Road Trip to Leh (India): July 2009 – Day 2 of 10

Manali to Sarchu

A tiring day indeed – we covered a lot of ground today.

It generally takes two days to cover the 500 kilometers between Manali and Leh. We left Manali at around 8 AM and took the Manali-Leh highway to try and reach Sarchu (approximately midway) by evening via Rohtang Pass. A number of taxis and tourists were headed with us, though only till Rohtang. Day trips from Manali to Rohtang are quite popular and these tourists usually head back to Manali in the afternoon.

The moment we left Manali, the scenery started unfolding around us. Grass-covered mountain slopes looked great with the numerous tiny purple, pink and yellow flowers mixing magically with the green. The road is not particularly wide and the ascent is slow and treacherous. We got stuck in a bad traffic jam and reached Rohtang later than we’d have liked.

Rohtang is a highly commercialized place where the first thing that strikes you is the pervasive smell of horse poo – people generally go sightseeing around Rohtang on horses. Rohtang itself doesn’t have much to offer sans some nice views of the surrounding mountain peaks. We didn’t spend much time there and hit the road again.

Thankfully the traffic almost vanished since not many venture beyond Rohtang. However the road was in a real bad shape and progress was slow. Next stop was Keylong which is the official stopover point for government buses going to Leh. However if you are not traveling by bus it is advised to cover more ground and camp at Sarchu for the night. It means around 120 more kilometers but a more relaxed second day when you head to Leh.

We had a quick lunch at Keylong. It was late afternoon and we were already quite tired, but the restaurant owner advised us to continue our journey to Sarchu, citing friendlier road condition ahead. He also had a fantastic map which gives the altitude of all key stations between Manali and Leh along with the road distance, in the form of a line graph. I’d been thinking of drawing a similar map myself for this post, but now I’ll directly post the picture of the map I took there.

To reach Sarchu you have to pass the Baralacha La pass which is pretty high in altitude. We had our first feeling of altitude sickness when we got down to take some pictures there. We felt dizzy and thought it best to move on fast and complete the descent to Sarchu. It was getting very cold and we crossed the first camps at Sarchu at around 8 PM. Sarchu is only a small campsite with no concrete structures, no electricity and no mobile phone signal. The camps are solar powered and the few light bulbs glow only for a couple of hours in the evening. We took two double tents which were furnished with beds, blankets and had a small washroom at the back. They usually charge around Rs. 2000 per tent, but we got a discount since not many tourists were around. Dinner was served in a large common tent in the fashion of school mess.

It was pitch dark and we couldn’t see what was around the campsite. However, the sky was absolutely clear and I could see the maximum number of stars I’d seen on a single night. Pity it was a new moon night, otherwise the night time scenery would’ve been visible and most likely amazing.