Diary of an Internet Addict

I rose at dawn, when the sun had started to peek through the mountains, a glowing jewel atop a crown. The sky was clear that day, a taunt to me over the smouldering blanket of the night before.

Itinerary

• Tsokar (Lake)
• Back to Leh, free and easy

We were initially supposed to lodge at the Nomadic camp at Tsomoriri, but with one person sick and the rest likely to fall sick due to our inability to cope with the weather, our guide suggested a switch to better-suited lodging.

Stepping out of the place, I finally got to know the name of the lodgings – Dolphin Guest House.

The bathroom is shared, but it was really clean. The only set back was that the whole area was suffering from dry taps, due to the weather, so we had to ration our water consumption.

We pulled over at Lake Tsokar, a salt lake, enroute back to Leh.

We trekked around 50m from the road (it felt like more because I was trying to not step on mysterious animal droppings). Never quite reached the lake though, because there were heaps of stones scattered near the edges, which meant that footing would be unstable and spraining ankles was not on our itinerary. From a distance, we could see the white-lined shores where salt had washed up.

Horses at pasture. The probable reason for my sand dancing.

We headed back to Leh via the Tanglang La, claimed to be the 2nd highest pass in the world.

We stopped briefly there and we realised it was snowing! My first snowfall experience, and it was not quite what I expected.

We had a snowball fight because well…we had to! The snowball fight lasted for 2 minutes before we ran into the car, from the cold.