Trek to Lingshed – Chadar trek memories

Chadar trek is the most beautiful Himalayan trek. This is the fifth part of the Chadar trek blog series. If you missed the initial parts start reading from here for better context & mind boggling nature. On the fourth day of the Chadar Trek we went to Nerak to enjoy the sight of blue frozen waterfall after walking 12 kms & from there immediately started towards Lingshed at another 10 kms.

Day 4 Part 2 | Towards Lingshed | 10kms | 5 hrs | 11,150 ft & to 11,811 ft

We had already walked 12 kms today  to reach Nerak but had to walk another 10 kms to reach Lingshed. The route has an hour of chadar walk and after that there is gentle climb to reach Lingshed. Jigmet assured me that route from Nerak to Lingshed would be amazing beyond my beliefs. It turned out to be an understatement. Many more frozen waterfalls, ice tunnels, tryst with ibex & snow leopard paw prints made sure I was amazed beyond anything.

At Nerak we had couple of bowls of noodles. We deserved it. I was all out of dry fruits. But we were lucky that Sachin had carried extra enough for all of us. After getting recharged it was time to make the final move towards Lingshed.

We started of at ease with a good chadar. Not a soul visible for miles in both direction.

Apart from the usual penguin walk we also tried to skate on the well formed chadar. Ash enjoying a joy ride.

At a point there were steel rods fixed to the rocks. Jigmet explained this were used to cross in case there is not chadar formed at that place. Since the chadar was formed properly we didnot use it. Ash , Jigmet & Sachin show how NOT to use it 😛 

Soon enough we had reached the end of Chadar route and we had to take a diversion to Lingshed walking on normal soil.  We had to change from gumboots to trek shoes. It felt a bit odd to walk in the normal shoes over hard land. Since there was barely anyone around we decided to hide the gum boots in the shrubs and collect them on the return journey. It felt like a different world altogether. Here’s me walking in my puffed up down jacket.

We continued to walk over the slopes of this hill full of loose soil for quite some time. Sooner the nature started to get creative with the ways to impress us. There was a ice tunnel visible at a near distance. Thats not something you usually see.

The ice tunnels are very risky as there are huge chunks of rocks hanging precariously within it & hence shouldn’t be traversed without proper helmets. Did we go through them ?  Yes only after another 10 minutes.  Jigmet spotted a herd of Ibex ( mountain goats ) high up the mountain. We got  some hints that they were present. But since i had only carried my 18-55mm lens i couldn’t capture them. Also a little ahead we found paw prints of snow leopard. 

We found out another stream which was also partially frozen. Chadars everywhere.

This stream lead us to the ice tunnel. A bit risky but so beautiful I could hardly believe it exists.

Since the rocks were visibly dangling from the roof, we rushed through the tunnel without stopping.

Once outside this tunnel we were immediately treated with a frozen waterfall. But unlike the frozen waterfalls till now , this was different. All the waterfalls we had seen were like a foamy ice cream this was like crystallised ice cream like an Ice Gola / Candy.

We continued our magical journey through the snow sprinkled trail watching these natural wonders.

There were so many frozen waterfalls that i lost count. Here are few of them.

I counted more than 10 frozen waterfalls & was mesmerised by every single one of them. Jigmet had to repeatedly ask me to move since I was reluctant to move away from this heaven. As we moved ahead we reached this king of waterfalls. I was spell bound.

“Thanks to photography, some memories overstay their welcome” – Mokokoma Mokhanoana

Just ahead of this majestic waterfall are the Gates of Lingshed. These multicoloured walls welcome you to the lands of extremely humble & hospitable people.

Few more spell bounding turns & an ice tunnel before Lingshed becomes visible.

Finally the mountain (in whose laps Lingshed resides) becomes visible.

After having enjoyed every moment of this wonderful journey finally tiredness had started to creep in. We had walked 21kms since morning & this last km seemed very long indeed. We had run out of water. My camera had run out of battery ( All three of them). Energy provided by a bowl of maggi had depleted to its very core. We continued to drag ourselves through this last km. Jigmet was charged up to be finally home and his enthusiasm was rubbing off on us as we finally managed to reach Lingshed.

This was our million dollar stay.

Went inside Jigmet’s palace. We sat down for a while, had some hot water. Very tasty water. The warmth in there was too pleasant. Our gracious host.

ADD VIDEO HERE 

Yak

After regaining some energy we moved around the stone house & came to find out Yak was the centre piece of their lifestyle.

• Jigmet’s Amelie ( mom) was wearing clothes made of Yak skin.
• Her shoes were made from Yak skin.
• They used yak milk in all preparations.
• Yak dung was used as fuel.
• And later on I was lucky to have some yak meat. A yak is shared between multiple families for meat.
•  Also it is used for transport.

Trying out my new 4 X 4 .

We wanted to move around towards the Lingshed monastery but it started to snow.

Sachin took the efforts to visit the village and make a phone call home. Me and ash headed inside. There was some Ladakhi song being played in the back ground  by a guy named Mingur – Luyang Say Rjulon. (Check out his songs on you tube, it has got a nice feel to it). Amelie offered us some Chang, homemade beer. Ash says it was good. Being a teetotaller, I was too busy watching Amelie cook the yak meat with the in house heater cum cooker. It was mouth watering.

Our humble host Jigmet serving food.

After dinner we moved to the top floor where Jigmet had arranged huge thick blankets. The warmth of the blankets, coupled with the exhausted muscles & a happy tummy lured me to sleep within minutes.

Next day a whole new frontier awaited as it had snowed through the night.

The day ends. Our Snow chan team had walked 22kms today. I still had zero falls. Happy mind. Tired body. Good Night.

END OF PART 5

It snowed all night making the return journey an intersting one Click here to read about the return jouney 

PARTS: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

 

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