Ladakh trip
15-20 August 2002
New Delhi to Leh
There was a time when there was a shortage of flights to and from
Leh. There was a time when these flights were a lottery given the
vagaries of the weather. The pilot would sometimes take off from Delhi
and return to Delhi. The lonely planet seems to talk about these
things. It appears that things have improved. Now there are more
flights, and atleast at the time we did it, the weather did not seem
to be an issue. Jet Airways has a competent office in Leh. In short,
the situation on flying is good.
The Jet flight leaves Delhi at 5:40a(!). Try to get in early - the
views are spectacular and it's really worth getting a window
seat. It's easily the most interesting landing I've seen in India till
date. Leh is 3505m, the highest commercial airport in the world.
Leh
Leh is at an altitude of 3505m (10,500 ft), and you'd be flying in
from Delhi which is at roughly 0. The altitude of Leh is quite a lot
for the human body to handle. Even with a gradual ascent, I know that
beyond 2700m, the air feels perceptibly thin. So it is generally
recommended that the first day should just be spent walking around
Leh, getting acclimatised. Some people feel it perceptibly
i.t.o. dizziness, vomiting, etc. In our case, there was no problem
beyond initial drowsiness (which could well have just been owing to
the pain of catching a 5:40a flight).
|
We stayed at `Lharimo Hotel' in Leh. It was nice.
|
|
| Welcome tea at Lharimo |
|
Leh is a small town and in one day it's easy to walk around and learn
the map. It's fun, wandering around, having mint tea at various little
places.
|
|
| Street scene in Leh, near the German bakery |
|
There are interesting bakeries behind the mosque. We went walking
in the evening, and the light was going down. Far behind, I visualised an
opportunity to take an interesting picture and started running to make
it to the target point where this would work.
|
|
| Sunset at Leh |
|
|
|
| Sunset at Leh |
While walking back, there were 'classic ladakh views' of monastery,
desert, and high mountains (with a half-moon thrown in for good
measure). The half moon is real, I didn't edit it in.
Ladakh is an ideal combination for stargazing: High altitude,
no clouds, no humans to kick up the dust. The milky way is
astoundingly crisp, and you see shooting stars all the time.
|
|
| Monastery |
|
|
|
| Monastery |
Choglamsar, and Dalai Lama
The next morning, we headed to Choglamsar. It turned out, remarkably
enough, that the Dalai Lama was speaking at Choglamsar. This is a
once-in-a-few-years event, and Mr. Lama is a big shot in these parts,
so a big crowd had gathered for this.
Strangely enough, this
guy was wandering around in Ladakh at roughly the same dates.
|
|
| Crowds headed to Mr. Lama |
|
|
|
| Mr. Lama speaking |
|
|
|
| Many foreigners in the audience |
|
|
|
| Playing games with the faces |
|
|
|
| Spinning the wheel |
|
|
|
| Woman in the audience |
|
Ladakh is desert, unless there is a specific water source. The green
patch in the foreground here is caused by the Indus river. The green
patch behind is some other river. But apart from the regions
immediately affected by streams or rivers, Ladakh is a harsh desert.
|
|
| View of the entire show |
|
|
|
| Trying to buy water |
|
These are called "mani
stone", and are found all over Tibet. But this is an unusually
pretty example of mani stones.
|
|
| Religious artifacts |
|
We climbed a neighbouring hillock and got a view of the show from an
elevation. This picture also shows an aerial view of villages, the
kinds of houses they have, etc.
|
|
| View of the show from an elevation |
|
From this hillock, a simple glance back and you get a sense of what a
desert Ladakh is. The sheer desolation is breathtaking.
|
|
| Ladakh the desert |
Thiksay gompa
|
At noon, we left Mr. Lama's congregation, to head for the monastery at
Thiksey (Thiksey Gompa).
|
|
| Thiksey gompa |
|
We had an authentic Tibetan lunch at the restaurant at the foot of the
hill, that's owned by the monastery. Note they have a URL on the
board: `Website: www.thiksey.com'.
