How's Snow on Rohtang Pass this Year ?

Antrek

Firstly, you are being a bit too ambitious in driving in your Maruty to Leh !! The roads up to Sarchu are really BAAAAAAD ! You have the Nallahs before Keylong which have names like Pagal Nallah ! only rocks and water. This year the road is as usual -very bad up to Sarchu and then on the J & K side its a paradise. Here, One can drive as fast and as smoothly as one wants.

Sarchu is not that bad. There good camps and bad camps over there. Sarchu falls exactly halfway between Manali and Leh.

Your petrol, water, fruits and medicine preparations are perfect.

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Naushad

The wild places are where we began.
When they end, so do we.

mk26in

Naushad Bhai, where on earth are you these days,
Well i hope you've just travelled the Leh-Manali road and i just needed the feedback you've provided, from a "been there done that" guy. So I can't do it in Maruti, the Pagal Nallah seems
serious this time. Please tell us more about the Nallahs how deep they are and how much flow is there. Any water flow above 18 inches means trouble for car. Pls. reply fast.

Thanks for info

Mk

Antrek

See the roads up to Sarch are really bad. The Nallahs do not have more that 12" water but when it rains a bit in July there might be more trouble. There is one photographer from Chandigarh the only one I know of who crosses this route every year in Maruty car. he has put bigger tyres or something - raised his car for ground clearance some how. There is no body else on this road with a car.

mount cleverest

Naushad bhai,
We spoke this morning (Abhinav). I am trusting that my scorpio should do fine on all the Nallahs that the route throws at me..

And once again, you are being an amazing help..

mk26in

Thanks Naushad, you are providing some thoughts to my over ambititious trip.
I'm gonna raise my car 4 inches more and still try the track. well i am also prepared to take a u turn and head back if any obstacle is more than my car can handle.

Thanks again

Mk

Antrek

Hi MK,

I just returned from Leh last night after my third trip Manali - Leh - Manali. Factually speaking the Maruti Cars have started doing this route !! I guess you could do the drive in your Maruti. I saw a total of four Marutis on this road and all the four were okay.

mk26in

thanks again Naushad, this info had motivated me more

Mk

vistet

Jispa (alt. 3200) sounds a lot better than Sarchu (4200) , in fact without an acclimatisation stop in Manali I would insist on it.

The road is awesome -enjoy !

manreet_16

oooo Snow was everywhere..yesterday i came back from there...it was chillin like anything...
V also went to leh and the real beauty 65Km above leh covered with snow..only ur car was there in a stretch of 65Km above leh..winds were so hard that even ur car got shaken with that..

vasuki

Articles on the decay of Manali and Rohtang Pass..

Manali in a mess

Snow vanishing in Rohtang Pass

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mk26in

hmmm.... very sad indeed and we are responsible for this.

samir_brd

It is nice to be concerned about the environment. Whatever nature has given us must be treated with care, and the we must do all we can to safeguard the balance of natural forces.

However, one has to say that these kinds of reports would be a lot more convincing if there was good science and hard data behind them. Any such anecdotal observations in nature need to be tempered with the recognition that within broad period averages, there are many natural cycles. Any blanket acceptance or rejection of concepts like global warming without hard evidence is not helping the cause of caring for the environment.

For example, the author states that since the last few years, Rohtang is opened to traffic earlier than it used to be. But the author ignores the fact that the army has much better snow clearing equipment in the last few years.

Indeed, if this year it has snowed less in the Himalayas than average, then in the previous year, it has snowed a lot more-more than in the last 20 years, I am told. This year, all the power projects of HP are generating very high amount of electricity, since the snow melt is higher, due to the high amount of snow last year. The same thing also happened last year.

Someone states that the temp. at Rohtang has increased by 1 degree in the last 30 years. This bland statement hides the fact that the year to year variations in temperature are much more than a degree. We simply do not have reliable data of a longer period to know whether this one degree shift observed over 30 years, is due to a generalized warming or part of a natural cycle with a slow frequency.

Climate cycles have varying frequencies-at some level, climate is known to cycle over thousands of years, at another level, over centuries, and at a further level, over decades. To really make definitive statements about any localized warming, one has to take into account the period in any of these cycles we may be in.


If indeed the traffic flow has doubled over the last 3 years, and it is this traffic that has caused the faster melting of glaciers, then there should be clear evidence that in the last 3 years, the temperature has gone up. But last year, being a longer than normal snowfall period in HP, and colder than usual summer, clearly presents a data point which is anamolous to this
"warming due to increased traffic" theory. Hence this kind of hypothesis, uninformed by statistics, ought to be taken with a large pinch of salt.


Having said all this, I would still advocate putting in place measures which would, in a common sensical manner, reduce the risk of pollution on the Manali-Leh Route. Allowing only vehicles which match a particular emission standard, is a very good suggestion.

The moral of my whole story, at the risk of being repetitive, and the high risk of being severely flamed at, is that people who care about the environment cannot simply use data selectively, or randomly, to claim that human activity is damaging the environment in some kind of irreversible way, either locally or globally. It would help the cause of the environment better if such statements were made after careful reasoning, proper statistical analysis, and a healthy respect for the cyclical nature of weather patterns.

Regards

rangers

Hi all,
Just arrived this day on Leh.
The rohtang pass is OK snowing but the ThanglangLA Pass is story and too cold to drive on.
Back in Leh its sunny..and I will be bringing more on this place once the trip is over..till then happy arrivals in LEH.

shubho

excellent writeup. thought-provoking yet an easy read.

amyl

ok in a hurry!! quick and kinda urgent questions !!!

1. hows the weather there in Manali? will be landing there in 6/7 days. do i need any warm clothing...planning to be only around Manali..then McLG,Dharmashala and all..so wud love if i have to carry less cloths.
2. any places where i can camp out..i have my own tent and wud love to just peg it down somewhere near the city but in the woods. is it safe?
3. any locker kinda place where i can keep my extra baggage while i roam around in that area.. wud like to carry just the required stuff..
4. and is there anything like 'rush hour' on the way up to Rohatang La when the traffic is heavier than any other time of the day? if i get some inputs on this i wud try avoid that part of the day.
5. any traveling IMer in and around Manali during this period - 27th June to 6th july?

hope to get some answers on this...

cheers,
Amyl

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