Day 6

Gagan raced ahead of all the others. The road became steep with a strong and cold wind blowing as we closed in on Baralachala. Anju suddenly started seeing everything yellow. “Why have you put yellow sun-block on your face Vijay?” she asked. We knew she was being hit by high altitude sickness. While the others had sped away, Vijay and I had to take a call as to how much longer we could risk her in that condition. We edged her along, gently nudging her to walk instead of riding. This happened about 3 km short of the Pass. We quickly stuffed 2 Disprins in her mouth, remembering Dr. Piyush Jain advise. We actually held her for a sizeable distance so as to ensure she would not buckle under. She did break down once when she thought Vijay and I were going to force her into the support vehicle. She knew if she reached Baralachala it was all downhill to Sarchu. Brave girl as she is, she prevailed and walked the stretch up to Baralachala. No stopping her then. We stopped at Bharatpur for some hot tea and Maggi. This set us up for a beautiful 20 km ride to Sarchu. I guess this part of the ride was the most picturesque. We witnessed various shades of brown on the mountains. We all took a lot of pictures and reached Sarchu in leisure. Sarchu is almost mid way point and we all were extremely satisfied with our performance. Unfortunately, our spirits were grounded when we were told that the Army was not allowing anybody to cross the border into Jammu and Kashmir. A group of motor bikers had not been allowed earlier on in the day to go beyond the check point. We set out to do a recce after having a hot lunch. As usual (Col) Vijay used his finest skills to convince the Army and the Police to let us go through. They gave us the permission only on the precondition that we use only our own rations and not put any pressure on the food supplies in Pang. Apparently, the Army in Pang had to feed over 300 people, mainly foreigners, for many days as they could neither go ahead nor return to Manali. There were landslides galore and the situation was not coming under control. There was one thing for sure that there was no way we would reach Leh as a mountain had fallen en-route Tanglangla and Leh in Rumse. 20 kms of the road was washed out and there was no way that the road could be cleared this season. We continued to take one day at a time.

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