The Plains. Wondering what this is, right? Well, first, 'the plains' is the best feature of the Manali Leh Highway. The most exciting and captivating, and something out of the world.

There is a stretch of some 43 km from Pang to a place called Debring. In this stretch, the terrain is plain and extremely extremely wide, and the mountains equidistant on both sides of the road. First, I request you to have a glance of the first photo on the right by clicking it to enlarge, and then come back to this description. After you climb a mountain, you expect to climb it down in normal circumstances. But here, after Pang, when you ascend through a series of hair pin bends, at the top, you see ahead not a valley, but a never ending plain, which is itself at a height of more than a 3500 to 4000 metres. And so massively wide with mountains at both sides. And the road traverses midway through the plains. The the air being thin, the distant appears near yet so far. As you move your sight from near the road to the far off mountains, you will also see many black dots away. Then see them through binoculars. You will see that those dots are actually sheep and goats and occasionally yak. Not hundreds but thousands. They are so far off that they appear like dots. And beyond them are the mountains. You can imagine. Now see ahead. The plain appears never ending. And all those peaks seem so away. The road here is also good, and your vehicle can easily reach good speeds. The mountains on both sides, do not appear very high, the main fact being you yourself are at a height of 4000 metres, so there is very little left of most mountains above this height, as they themselves are 6000 to 7000 metres in height. The terrain is completely barren , except some stray grass and shrubs that may grow here and there. This area does not receive rainfall.

This experience of the plains, that too for a full 43 km, is thrilling. After Debring, ascent again starts to climb towards Tanglang La, the second highest motorable road on earth, at 5360 metres above sea level.