts flowing over the road! I had never thought on these lines! Though I had suffered many an aborted trip because of monsoon rains washing away a bridge, I had never applied the principle to the cold desert of Ladakh, a monsoon shadow region!
This fired up my imagination; I wanted to drive through this route. An added incentive was the chance to see the Pangong lake frozen to its depths.
Further, a diversion on this road could take one to a place much in the news – Daulat Baig Oldi, where Indian and Chinese forces indulge in skirmishes on and off and where exists the highest airstrip in the world. While I had no chance of going to Daulat Baig Oldi – it being off-limits to civilians – travelling on even a small section of the legendary Silk Route was another high.
It was like partaking a part of history, so to say! The name itself held a fascination for me – the place is named after Daulat Baig, a 16th-century Yarkandi nobleman who is said to have died after descending from the Karakoram Pass, 17 km from the Indo-Chinese border. Daulat Baig Oldi literally means, ‘Daulat Baig died here’. Death, clearly, figures a lot in these parts; Shyok too means ‘the river of death’ in in Yarkandi Uyghur language.
So, it was to be in March that I would travel along the ‘River of Death’, passing close by to the place where Daulat Baig died. My drive would culminate at the freezing Pangong in the dead of winter! So, it was on March 23 this year that we started from Diskit at an unearthly hour of 6 am.
It was still wearing did nothing much to stop the cold. A freezing wind howled through the empty streets of Diskit as we bundled into the Mahindra Xylo, rubbing our hands to generate some warmth. Iqbal had anticipated this and the heater in the vehicle was on. Soon, inside the Xylo it was all normal.
“It is about 145 km to Pangong via this route,” Iqbal informed. This meant about six hours of driving. If all went well, we could be at Pangong by mid-noon. Till Khalsar – where people normally stop for a cup of tea after driving down from Khardung La – the road was good.
We took a diversion just above Khalsar and turned left on the road going to Agham. This now was new territory for me. The road was still metalled, though it had narrowed down quite a bit. About half-a-dozen twists and turns later, we came down back to the banks of the Shyok River.
The tar on the road disappeared – it made some guest appearances on the 100-km stretch till Tangtse, about 25 km from Pangong.
The track ran straight as an arrow for the next nearly 10 km, made primarily of pebbles and sand. Shyok, divided onto numerous streams, was to our right.
In these early hours, its flow was lazy on the wide bed it lay on. It looked grey and not a ripple disturbed its façade. It was as if it too was waiting for the sun to come out to wake up and get ready for the world to see. Clouds delayed that hour and it was around 8 am that sun appeared in all its glory.
By that time though, leaving the Shyok asleep, we had entered the narrow part of the valley – not a gorge, but shrunk appreciably from the wide swathe it presented around Khalsar.
As if alive to the change in time and scenario, Shyok shrugged out of its slumber and made gargling sounds as it slipped past the boulders that had rolled down the stark, barren mountain sides. It changed its colour too – from the tepid grey, it had turned into deep turquoise.
As the scenery improved and revealed various hues and shades, the road worsened. At sections, we drove by instinct. At points, especially at turns, we even took guesses as to where our path could be.
Soon, we crossed a bridge to reach a tented colony of sorts. It was a Border Roads Organisation (BRO) camp. The workers were busy getting ready for their day – some were brushing their teeth, a couple of them were shaving while a few adventurous ones were washing their faces. They looked at us with interest; apparently we were the first vehicle of the day that passed their camp. We waved to them and continued ahead. The camp soon was hidden from our view as we took a sharp turn to the left, descending further towards the Shyok.
The turn also brought into view a water channel that we had to cross. Thankfully the water was only ankle-high. Our vehicle though rolled left and right as it went through the water that hid the small potholes that lay hidden beneath the surface. It took us a good 10 minutes to cross the 100- metre stretch, more than half of which lay under water. As the road climbed a bit to leave the loose gravel behind, we heaved a sigh of relief. This was much better for our necks and backs, which had been bobbing and twisting uncontrollably on the stretch behind.
The relief though was short. A large boulder lay in the middle of the road ahead. We got down to see if we could go around, it but realised even as we approached it that we were hoping for the unachievable. It was too big for us to even try and push it away, and as far as we could see, we were the only beings there.
The only glimmer of hope was a big bulldozer parked a turn before. It was a BRO machine and we decided to go back and request them to clear the road. So back we went again through the gravel water stretch to reach the tents.
The BRO officers heard us out and when we told them about the bulldozer, they shook their heads. “That needs repairs,” the officer told us. “We’ll have to take one from here to clear the road.” According to him, it would take about an hour. “Have tea with us till we clear the road,” he offered magnanimously.
We took his offer for two reasons: One, the wind was bone-chilling though the sun was out and two, a cup of tea would be very welcome. We had got our breakfast packed at the hotel in Diskit but had come across no shop on the way, forget a tea shop.
So, thankfully we entered a tent where a lit bukhari made it comfortably warm. I looked at the time – it was 9.30 am. If all had been right, we would have reached Pangong by 1 pm – the condition of the road had already delayed us by an hour in our estimates.
Our gracious hosts told us innumerable stories about the work they did and the road we were travelling on. “Every year we build a section and the river washes it away in the summer,” said one who hailed from Faridabad, but had not been back home for a year.
“The river even washes away the bridges built about 20 feet high,” he said, adding, “this river is deadly; many have died over the years trying to build a road here.”
I understood why the Shyok is called the River of Death.
After an hour we took leave and drove back to the landslide section. Work was still going on. In the event it took around five hours to clear the road as around the turn there were boulders on the road. Also, loose gravel had started rolling down the mountain side triggered by the sound vibration of the bulldozers.
It was 1.30 pm by the time we started again. We realised that it seemed difficult to visit Pangong this time. But, Iqbal had different ideas. “Let’s decide when we reach Tangtse,” he said and put his foot down on the accelerator.
The road improved a bit, though some stretches were as bad as the one we had already done. There were sections where the road was under hard-packed ice and some where water hurried down to meet the Shyok, to our right again as we had crossed another bridge after the landslide.
By the time we reached Shyok village, the point where the river takes a u-turn and from where the road to Daulat Baig Oldi diverts along its banks, it was 3 pm. The road now entered a gorge cutting through the Pangong range to enter the Changthang plains. Another hour and we were at Tangtse.
“Let’s go to Pangong,” Iqbal decided for us, “you have come so far, how can you go without seeing the frozen lake.” We reported at the post at Tangtse and rushed towards Pangong.
Everything on the way was frozen – the streams, the water holes, the waterfalls; even the wind seemed so. To complete the picture, it started snowing too. It was in this state that we reached Pangong lake, a greenish-white expanse on which “a truck could be driven,” as the BRO officer had told us. We gaped at it; we shivered but we laughed.
Our mouths steamed and as the snowfall turned heavy, the only word that we could think of was a cliché: “It’s cool!”