|
|
| Restaurant at Thiksey gompa |
|
|
|
| Boys at big wheel |
|
|
|
| Boys at big wheel |
|
|
|
| Main staircase |
|
|
|
| Boys studying |
|
|
|
| Large statue of Buddha |
To Khardung-la, the highest motorable pass in the world
With this preamble, we were ready for the main part of our trip,
which was to ride through Khardung-la, the world's highest motorable
pass, to Nubra valley, which is at "the end of the road" w.r.t. the
Chinese border. This involves first driving from Leh (roughly 10,000
feet) to Khardung-la (roughly 18,400 feet).
|
One thing about Ladakh is that the scales of physical size are
enormous. At a glance, you'd easily see a hill gaining 5000 feet. This
picture has miniscule black dots which are yak.
|
|
| Yak dotting the mountain slopes |
|
|
|
| Yak |
|
On the way, at South Pullu, we had a nice chat with an outpost of the
Indian Army. It was real national integration - chatting in Malayalam
with a bunch of soldiers from Andhra Pradesh and Garhwal, snacking on
pepper-peanuts made and packed in Bharuch, Gujarat and sold in Bombay.
They were most hospitable and friendly.
|
|
| Chatting with soldiers |
Even in the remotest parts of the trip, we didn't see any distance
between army staff and local civilians. In fact, we saw many sweet
scenes where local kids were laughing and playing with soldiers.
|
A short while later, this is a top view of the army camp, which has
been built on the road, adjoining these beautiful little lakes which
have indescribable colours.
|
|
| Army camp adjoining lakes |
|
|
|
| Road gaining height |
|
A grand vista - the road winding up, the army camp with the lakes, and Leh far away.
|
|
| Road gaining height |
|
Finally, we reach Khardung-la. At the pass, it is not difficult to add
a few hundred feet of altitude and thus get really high! This picture
is the highest point that we reached, and is perhaps 19,000 feet. It
is higher than most hikers achieve in their entire life. :-)
|
|
| The top of the (driving) world, Khardung-la |
|
Ladakh was one of the hardest places I know of to take pictures
in. There are no clouds, the light is extremely bright. I sometimes
faced constraints with my Nikon 995 since it would not go faster than
1/1000s. I think there are problems owing to UV also.
|
|
| Khardung-la: jagged rocks, difficult lighting |
|
The opening of this road is relatively recent. This plaque talks about
some achievement of first going this way in 1994.
|
|
| Commemorative plaque at Khardung-la |
From Khardung-la to Nubra valley
Beyond the pass, on the other side, is Nubra Valley. This valley is
made of two rivers: Shyok river (which flows into India from Tibet)
and Nubra river (which is formed of the melting of Siachen
glacier).
We drove to the village of Sumur where Messrs Lharimo Hotel own
'Camp Lharimo North'. This is an extremely lovely fixed-tent
accommodation. This destination is at 10,000 feet of altitude. All
this gets done in a day of driving: From Leh to Khardung-la to Nubra
valley. Hence, the day involves gaining and losing 8,000 feet or
so!
|
After Khardung-la, the terrain becomes noticeably more austere and
surreal. There are huge mountains, endless stretches of wasteland of desert.
|
|
| Vista, en route to Nubra valley |
|
If one imagines pre-technological travellers and warriors moving
through these parts, it must have been incredibly hard and harsh
terrain to deal with.
|
|
| Vista, en route to Nubra valley |
|
|
|
| First sight of Shyok river |
|
Every once in a while, there is a stream which empties into the river,
and around it we get a brief piece of green.
|
|
| An oasis |
|
|
|
| Looking back at the oasis |
|
Camp Lharimo is a very sweet place, a good tradeoff between
experiencing the place while still having a soft bed to sleep on. They
give you plentiful hot water, nice loos and showers, decent food, and
a soft bed to sleep on. Apart from these, you get to experience Ladakh
in the wild, right next to the river.
|
|
| Apples at Camp Lharimo |
|
This apple tree seemed to be having a profusion of fruit that nobody
was interested in. There were apples fallen on the roof of the tent.
|
|
| Susan goes after fallen apples |
|
From here we visited Samstemling Gompa - a very cute school for 50
little boys with snow-clad mountains behind it.
