Ladakh

PANGONG LAKE is a salt water lake in Ladakh. It is huge - about 135 km long and 5-8 km wide. It is 100 -200 meter deep. 1/3rd of the Lake is in India .It is well known that Himalayas is the result of two continents jamming into each other at the time of the continental drift. Pangong is supposed to be the remnants of a sea sandwiched between the 2 continents at the time of the drift.
It is really blue - not just the blue of a picture post card. I have yet to find the reason for its deep blue colour. The waters are extremely clear. One o f the piks shows the stones through the water.There seems to be no marine life at all. But we saw quite a few birds including the famous black necked crane. Pangong is fed by various streams from both India and Tibet .

The swift mountain steams of Ladakh
Snow on a mountain near Changla Pass (!7000 ft + )

The dirt roads leading to the lake

The white sands on the banks of the lake

Crystal clear water

The Snow clad mountains (from the Indian side ) facing the lake

Different views of the lake :

We left Leh (11000 ft above sea level) in the morning. The previous day was extremely hot (> 25 degrees) and the morning also was very warm . Three hours later (towards east) we were at CHANGLA PASS (~17800 ft above sea level) and shivering. While most of the snow on the peaks of LAdakh himalayas have melted down, Changla (the third highest moror pass in the world) still has quite lot of snow. Strangley, the highest pass - Khardungla - which we had visited the previous day did not have much snow.
The route to Pangong has many obstructions due to many mountain streams. They are beautiful and fast, but they also stop the traffic, sometime for hours. One starts seing Pangong Lake 2 hours after Changla Pass. Most tourists see only this part of the lake. Since we had permit to go beyond we traveled about 30 km by the side of the lake.

China is just a whistle away from the site. Not too far are the famus battlefields of 1962 indo-china war like Chusul. There are two war memorials for the martyrs at Chushul and Rexang La.The Chinese went back after meeting stiff resistance at Chushul

Well, a friend said " this is my Manasa sarovar " . To each his own Manasasarovar and of course Kailsh too !

When The MInd (' manas') anoints any Lake( ' sarovar') as the one for reverence , does the location matter ? And any hill would be Kailash !

(piks: Krittika Vishwanath)
(For a fairly detailed look at Ladakh, please see

LADAKH - Himalayas , Sindhu and Monasteries

Following map courtesy of internet:
Chanlga pass(not shown in the map ) is about 40 km west of Tangtse town;
Some of the piks taken near Merak village; you can see Chushul also in the map