If you want to go on a journey that transports you to the moon in one instant and to a bed of clouds in the very next; if you want to fall in love with mountains, that loom with threat at one turn and smile at another, take the winding road to Pangong lake. Perched at a lofty 4,220 metres, with three-fourth of its aquamarine waters flowing into China, the lake as well as the journey to it is guaranteed to hook you for life.

We left Leh for Pangong on a rain-drenched Saturday with enough woolies to conquer the Antarctica—the lake, we’d been warned, was icy cold. But 10 minutes on, a bright sun—this cold desert is the only place in the world where you can suffer from frostbite and sunstroke at one go—had us peeling down to our T-shirts. No mean feat in a Gypsy that was hurtling along with no respect for yellow Border Roads Organisation messages asking it to go slow.

Leh, I’d thought, would be a study in brown, but there was plenty of emerald in the vale. As the road began to climb the multi-hued mountains, our woollies returned. And the mountains, which had seemed so benevolent, suddenly turned forbidding, with gigantic yellow boulders and torrents of water on the road. It was the chilling wind that first warned us of the snow ahead. It’d begun to drizzle when the road suddenly turned into Zingral, where an Army detachment was perched at 15,500 feet. “Get warmed up here,” welcomed the sign on a hut kept snug by a modern bukhari. Sufficiently energised with a hot cuppa in the hut, we drove up to the white mountains again, watching tufts of green grass sprouting bravely from rust-coloured rocks. Soon, the Gypsy stopped again. “Welcome to Chang-la top, the third-highest motorable pass of the world,” said a signboard.

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