Visual Quotient

Ladakh was on my list for a very very long time. When my friend Sharad came up with the idea of a birding trip, there was no way to let the opportunity pass. We set off from Gurgaon on the morning of July 31 with the following plan in mind:

31-Jul Gurgaon to Manali
01-Aug Manali to Keylong
02-Aug Keylong to Leh
03-Aug Stay in Leh
04-Aug Leh to Choglamsar/Shey-Thiksey
05-Aug Shey-Thikse to Chushul
06-Aug Stay in Chushul
07-Aug Chushul to Hanle
08-Aug Stay in Hanle
09-Aug Hanle to Puga Valley
10-Aug Puga Valley to Tso Moriri / Korzok
11-Aug Stay in Tso Moriri / Korzok
12-Aug Tso Moriri / Korzok to Tso Kar
13-Aug Stay in Tso Kar
14-Aug Tso Kar to Manali
15-Aug Manali to Gurgaon

The itinerary was arrived at after an exhaustive study of Otto Pfister’s Birds and Mammals of Ladakh, multiple reports on the Internet (Pfister and Mathias Ritschard & Daniel Matti to name a few) and help from birdwatchers and photographers who’d been there before.

I’ll divide the account of my Ladakh trip into 3 posts. This post will be about the journey from Gurgaon to Leh. The next post will be about our birding adventures in Leh, Shey, Chushul and Nyoma. The last post will be about Puga Valley, Tso Moriri, Tso Kar and a journey shortened.

Day 1 – Jul 31 – Gurgaon to Manali: The road to Manali was fairly uneventful. After a day-long long drive through 5 states/Union Territories, we arrived at Manali late in the evening. We stayed at one of the lower priced Govt-run hotels, The Tourist Lodge. Hardly 2 of the at least 25 rooms in the hotel were occupied. The beds were clean and the sound of the Beas gushing below us helped us get some good sleep.

Morning brought with it a lot of birding activity. Himalayan Whistling Thrushes were singing around the hotel. A lot of House Sparrows and Eastern Jungle Crows were busy with their early-morning pleasantries and were looking for breakfast.

Day 2 – Aug 2 – Manali to Keylong: We set off on the next leg of our journey – to get to Keylong via Rohtang Pass. Luckily for us, the road was re-opened the same day after being closed for 2 days. Although the distance from Manali to Keylong is only 120km, it took us the whole day to get there. The roads were bad pretty much all along the way, particularly at Rohtang.

Birding: The Himalayas present some of the most wonderful scenes, with snow-clad peaks, coniferous forests and streams running all over. The birding was also very fruitful, with a lot of lifers from me. A Common Stonechat pair kept hopping around a potato field looking for insects. Rock Buntings were everywhere. I watched a mixed hunting flock for the first time ever, with Coal Tits, Bar-winged Flycatcher Shrikes and Western Crowned Warblers.

And then we spotted the Himalayan Vultures (or Himalayan Griffons) on the tree-tops.

There was a bovine carcass on the road-side and they were monitoring the traffic to get down and have their fill. We drove up to eye-level and got some great photographs.

The light was glorious that day; even crows (Eastern Jungle Crows) showed off their radiance.

The bird of the day for me was the Bearded Vulture (or Lammergeier) that we saw flying over the Rohtang Pass. I’d been looking forward to see it, especially after watching it in so many documentaries. Sadly, visibility dipped soon after and that was the last I saw of the bird on the trip.

At Keylong, the most common bird seemed to be the Oriental Turtle Dove. We saw them all over the place.

The stay: We stayed at the HP Tourism-run Hotel Chandrabhaga in Keylong. The hotel has clean rooms and decent food. The views from the hotel are awesome too.

Day 3 – Aug 2 – Keylong to Rhum-Tse: This was one ambitious leg in our journey – the plan to cover a distance of over 450km from Keylong to Leh in a single day. With the tip that birding in Keylong was not to be missed, we set off a bit later than planned. The drive was one of the most scenic ones I’ve ever gone on. From high-altitude passes to vast plains, with the Indus and its tributaries cutting all over the place, beautiful rock faces, emerald lakes – it’s to be seen to be believed.

However, the winding roads, the dust and the climate took their toll on us (read altitude sickness) and we broke our journey to rest for the night at a small village called Rhum-Tse just after Taglang La.

Birding: Birding in Keylong was very fruitful. We came across Eurasian Cuckoos, European Goldfinches, Red-fronted Serins, Streaked Laughingthrushes – one more beautiful than the other.

Bharatpur City, a small settlement consisting of dhabas after Baralacha-La, yielded fantastic photography opportunities of the Horned Lark, Brandt’s Mountain Finch and Hill Pigeon. They were enjoying a hearty meal at the mini garbage dump. Horned Larks were fairly common along the entire route.

Day 4 – Aug 3 – Rhum-Tse to Leh: We thanked our host and set off to Leh. The road was very good from here onwards and we got to Leh in quick time, along with some enroute birding. We stayed at Hotel Snow View at Leh for the next couple of days. Day 4 was spent taking rest to shake off the altitude sickness.

I visited Leh Palace in the evening and watched the performance there. Two things struck me about the dance – the very colorful clothing (contrasting with the barren grey landscape) and the slow casual dance almost aimed at conserving breath and energy at that high altitude. I envied a group of kids who were running up and down the mountain slopes with utmost ease.

Birding: Eurasian Magpies were fairly common all along the route. Before Choglamsar, we saw a Chukar for the first time. We were lucky to spot this beautiful bird quite often in our trip. We spent some time driving around Shey. Although we didn’t spot the Eurasian Hobby (which we saw 2 days later), we saw a Eurasian Cuckoo, Eurasian Hoopoe, White Wagtails, Citrine Wagtails, a lone Cattle Egret, Common Moorhen and Common Mergansers (near the bridge) around the marshes.