| Name of Pass |
Shingo La |
| Altitude |
5,058m |
| Type of pass |
Trek – pushing bikes |
| Where |
Between Zanskar Sumdo (3,930m, 22km) and Kargyak (4,150m, 22km) |
| GPS Co-ords |
32.909 N, 77.200 E |
| Climb |
1,370m push in 2 1/2 days from Zanskar Sumdo |
This is a beautiful pass, but there is a lot more trekking than cycling between Zanskar Sumdo and Dorzong. Many cyclists take this route and put their bikes on horses, but we fancied a challenge so pushed from Zanskar Sumdo to Lakang, then occasionally cycled (but mostly pushed) from there to the road at Dorzong. A road is slowly being built along the route so maybe it’ll be possible to cycle it in a few decades.
i crossed shingo la in the end of august 2016 from padum to darcha. there is a road from padum to amnu. there is also a road from the pass to darcha. but i guess that it is not possible to cycle all the way from darcha to singo la, as the road is not in good shape when you get higher, but it was (mostly) possible to cycle down. thus, the hard part for me was from amnu to the pass. but a monk is building the road from the pass to kargyak and when i was there in the end of august, the new “road” was about 10km on zanskar side, but it is impossible to cycle there, but at least i could push my bicycle most of the time. the monk planned, to build the road to kargyak until the end (of the season) of 2016.
The road from Darcha to the Shingo-la is rough but OK. We had to partially push up our cycle to the pass, but consider we are not so young (61 and 64). There is useful a JCB track from Shingo-La to Lakang Sumdo, useful because you can push a loaded cycle down on this track. The trail is partially cyclable down to Purne. From Purne to Anmu the trail is very narrow and exposed.