A sojourne in the mighty Moore plains

Crossing Moore plains on foot was attempted in early expeditions, however, now-a-days; nobody does that because the highway passes through the plains. I also trekked that plain by chance. My original plan was to trek the Darcha-lamayaru trek but could not do that because the shingo la was closed since I went for the trek quite early in the season. Actually, I had no option other than going for the trek in late May. I had some prior commitments in June.

When I reached dacha, I had two options, either I go back to Chandigarh or go for the Moore plains. Actually everyone who has travelled on the Manali Leh highway knows the highway but very few people knew about it in the good old days. The localites of Ladakh used to cross that plain on foot. City folks will never find any tour operator offering a trek in that part of Ladakh. I came to know about that 2-3 years back from a "gaddi " (shepherd). I met him during my Pin Parvati trek, he was an old guy. He told me about his journey.

At that juncture, in darcha, I decided to go ahead for the Moore plains. At that time of the month reconstruction work was going on the highway and was not officially open. So there were very few vehicles on the road. I reached Moore plains by covering half of my journey on foot and half of journey by hitchhiking from the border road organization trucks. Well that was a boring part of the journey so I am not going to waste my energy on writing about it.

The Moore plains start from Pang. One has to ascend a steep mountain from Pang to reach the plains. It is a straight 60-70 degree gradient climb. I did not take any pictures during that ascent. It was really a tough climb because during the whole climb I was regularly slipping as the soil on the mountain was loose due to lack of vegetation. I wish I had a GoPro camera at that time because the view from that place was spectacular, I was able to see a river bed, the Moore plains and the snow covered peaks of Ladakh in one frame.

The Moore plains are one of the most beautiful places that I have seen in my life, it is a 40km stretch of land with no human element, no vegetation and no water except it is flanked by snow covered mountains on both sides. The plains is dead flat and would be a perfect place for some off-road driving with a SUV. Now here comes the real adventure of my journey. I started my journey early in the morning and I was at the starting point of the plains at 8 A.M.

The most difficult part while walking in the plains was the combined factor of the sun and wind. I faced the type of wind that one would face while riding a bike on a January night in Chandigarh at 40-50 km/hr and the sun one would face in bright cloudless May afternoon. The stretch of land was 40 Kilometers and completely devoid of water. I carried around 3 liters of water with me but that also did not prove to be sufficient. I trekked my last 10 Kilometers without a single drop of essential living liquid. I trekked incessantly for 12 hours as I could not erect my tent in the plains.

Eventually I reached a place that was quite appropriate for the camping, but I was completely drained by that time. I had sunburns and most importantly I was at height around 4500 meters, I was near the taglangla pass. I was not able to sleep that night because of the high altitude breathlessness and mind bursting painful headache. Next day I crossed the pass and reached Rumste. I was lucky that I got some BRO(Border Roads organization) trucks at the pass. I stayed in Rumste for a day then went back to Chandigarh via Leh -Srinagar route.

About Author:

Profession: Student of Engineering,

I am passionate about adventure sports, specially trekking, rafting, and traveling. I can give anything for trekking to an untouched and unexplored pristine terrain of Himalayas.