Ladakh’s Far North: Turtuk, Pangong and Nubra | K2K Part 2

Most of the climbing was behind us. What lay ahead for the next three days was a different kind of riding, not distance for its own sake but the far edges of Ladakh, the places where the map simply runs out. From Hunder we rode to the last villages before the Pakistan border, crossed the region to Pangong, and came back over one of its high passes in the snow.

It was three days and 540 km, and the strangest, most remote stretch of the whole trip. Here is how it went.

The Road To The Border: Turtuk & Thang

The day to Turtuk began slowly, late off the mark after the usual round of discussions, and we were riding by nine. The road out was in fine and we reached Turtuk in two or three hours. On the way we picked up three children who had flagged us down for a lift; there were three of us and three of them, so we each took one. It was somewhere around here that we noticed Pankaj’s footrest had broken, snapped the evening before when his bike went over entering the homestay.

Turtuk and the village past it, Thang, sit almost on the line itself. The last medical centre and the last school were both shut, near enough abandoned. We rode out to the Indo-Pak border viewpoint and on to Thang, the final village on this side, and stood a while looking at country you do not usually get to see.

Back at base, Aditya and I had a more ordinary problem: cash. The one ATM was dry. We solved it at a restaurant, paying by UPI and taking the same amount back in notes, and the owner, Takshi, would not take a single rupee extra for the trouble. That is the thing about people in Ladakh. We went back to the room, had a drink, and slept.

Across To Pangong

Pangong was the next target, after some work and breakfast. Nubra had one last surprise on the way out, a queue for the petrol pump unlike anything I had seen, a full hour of waiting that the place somehow made worth it. My bike refused to start after breakfast, and by the time it came alive the others had gone ahead, so I set off alone meaning to catch them. The road was good and bad by turns, with long stretches of off-road, and at one point I lost the way to Pangong completely. A single milestone saved me; without it I would have ended up halfway back to Leh.

I found the others again somewhere in the middle of all that, and together we reached the lake. Pangong earns its reputation. The water changes colour through the day and it is hard to look away from. We took a tent for 1,300 and shared the evening with three men from Bihar who had driven up in a Kwid, falling into a long conversation about truck engines of all things, drinking and talking late. It was a cold, easy night, headache and all, and worth it. Without those three it might have been a boring one. The GoPro, for once, was working again. We had dinner and slept.

Chang La, In The Snow

The last morning at Pangong was bitterly cold. We freshened up, ate, packed, and rode the extra three kilometres to the final village on the China side, a place under a little snow that looked like heaven. The plan for the day was Chang La, and we had been warned the road to it was all dust and off-road.

We made Darbuk, about sixty kilometres on, had breakfast, and pressed on into exactly that. An army convoy was stuck across the road, so we had to pick our way along the edge of it, through deep dust and loose sand with the ground heaving up and down. Aditya’s bike took it well and he worked along the stony side. Pankaj’s would not, and when it finally went down, an army man and I had to push it back up onto the road. Then it was my turn, and the bike simply walked up the same broken ground.

After that came the water crossings, every one of them taken, and then snowfall and rain and a cold that cut through everything, all the way up to Chang La. The pass was not the end of it either. There was still a long run of off-road and more rain before we dropped back into Leh and the same hostel as before. We took a break, did some work, had dinner, and the day was over.

Next: Coming Down, Leh to Rajasthan (Days 18–25) →

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