The countryside on the Chandra-Bagha river valley is one of the most beautiful I have ever seen. The river changes color between green, blue, brown, white and even grey depending on the time of the day and the type of mountains around.
On the 3rd day, Uli was down with a bad stomach. In such situations, it is hard to tell whether the problem is altitude sickness or the change in diet (3 of us south Indians and one German) or whether it is some infection. We had bought most of the medicine for the journey but deciding what to take is the difficult. Moreover, everybody has an opinion in such circumstances and nobody is sure. Our guy though was strong and he persisted with his cycling. After 8 hours of cycling, we were at Jispa at about 6 PM.
Jispa with its green Bagha river is a really beautiful place in the summer, perfect for chilling out for a few days.
Our 4th day destination was ZingZingBar. Although the distance for the day was just about 35 km, it was uphill most of the way. The day saw us through Darcha, a police checkpost where every traveller has to register; then through Deepak tal, a high altitude small lake; through Patseo, where there is one tent serving maggi and dal-chaval; through army transit camps and through a huge expanse of barren dusty land.
The uphill appears at some places like downhill due to a lack of reference terrain but the legs were telling me the truth. Finally, ZingZingBar showed itself but there was no bar to be seen. May be there was one during some army exercise or war. The actual camps are 6 kms further or in other words, 2 hours more of pain. Anyway, we were finally there and the only thing on our minds was 'sleep'. The cold weather though does not support the tired man's cause and we did not catch much sleep during the night.
At ZingZingBar, we met another group of three cyclists, all self supported and with an impressive journey behind them. One, Satish had cycled from Bangladesh to Tamil Nadu. The other group of 12 also finished with us.
After the fourth day, Leh looked well within reach.