After two days of casual sight-seeing we decided to take a step further and ascend into the adventurous mountains of Ladakh. These snow capped mountains had been inviting me since the day I landed. Now it was time to have a tete-a-tete with them. It was time to explore the Khardungla pass. Khardungla means 'la pass' in Tibetan. Located at an altitude of 17,000 feet it is considered to be the world's highest motorable pass. As exciting as hell it might sound the 2 and a half hour drive from Leh to Khardungla was perhaps the riskiest drives of my life. Since the ice from the mountains had not even started melting, we were driving virtually on snow at a speed of 30 kmph. You cannot even imagine surpassing that speed because there is a constant risk of the car slipping on the ice (for which our driver used to tie the tyres of the vehicle with chains that would eventually break the ice with friction).

Also I had never in my life seen these massive sheets of ice in front of me, glittering sharply under the rays of the sun which was almost blinding after a point.

On reaching there, I realized the minus freezing temperatures along with the cold breezing that simply did not let us stand peacefully. And whenever I wanted to walk a certain stretch on ice I would sunk deeper into it due to the thinning of the top layer of ice.

On our way back from Khardungla, we passed this Gurudwara which is built in the memory of the first Sikh leader, Guru Nanak Sahib. It is a beautiful gurudwara situated at 12,000 feet on Leh- Kargil road, constructed and maintained by Indian army. The gurudwara has an interesting story behind it, where Guru Nanak ji had saved the Ladakhis from the misery of an evil giant Chardi Kalan.

All the images © Shraddha Chauhan