CDS (II) 2022 General Knowledge · Question 47 of 120

Correct — C, Sikkim. Tsomgo, also written Changu, is a glacial lake in Gangtok district of Sikkim, about 3,753 metres above sea level and roughly forty kilometres from Gangtok on the road that climbs to the Nathu La pass on the border with China, some eighteen kilometres further on. It is fed by snowmelt from the surrounding mountains, freezes over in the depth of winter, and is held in great reverence by the Sikkimese, who read the changing colour of its surface through the seasons. Its position on the Nathu La highway makes it one of the most visited places in the State, and also one that visitors need a permit for, since the road runs up to the frontier. The name itself is a clue worth keeping: 'tso' is lake in Tibetan and the whole eastern Himalayan and Ladakhi lake vocabulary uses it, which is exactly what the question relies on to make Ladakh tempting.

• (a)Ladakh — The deliberate trap, and it works through the name. Ladakh's famous lakes also carry the Tibetan 'tso' — Pangong Tso and Tso Moriri above all — so a candidate who recognises only the syllable and not the lake will go there. Both of those are in eastern Ladakh, hundreds of kilometres to the north-west.
• (b)Himachal Pradesh — Himachal's high lakes have quite different names — Chandratal in Spiti, Suraj Tal near Baralacha La, Renuka and Rewalsar lower down. None of them is Tsomgo.
• (d)Uttarakhand — Uttarakhand's best-known lakes are Nainital, Bhimtal and Sattal in the Kumaon foothills, and the glacial tarn of Roopkund high in the Garhwal, which is famous for the skeletons found in and around it. Again, no Tsomgo.

The Himalayan lakes that appear in these questions fall into a few recognisable groups. Ladakh has the great high-altitude brackish lakes of the Changthang plateau — Pangong Tso, Tso Moriri, Tso Kar — sitting above 4,000 metres in a cold desert. Sikkim has glacial lakes on the eastern flank: Tsomgo on the Nathu La road, Gurudongmar in the far north near the Tibetan border, and Khecheopalri in the west, a sacred lake in the forest. Himachal has Chandratal and Suraj Tal in the trans-Himalayan Lahaul-Spiti country and Renuka, Rewalsar and Prashar in the outer ranges. Uttarakhand has the Kumaon lake district around Nainital and the high tarn of Roopkund. Learning them State by State, rather than name by name, is what makes an item like this quick.

This is a one-line location question, and the only real difficulty is the linguistic one the option set is built around. Tibetan-derived names travel right across the Himalaya, so 'tso' will not by itself tell you whether you are in Ladakh, Sikkim or Arunachal. The reliable anchor for Tsomgo is Nathu La: the pass, the trade route to Tibet reopened in 2006, and the lake on the way up to it are one package, and Nathu La is unmistakably Sikkim. CDS has been fond of Sikkim's lakes — the previous session of the same year set a match list in which Khecheopalri had to be paired with Sikkim — so it is worth holding at least two Sikkimese lakes rather than one. As a present-day note, Sikkim's glacial lakes have become a live hazard question rather than only a tourism one: the outburst of South Lhonak Lake in October 2023 sent a flood down the Teesta that destroyed the Chungthang dam, and glacial lake outburst monitoring is now a standing concern across the State.

• Tsomgo, or Changu, is a glacial lake in Gangtok district, Sikkim, at about 3,753 metres.
• It lies roughly 40 kilometres from Gangtok on the road to Nathu La, which is about 18 kilometres further on.
• It is fed by snowmelt, freezes in winter, and is held in great reverence by the local Sikkimese.
• Sikkim's other well-known lakes are Gurudongmar in the north and the sacred Khecheopalri in the west.
• 'Tso' means lake in Tibetan, which is why Pangong Tso and Tso Moriri in Ladakh make that option tempting.

• Reading 'tso' as automatically Ladakhi; the word is Tibetan and is used across the eastern Himalaya too.
• Confusing Tsomgo with Gurudongmar, which is also in Sikkim but in the far north rather than on the Nathu La road.
• Placing Nathu La in Arunachal Pradesh or Ladakh; it is in Sikkim, on the border with the Tibet Autonomous Region.

As a lake-to-State identification, or inside a match list of lakes and States.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Nathu La pass, on the route past Tsomgo Lake, connects India with China through which Indian State?

  • (a)Arunachal Pradesh
  • (b)Sikkim
  • (c)Uttarakhand
  • (d)Himachal Pradesh

  Answer(b) Sikkim — the pass lies on Sikkim's border with the Tibet Autonomous Region and was reopened for trade in 2006.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Pangong Tso and Tso Moriri are high-altitude lakes of which Indian region?

  • (a)Sikkim
  • (b)Ladakh
  • (c)Spiti in Himachal Pradesh
  • (d)Kumaon in Uttarakhand

  Answer(b) Ladakh — both lie on the Changthang plateau of eastern Ladakh, which is why their Tibetan names make Ladakh a tempting wrong answer for Tsomgo.