Day 4 – Srinagar to Kargil
The next morning wasn’t an early start, so it was a little easy. Couldn’t say the same thing about the drive though, as today we would be crossing the mighty Zoji La. On the request of most participants, yours truly included, we decided to take a detour while heading out of Srinagar, to check out the Dal Lake. We had a stop for around 20 minutes by the lake for photo ops and then continued onwards. We reached the beautiful Sonmarg for lunch.
The view of the snow covered mountains was a sight to behold from the lunch table. It started to get chilly and out came my jacket before we got ready to hit the Zoji La. But as soon as the convoy rolled out, we got news that the pass was shut. So it was a waiting game of around half an hour before we actually got going. I had heard a lot about the challenging drive of the Zoji La but to actually experience it was a whole different ball game. Dodging truck traffic, going over non existent roads and passing broken down trucks meant it took us a good 5 hours to cross Zoji La eventually. Also not helping were the parked taxis at the pass top where there are snow sports on offer for tourists. Thanks to the delay, our plans for visiting the war memorial at Dras went for a toss, and we finally reached Kargil around 8.30 pm and checked into our hotel, ‘The Kargil’ a really nice property right in the middle of Kargil town. After freshening up, a bonfire night with music and dinner was just what the doctor ordered. Before retiring for the night, it was unanimously decided that we would visit the Kargil war memorial the next morning before heading to Leh.
Contd…
