Incredible Beauty, Incredible Tragedy: Part 4

After we decided not to cross the bridge in Nimbo, we needed to come up with alternate plan to get out. We retreated as a group back to the hotel. At the bridge, we picked up Drew and Hanna, the two young Scots we had seen kicking stones off the road on the way down.

When things go sideways, all that you need are luck and good judgment. It was good judgment not to cross the bridge as it collapsed into the river a short time later. It was good luck that we emerged just west of the bridge, the last of six bridges which fell between where we were and Leh. If we were on the other side of any bridges, we would have been done for, waiting days for the army to rescue us. As it was, many less fortunate travelers found themselves in that situation.

Considering the situation, and all available options, we quickly realized that return to Leh would be impossible and that our only viable choice was to try to get to Sri Nagar, 400 km away and the next closest airport. From there, we could get to Delhi. In short, everything was turned on its head. We were going to have to change everything, go far, far out of our way to get back to safety, and we were going to have to leave most of our possessions in Leh. Still, there was little other choice. We asked the taxi driver if he would be willing to go the Sri Nagar, but he was not. Our best bet was to go west to the next closest town, Khalse.

Khalse is a bit of a ground-hog day for me. I didn't like it when I went through the first time, and got food poisoning. I didn't like it the second time, when we went on a long, kidney-jarring ride in a taxi as part of an outreach earlier in the project. And now I was heading back. Potentially for a multi-day stay as it turned out that the highway into Khalse from the other direction was also closed, apparently due to landslides. Nothing was moving in and out.

However, we had no other option. Once we got to Khalse, we made contact with the school headmaster, whom Phillip knows, and arranged to stay in the dorms, should we need accommodation. Then, we made the short walk into town, where in another moment of great luck, we ran into an Aussie traveler who had contracted a taxi from Sri Nagar the day before and now would be heading back. Through this guy, we were able to locate probably the only other Sri Nagar driver and he agreed to take us there. Once the road opened again.

There was little information coming in at that time, but the rumour was that the road would likely open in a few hours. We made one break for it in the taxi but were turned back at the police checkpoint. Back to the dorms to wait for who knows how long. As it turned out, it was only a couple more hours when Riyad, our taxi driver, appeared at the door and announced that the road was open. We quickly packed everything up, loaded the car, and set off on, hands-down, the most terrifying two-day journey that I have or will ever take.

Sure, the road was open. But, I had described this same road, from Khalse to Kargil, in an earlier post, and it was not good then. The dramatic high mountain road, over Lamyruru, was scary at that time. Now, covered with water and a thick layer or mud in several areas, it was ten times worse. Meeting traffic coming the other direction on the single lane, slick, steep road was heart-stopping. The most ridiculous sight was the westerner who we passed riding a Royal Enright motorcycle down the hill, his legs splayed out to the side to try and keep control and save him from the plunge off the side. Many tourists come to India with the idea of hiring an old style Royal Enright motorcycle and living the dream. Some clearly do not know when to pull the plug on the dream and retreat to safety.

As we drove along from Khalse and up the mountainside, it seemed like we could not keep ahead of the rain. In Khalse, it was blue skies. But a big, dark cloud appeared over the southern mountains and quickly grew into an imposing storm. More rain was exactly what this area did not need. We passed many small mudslides on the roads and in places, the road bed had begun to wash way into the river below. We realized that it was just a matter of time before more rain caused more slides. As we reached the 14000 ft pass at Lamyruru, it was raining hard and in an amazingly short period of time, the blue sky in from was enveloped with ominous rain clouds and the thunder and lightening began.

From then on, we were running with the rain. Riyad thought (rightly) that it was best to make good time on the road and try to get out of the the area quickly before the road closed and trapped us, or worse. However, no matter how slowly we drove, we were always driving too quickly for the conditions. When we were going 50km, we should have been going more like 30. When we were going 10km, we probably should have been stopped. Still, Riyad is a very good driver, so we had confidence that he knew what he was doing. He has driven this road for almost 20 years and knew all the curves and bumps.

When darkness fell, it got much worse. With the rain, we could see little of the narrow road. Debris and small mudslides would appear out of the dark into the headlights. At one point, we were driving alongside the Summu river, approaching Kargil. Through dark, I could see it coursing along more quickly than us; it was dark and full of mud and parts of trees. we hit a bit pothole or rock and the car bounced once, so that from my front seat vantage I was looking right into the river, past the eroded roadside. Then we bounced again and I was looking at the otherside of the road. Then we asked Riyad to kindly slow down, to which he readily agreed.

