Into paradise in 4x4s

M ain Kashmir hun, jannat ki tasveer hun (I am Kashmir, a picture of heaven)” — an early morning voice on the local radio station prepares uninitiated travellers for the visual extravaganza that lies ahead.

And though one has no idea what heaven may be like, Kashmir amidst the mighty Himalayas is probably the most fitting candidate. Imagine being enveloped by gigantic snow-capped peaks, with lungs full of crisp cold air, absorbing the eerie and peaceful silence — which at times is gently broken by the sweet notes of a nearby stream with freshly-melted sapphire-blue glacier water. Over the course of our three-day journey, these unassuming rivulets would gradually merge as the mighty Indus.

But words fall incredibly short when describing the diverse beauty of India's crowning State. This we realised over the course of our drive, which began one early morning in Srinagar and ended three days and over 500 km later beyond Leh. From the cushy confines of rugged Mercedes-Benz SUVs — the luxurious GL 350 and the angry-sounding performance off-roader G55 AMG, our convoy of eight vehicles travelled across Drass and Kargil, and later to the third-highest motorable pass in the world at 17,590 ft — Chang La. We drove further to Pangong Tso ( tso means lake), a picture-postcard location that famously features in the Aamir Khan-starrer 3 Idiots .

Calm in Kargil

We had mostly good and wide roads on the first day's drive from Srinagar to Leh, but also the longest stretch at around 250 km (which on hill roads takes longer to cover). This region, with the now famous Tiger Hill and Drass town, saw the worst of 1999's Kargil War. But 12 years on, and with a new generation in the streets, the war seemed to be a distant memory. While we became accustomed to the high levels of army presence all through our travel, the Kargil district appeared pleasantly calm, with relative prosperity in terms of farming and abundant small businesses.

The terrain too was fascinating — between Srinagar and Drass, we had thick forests in the surrounding hills and the snowy peaks were further away. But as we climbed higher towards Kargil town — our destination for the night, the thick foliage gave way to dry mountainsides. With hardly any plant growth to hold down the top soil, landslides are a daily occurrence here. However, the Border Roads Organisation's crews are always on call, to clear and fix damaged roads, which rarely see more than an hour's hold-up.

Next day, we again set off early morning, but the less than 200 km drive from Kargil to Leh passed through some trickier roads. To help us acclimatise to Leh's higher altitude (11,562 ft) and the consequently lower oxygen levels and cold, our activity for the day had been deliberately kept light.

Off-roading with élan

While we drove the GL 350 for the most part, in this section, however, our luck turned. We landed our frenzied hands on the G 55 AMG, a beast of a car with 507 HP on tap. That's 6.5 times the power of the Maruti Swift. While the G 55 AMG ate up with élan every bit of off-roading we had courage for, it made no compromise on paved tarmac either. The 5.5-litre V8 petrol engine had a loud, yet deep and melodic roar and kept begging to be pushed harder onto the next patch. Although the stiffer suspension reduced driver comfort, for purists this car makes it all up in the way you can throw it around in the worst of terrain and it will still come back smiling and wondering if that's all you've got. Celebs who swear by this over three-decade-old design reportedly include the Pope and Hollywood actors Brad Pitt and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

But sooner than we could have wished for, it was time to return to the wheels of a tamer GL 350 for our drive into the quaint town of Leh. The erstwhile capital of the Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh is today a major air force and army base due to its proximity to the tense Indo-China border. Resembling a cup, it is surrounded on all sides by tall mountains; every winter, its two arterial roads, linking Srinagar and Manali respectively, remain largely cut off.

Sheer drop… and some festoons

On the third and final day we drove to Pangong Tso and back to Leh, a journey made hair-raisingly exciting by the single-lane road passing through very high mountains, offering dizzying views of the drop below. The 160-odd km stretch from Leh to Pangong Tso, past the mighty Chang La pass, offers a mixed bag of driving surfaces, making it the perfect testing ground for our convoy of SUVs. The sun is just rising as we leave Leh behind and drive into neighbouring Karu, which is festooned with avenues of feathery willows and tall poplars aflame with the orange-gold-amber colours of autumn. Magpies — long, black tails streaming — flutter across the path and ruminant yaks gaze on perplexedly.

Further on, the landscape turns less benevolent as we begin the ascent. Winding along the sides of craggy, ochre-hued mountains, the narrow road is replete with steep inclines, hairpin bends and rough patches. The raw, stark, dramatic, treeless beauty of the landscape demands your awed attention, as do the snow-capped peaks in the distance; but the task of negotiating the curves — gently, as the many signs here continuously urge — commands complete concentration. Embankments are conspicuously absent, and the dreadful prospect of a sheer fall of a few thousand feet instils a vital sense of driving discipline.

Patches of snow announce the approach of Chang La. Standing sentinel at a breathtaking elevation in the Zanskar range, the rarefied atmosphere here poses a challenge to both man and mechanical beast. While some of us reach out instinctively to inhale oxygen from the portable cylinders kept in the vehicle, the only evidence of strain in our mean machines is the occasional stream of black exhaust due to incomplete combustion under low-oxygen conditions. Oddly though, while it is freezing outside, a greenhouse effect keeps the car interior warm as the sunrays, which are stronger at the high altitude, filter in.

Vroom… on a high-altitude beach

Pangong Tso, at 14,500 ft, is arguably the world's highest saltwater lake. On the last leg of our onward expedition, we find the tarmac surface washed away in some stretches, and watch out for treacherously sharp stones that are quite capable of shearing the tyres.

Encircled by mountains ridges, two-thirds of the 150-odd km lake lies in Chinese territory. Across the width of the lake, an entire rainbow of colours — violets, indigos, blues, greens and a hundred shades in between — mesmerise the eye. Can there be icing on such a delicious visual cake? It would have to be flooring the accelerator on this empty sandy beach, our ardour fanned by a crisp, mid-afternoon breeze.

The writers undertook a three-day drive across Jammu & Kashmir on invitation from Mercedes-Benz India.

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