All the way to solang nala.May 20th

The day was new. The weather was clear to start with but it became cloudy by the time we reached Kunzum pass and it was raining by the time we reached Rohtang pads The distance was only around 210km, but due to the steep turns & bad roads conditions, it took us almost 8 hrs to complete the trip. The following photos will prove this to you… The two passes had just been cleared 2 days back and very few vehicles had started crossing it. Pass was supposed to officially opened for vehicles after a few days. The road (or whatever was there of it) was really in bad condition after the Kumzum pass and at places was it was quite precarious.
As you may have observed, there was snow all over the road & streams used to pass from these roads. A vary tiring day, on the way, we gave lift to a doc. We reached Solang nala almost at 8:00 clock in the evening. It was the dusk of course. We then relaxed in a hotel called hotel Iceland and had a hot, spicy and delicious pizza and then slept.

 Early morning in a village on route from Kaza to Kunzum

 

Spiti valley is one of most sparsely populated places in Himachal. Most villages have a population of 30 to 150 people. But all of them have electricity and schools are there within 4-5 Km
Village folks waiting for a ride to go to Dhankar monastery for the big Buddh Pournima celebrations


























The road get totally eroded or washed out during winters and has to be repaired every year

Kunzum pass (approx 4560 meters)

Kaka's Pajero makes a big splash

The road was still not opened officially and snow clearing was in progress at places

Just approaching Rohtang pass (approx 3950 meters). On the other side of the pass (within 1 Km) there was huge crowd of tourists. Good that they did not think of coming this side :)

 

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)