On the way from Khalse to Kargil, we passed dozens if not hundreds of mudslides. We thought that, as we got closer to Kargil, conditions would improve but they deteriorated. The largest slides were close to Kargil and some had been cleared only a short time before. And it was still raining hard. The last thrill of the trip came when we had to cross the Summu River into Kargil. The bridge is large and strong but at this time the river was clearly larger and stronger still. I mentioned this river earlier in the blog; on a good day it rips with tremendous force, down out of the Himalayas, and into Kargil. Now, it was completely out of control. We drove quickly across the bridge and held our collective breath as we watched the speed and force of water running below us. We had made it safely to Kargil; it was about 9 pm.

Surprisingly; amazingly, ridiculously, our driver wanted to continue, through the next pass. His thinking, again, was that it was better to clear the area before we became trapped. The group thought it was better that we were alive, so elected to overrule and stay the night. Riyad wasn't too happy, especially when two other vehicles that were traveling with us decided to continue the trip. Good luck might have got us to Kargil, but good judgment kept us there until daylight, when we could reassess.

In the morning, it was surprisingly not raining. Looking out from the river, however, blew my mind. I'll try to post some pictures of the water when I get the chance. Clearly, some of the areas of Kargil had flooded overnight, and there were large landslides in town. The area we looked across at had been described by Dr. Khan during our team visit to Kargil as 'unregulated development in a flood plane'. He was proven right by this obviously devastation. We also saw where the hillside had come down, forming an entirely new river into town and damaging several houses.

After stocking up with money from the only ATM in town, we hit the road again. In Kargil, we also added another member to the groud; Hilde, a Belgian girl who had been up the Zanskar valley and seen the rising water and slides coming first hand. She just wanted to get out of town so we made space for her. Riyad had heard that there were landslides for only a few kilometers out of town but, as it turned out, we encountered them for most of the the way to Sri Nagar, though fewer than the previous day's trip. Leaving Kargil, we again had to cross the Summu River across a bridge. A few moments of awe and wonder and we were safe on the other side. We followed this by a short dash along side the river, more or less at the same level as the road. Apparently, this part of the road is now gone but we had navigated most of the danger.

The drive for the next few hours was fairly uneventful. We drove through several picturesque towns and up into India Gate, the massive pass that drops you down into the Kashmir Valley. This part of the drive was amazing. Massive mountains and glaciers. All over the sweeping alpine meadow were nomads who bring sheep, goats, and horses up to the area for the summer pastures. This is a place I would like to get back to one day.

Dropping into the Kashmir Valley, is the most absurd road yet encountered. I thought the one along the Indus from Kargil that we drove in July was crazy; this one takes the cake. It is a mud and dirt track that is cut into the side of the steepest mountainside possible. As we skittered down the mud, I could feel the wheels sometimes spinning with a loss of traction, but overall, skilled driving took over and we made our way down the worst of it safely. At one point, we came across a bulldozer, pushing debris from the latest landslide off the edge of the cliff. As we waited for three of the longest minutes of my life, directly in the path of the slide, for the dozer to complete his work, I just stared, alternately, at the giant pile of small loose rock above the car, and the Kashmir Valley, hundreds of feet below.

As luck would have it, we had arrived just when a slide that had blocked the road for hours was cleared. The downside of this is that it meant coming up the narrow road were hundreds of trucks that had been delayed by the slide. Lot's of vehicles were still coming out of Kashmir but we were about the only ones going in. This meant we had to pass around the trucks on the thin, rough road. We passed may be one or two before Hilde had had enough and ordered Riyad to pull over and wait at a safe spot to let them pass. More good judgment. This got us out of the car and, because there were so many trucks still to come, we decided to walk down the road, through the jam. What a great walk. We took pictures and talked to some of the drivers and made our way most of the way down to the valley floor before Riyad caught up. One of the most memorable walks of my life.

After driving the car under a spilling water pipe to wash off the mud, we continued down the beautiful Kashmir Valley (also a place to go back to) all the way to Sri Nagar. We had escaped the disaster zone and entered a war zone....