Its been a month since our trip to Ladakh, and I am still searching for words to accurately describe how it felt. I am not even sure I may be able to put all that I felt during the trip into words, but try, I will. What follows below is the planning part of the trip. Subsequent blog entries will cover each day of the trip,
Ladakh was a place me and my friends have wanted to visit for quite some time, infact it took us almost 2 years before we could finally nail it down and plan the whole trip. I had first seen the pictures of Pangong around the time i had just joined in as developer fresh from college(around 2005), so the desire to visit this place had been there for much more than 2 years and the trip was long over due. The planning of the trip in itself had to begin months in advance as the window of opportunity to visit this place is only limited to 4 months in a year between Jun to Sep. Our preparations began sometime in late Feb and took us almost a month before all the nitty gritties related to date of travel, leaves to be planned, the places to visit, flight tickets etc, had been all sorted out(Thanks to Jayant, the man who gets things done. Luca Brasia, you better watch out :P).
The planning in itself was quite heart breaking as we just could not cram every place we wanted to visit into 7 days. It meant places like Tso mori(another beautiful lake), Turtuk( beautiful village bordering Pakistan), Stok and many more had to be dropped at-least for this trip. We were also politely informed by our tour operators that they do not generally encourage too many customizations from their offered packages and if any we still insisted, then we will have to pay dearly. That put an end to most of our arguments, "itna paisa main itna hich milenga" sytle :)
At the end of it we had 6 people standing who were in for the trip and 12th July set as the D-Day. Our trip gave us 7 days in Ladakh, with Leh being our base camp and two day trips to Nubra valley and Pangong lake. With the plan in place and all the details taken care of, all we could do now was wait for 12th July to arrive.
The final itinerary we had was:
12th July (Saturday): Morning flight to Delhi.
13th July (Sunday): Early morning (6 AM mostly) flight to Leh, a day to Acclimatize. .
14th July – Local sightseeing in and around Leh (Shey Palace, Thiksey monastery)
15th,16th July – Nubra valley and on the way sightseeing
17th, 18th July – Pangong and on the way sightseeing
19th July – Places closer to Leh like, Gurudwara Patthar Sahib , Magnetic Hill etc
20th July – Flight back to Delhi and then to Bangalore. To reach Bangalore by night
The polite tour operators who offered their services: Ezeego.
Note: Read Ladakh Trip - Day 1(Delhi) here.
Ladakh was a place me and my friends have wanted to visit for quite some time, infact it took us almost 2 years before we could finally nail it down and plan the whole trip. I had first seen the pictures of Pangong around the time i had just joined in as developer fresh from college(around 2005), so the desire to visit this place had been there for much more than 2 years and the trip was long over due. The planning of the trip in itself had to begin months in advance as the window of opportunity to visit this place is only limited to 4 months in a year between Jun to Sep. Our preparations began sometime in late Feb and took us almost a month before all the nitty gritties related to date of travel, leaves to be planned, the places to visit, flight tickets etc, had been all sorted out(Thanks to Jayant, the man who gets things done. Luca Brasia, you better watch out :P).
The planning in itself was quite heart breaking as we just could not cram every place we wanted to visit into 7 days. It meant places like Tso mori(another beautiful lake), Turtuk( beautiful village bordering Pakistan), Stok and many more had to be dropped at-least for this trip. We were also politely informed by our tour operators that they do not generally encourage too many customizations from their offered packages and if any we still insisted, then we will have to pay dearly. That put an end to most of our arguments, "itna paisa main itna hich milenga" sytle :)
At the end of it we had 6 people standing who were in for the trip and 12th July set as the D-Day. Our trip gave us 7 days in Ladakh, with Leh being our base camp and two day trips to Nubra valley and Pangong lake. With the plan in place and all the details taken care of, all we could do now was wait for 12th July to arrive.
The final itinerary we had was:
12th July (Saturday): Morning flight to Delhi.
13th July (Sunday): Early morning (6 AM mostly) flight to Leh, a day to Acclimatize. .
14th July – Local sightseeing in and around Leh (Shey Palace, Thiksey monastery)
15th,16th July – Nubra valley and on the way sightseeing
17th, 18th July – Pangong and on the way sightseeing
19th July – Places closer to Leh like, Gurudwara Patthar Sahib , Magnetic Hill etc
20th July – Flight back to Delhi and then to Bangalore. To reach Bangalore by night
The polite tour operators who offered their services: Ezeego.
Note: Read Ladakh Trip - Day 1(Delhi) here.
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| The final 6 |
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