Dankar lake & Pinn Valley, may19th

The day was fresh and the weather was perfect. While Chetan dada & family along with Kaka & Moushi, were planning to go see the famous Ki monastery, Papa, Aie , me & Dadu were going to see a lake which is on the top of mountain besides Dhankar monastery. The climb up the hill was quite tiring for me. But thanks to Papa, I got acclimatized and completed the remaining portion easily. Besides the lake, the soil was a bit soft, as the lake had just been over it and then evaporated. This was the most enjoyable part in this trip. The soil was soft in the lake bed and we saw tiger like pugmarks. We were sure that these were the pugmarks of the famous and elusive snow-leopard.We took pictures of the marks so that we can show it to some wildlife experts later and get confirmation. We saw smaller pugmarks also which probably were made by the young . These marks were not very fresh.
As we went closer to the lake, the pugmarks there seemed fresher and fresher. It appeared as if they had been playing in the water with the supervision of their father. Not only that, we also saw the bones of s yak, which had probably been eaten by the leopard. I even collected one of these bones.
We also went to see the Pinn valley. The monastery in it had become new due to reconstruction. The Pinn valley still remained as beautiful as ever. On our way to see these places, we gave lift to three women. On the way, I observed something very beautiful of the snow clad mountains at a moment they don’t appear to you and at the next the mountains ‘move’ like a curtain as the car goes forward! Revealing the magnificent snow behind them.

Dhankar lake

Our steep climb up the mountain of the Dhankar lake

The Tibetan Wolf Pugmarks we spotted along the lake. We initially thought it was Leopard's pugmarks.

View of the Key Monastry ( Chetan dada took this)