It was tough, grusome and it was Amazing!!

We left Keylong an hour late from the plan in morning at 7:15. We had to travel around 360 kms today to reach Leh by evening, something which looked unlikely at different times during day. From keylong the journey was all downhill into the valley of Dercha. Well, there are two parts of travel through mountains, one is you travel uphill and then you have to travel downhill and that sequence repeats till you reach your destination. We must have gone though this uphill-downhill sequence four times since we started our journey from Manali. Four does not seem a like a large number, but these were spread over 473 kms!!

The journey to Dercha was nice. The sun was out, but we were traveling to the cold side of the mountains(the side of mountain were sunlights dont fall), so it was a bit chilly. The roads were mostly good, but on these mountains the good roads are mostly like teasers, you learn prettty soon they wont last too long, bumps are going to be just round the corner. Dercha is picture-perfect valley, like the ones we used to draw in our childhood, a river running through triangle shaped mountain, houses with triangle shaped roofs beside the river, a farm near the houses. :) :) This picturesque valley also had a smal bridge over the river. ;) So we had aloo parathas again for breakfast, and dint take disel for the vehicel something we wud regret later in the day. Once were done were off to Sarchu.

The drive to Sarchu can be divided into two parts. The first part is through the Switzerland-like-mountains. The sun was out in its full intensity and the view was beautiful, absolutely breathing-taking. Once the drive through the mountains was through, we were onto the plains, the second part. The plains are flanked by mountains on both sides. The view is majastic, much like the view in "khwabon ke parinde" song from ZNMD, where the horses running run beside their open-roof car! Well we dint have the open roof car or the horse running beside us, the view was wonderful none the less. We reached sarchu, at around 11:30, the HP-JK border. Our next stop was going to be Pang, which seemed to take forever to reach.

(To be continued..)