|
|
| Interior of Samstemling gompa |
|
|
|
| Perhaps the remotest school in India |
|
After this, we pressed on to drive to to Panamik, which is "the end
of the road". This is a spectacular drive with the Nubra river on the
left.
|
|
| Looking across Nubra river |
|
|
|
| Mountains |
|
|
|
| Mountains |
Returning to Leh
|
After this was the long drive back to Leh.
|
|
| Mountains |
|
|
|
| Back to Khardung-la |
|
|
|
| Views at Khardung-la |
|
|
|
| Views at Khardung-la |
|
|
|
| Views at Khardung-la |
|
|
|
| Views at Khardung-la |
|
After Khardung-la, we get back into the long descent (roughly 8000
feet) to Leh.
|
|
| Terrain in descent from Khardung-la |
|
At some point, where we could visually locate the army camp, we asked
our driver to go on to the army camp and wait for us there. We then
cut across the hillside on foot. It was a fun walk of around 90
minutes - perhaps 1000 feet or so.
|
|
| Last look at the peaks |
|
While the mountain side looks barren from a distance, there is
actually a thin layer of vegetation and interesting flowers.
|
|
| Wild flowers at ~ 15,000 feet |
|
|
|
| Terrain in the descent |
|
|
|
| Wild flowers at ~ 15,000 feet |
|
That's me in the distance.
|
|
| Terrain in descent |
Back in Leh
|
|
|
| Apricots at Lharimo hotel |
|
Leh is one town where you can have a very mundane town around you, but
look up and you see stars.
|
|
| Back in the streets of Leh |
|
Finally, here's the product of a shopping expedition.
|
|
| Sold in Leh |
|
|
|
| Sold in Leh |
|
|
|
| Sold in Leh |
Overall
Ladakh is extremely accessible, thanks to the airport at Leh. This
is unlike Uttaranchal, where there is a huge overhead of getting
there.
Geographically, Ladakh is really a part of Tibet. So it's a unique
opportunity to experience the feeling of being in Tibet while being in
India.
Ladakh is absolutely unique: High altitude, desert, huge scales. It
feels like a different planet. There are many other beautiful
photographs of Ladakh on the net.
Travel facts
- The trip was put together using a travel agent called Shobha Mohan
of TS Travel Services who seems like a smart and sensible dude.
Shobha put together a travel plan which I assented to without
looking at it. It was for five whole days, Rs.26k all
inclusive. In addition, two round-trip tickets on Jet Airways
from Delhi to Leh were Rs.16k. So the total locked-in cost was
Rs.42k. One can do better when compared with the 26k number, but
this was a first recce of sorts.
Shobha was (in turn) getting her work done through an entity called
Waymark Adventures in New Delhi. They seem like a good outfit too.
- There are numerous firms in Leh who do full-services trekking
support. They supply guide, cook, horses, equipment,
everything. The price tag works out to roughly Rs.10,000 for a
four-day trip for two. As the number of pax goes up, the price
comes down somewhat.
- Trekking is much harder in winter. There is one famous trekking
route which works in winter. But it involves walking on a frozen
river, where ponies slip, so there are more porters hired to
carry stuff and the cost goes up substantially.
Concrete information
|
Lharimo hotel
|
R. Mutup Kalon
Hotel Lharimo
P. O. Leh 194101
Ladakh, India
Phones 52101 (off)
52177, 50948 (home)
01982-53345 (fax)
|
Is open May-Oct.
Rates -- Rs.2350/day for two and Rs.1950/day for one -- all
inclusive including meals.
Camp Lharimo North is Rs.2000/day for two, all inclusive.
|
|
TS Travel Services
|
Shobha Mohan
tstravelservices@mantraonline.com
98102-65781
635-6004 (work)
|
|
|
Waymark Adventures
|
C-80 Lajpat Nagar, New Delhi
Phones - 631-5686, 692-2372.
In Leh - Swami Raj - 52727 (W), 53354 (H).
|
|
Back up to some trip reports.
Ajay Shah
ajayshah at mayin dot org
