Road Work in Ladakh HIMANK Project.

Road Work in Ladakh HIMANK Project., originally uploaded by The Wandering Hermit.

Every visitor to Ladakh comes away with an awe of the roads in Ladakh.. I for one was blown away the first time I visited there.. marveling at the kind of men required  to build roads in such inhospitable terrain..Most of the road gangs were workers from Bihar who are more used to the heat of the terai plains then to the icy locales of Jammu & Kashmir..
Till 1960, Leh was connected with Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh by mule tracks only. The first jeepable road to Leh from Srinagar was thrown open to traffic on August 1, 1960. In order to construct and develop the road network in Ladakh, BRO (Border Road Organization) was inducted.
Project Himank was raised exclusively for development of road communication and other works of BRO in Ladakh region, in December 1985. The need for creating a separate Border Roads project exclusively for Ladakh arose owing to increased work-load in the region. The quantum of work and long distances from road-head and inhospitable terrain was just another roadblock to be overcome
Project Himank, with its HQ at Leh, was given the task of creating and maintaining roads and airfields in the most inhospitable terrain in the world, where most of its roads are above 10000 to 18000 feet in height. In such altitudes, the efficiency of men and machine is adversely affected due to lack of oxygen in the rarefied air and extreme cold conditions created as a result of high altitude and icy high velocity winds. The long harsh winter of seven to eight months permits a working season of only five months from June to October. The summer temperature rarely exceeds 32 degree centigrade and winter temperatures plummets to minus 30 degree centigrade with the temperature at Drass falling to minus 50 degree centigrade; thus earning for it the distinction of being “the second coldest inhabited place in the world”.
In such adverse working conditions and hardly a working season to write home about,
Project Himank is unique by itself as all the roads of the Project are located in high altitude areas. The Project boasts of the highest motorable road in the world at Khardungla at a height of 18380 feet.
One of the most challenging and demanding tasks of the Project is snow clearance. There are nine major passes in the jurisdiction of the Project.
These are 

the notorious Zoji La (11578 feet) (Where in 1948 in what is now known as "Project Bison" saw Indian Army Tanks managing to cross the pass on a trail built by the Indian Sappers in nearly impossible conditions and this action saved the Ladakh Region from the encroaching Pakistani Army Units .) ,
Namika La (12200 feet),
Fotu La (13497 feet),
Hamboting La (13620 feet),
Khardung La (18380 feet),
Chang La (17356 feet),
Kajukongta La (16626 feet),
Taglang La (17582 feet),
Lachalung La (16616 feet) and