Friday, February 29, 2008

Mulbekh Sonamarg 23 June 2008

Day 11 : Mulbekh - Kargil - Drass - JoziLa - Baltal - Sonamarg.

I Can  go solo riding. Just need to know the puncture thing and apart from that the normal bike
things. The cables are generally good. We need to have proper for brakes, chain links also.
Chain gets loose everyday, hill riding loosens it. The climb for Lamayuru was better that Gata
Loops, one is it was easy and second it wasn't that cold as it wasn't that high.

Anyway,Gandherbal had some shooting yesterday and three terrorist and one army man
went down. This Gandherbal is en-route to Srinagar when we approach it today.

Target for today is Sonamarg if things go fine or else may be move forward to Srinagar. Lets see.

It is the most fantastic location, we could have ever stayed. Gulmarg and Sonmarg and kashmir
is really the Swarg. Yeh Hindustan ki Jannat hai. I have taken lots of photos in both places.

Started from Mulbekh at good time, I think 8 after breakfast. Crossed Kargil . It is just any other
Indian town. Its just that it has become very famous after the 1999 war with Pakistan.Moreover,I
think this is almost 100% muslim populated town I have ever seen.

Although it didn't look like scary or so at all. But the friendly faces till Mulbekh have slightly
started to diminish now. We stopped at Drass, at the Kargil War Memorial.

The Tiger Hills are touch to the memorial and other battle zones are visible further.
The Border as the army man there told us, it only 10kms from the place we are standing that
sound scary. They told us about the Kargil war, India and Pak had a peace treaty, whereby both
countries would withdraw there men from border in winters as it turned to be severely cold.
Although it seems ,in 1998 Pak didn't do it that way and had started capturing parts on the
Indian territory.
This was for the first time reported by some locals, they said 'ki shayad koi terrorist aaye hain'.
A few army men were sent for them and they were all butchered. Then the battle started .

The battle lasted many months between May-Aug1999.

Also in the way yesterday , Gurudwara pathar Sahib was just after 25kms from Leh, we stopped
and spent some good time at Gurudwara Pathar Sahib, and heard the complete story from one
fellow.
It is being maintained by army since 1962 and around 7-9 army men are always there to
manage it. They were serving hot tea and everyone was welcome to join for Langar always.
It felt good to visit Upar Waley ka darbar for first time in so many days.
And the jawans were also very friendly.

!0:30 pm:
Sonamarg, we are sleeping on the floor in dorimtory, lets see how it goes tomorrow.

Total for the day : 169 kms
Night Halt : JKTDC Guest House

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