part 6

ere the locals stayed to help in cooking and caring for the tourists. It was a beautiful place surrounded by mountains ans with a huge vegetable garden in front. They grew all things for themselves. A perfect place for the wandering nomads like us. There were zuchini, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots,onions, turnips nd what not. The slightly bigger trees were full of green and red applePart 6. From the top of Khardung la pass to the drive to Nubra valley...We climbed down to our next stop which was the Eco lodge t Nubra valley. The roads were winding, rough and not very wide. We saw many military convoys carrying supplies to their different bases. When such a motorcade approaches the drivers on the opposite side had to wait in certain res where the road was more wider.Through out we could see groups of men at work on the roads clearing anything that was on the road. Many areas has snow fall, some areas were prone to stone shooting and sometimes huge boulders. !! Stone shooting can be caused by just one single boulder falling and carrying along many rocks along with it in its downward course. Or even mountain goats who rush and run sometimes on such altitude. Many places long the rod had soft and powdery snow on one side and the other side….deep valleys.

The moment we saw the fine snow we told our driver to stop for clicks again. He turned out to be more interested than us to roll down in the snow. The girls sreedevi, sunena and chinnus took pictures in all possible angles in that gleaming white background

Further down...and here were some sights which I forgot to mention. The wild life of ladakh mountains. We came across many species of birds, mules, mustangs yaks, donkeys and marmuts. This was my first encounter with this animal called marmut. They were five or six in numbers and we took out our cameras in haste. Group of other tourists too joined us on the roadside to see these beautiful animals. (Pictures attached) surprisingly they were ot at all shy of people and were actually posing for photos. Tea break stop and this time Sonaldi had herbal tea bags for us from her black bag. Mountain terrains continued. Roads were beautiful and we saw a camp for buggy riding at hunder valley which were ATV. All terrain vehicles. The girls had fun riding them and we moved on to reach the Eco lodge by in the evening.

The Eco lodge was nestled in the middle of three huge ranges, the karakoram, the ladakh and the Seltro range. It was a two storied building with an outhouse whs hanging down. Settled in for the day in such a picturesque surrounding and went to bed dreaming about the next day.