Monomad - A Frozen Journey Through the Indian Himalayas

It is very difficult to make mountains black and white because mountains look beautiful only in colour, mountains look unique with greenery. All the mountains in today's post are taken from the Indian Himalayas. This is Baralacha Pass which is the second mountain pass on the famous Manali-Leh highway. The height here is 4850 meters and this mountain pass remains covered with snow for 6 months of the year.

If I talk about myself, I go here every year since 2014 and many times it has happened that I have visited this place 2-3 times in a year. Once I and my friend went here trekking, it took us about 5-6 days and when we tried to cross the river starting from here, the river refused and we had to come back.

I believe from my heart that you can climb the mountain only when you want and similarly the river will give you way whenever it wants and will stop you when it does not want, something similar has happened to us. Coming back, we camped at the top of Baralacha Pass. Camping at 4850 meters was a very dangerous experience because there was snowfall along with strong winds for which we were not prepared at all.

This pass is 145 km away from India's famous hill station Manali and now since the construction of Atal Tunnel, it has become easier to reach here. Where earlier it used to take about 6-7 hours to reach here, now the passengers reach in 4 hours. There are 2 lakes around this pass, the first one is Suraj Lake and the second one is Deepak Lake. Nowadays both the lakes are frozen due to low temperature.

The road of Manali-Leh Highway is not in such a good condition because every year the highway remains closed for 6 months due to snowfall and when summer comes, the entire road breaks due to melting of snow. Landslides and avalanches also play an important role in breaking the road. The result of which is that the highway remains closed for many days. Once a cloud burst here after which I myself was stuck here for 2 days.

This is my entry for the #monomad challenge.

Disclaimer: This post is originally written in Hindi and I have used Google Translator to translate the Hindi text in English. All the photos have been clicked by me from Sony point and shoot camera and edited in lightroom, post thumbnail created in adobe photoshop.