The view from the portholes reveals giant mountain peaks seeking dominion in this godly realm. The pilot announces our imminent arrival at Leh at the end of a one-hour flight: “We will soon begin our descent into Leh airport, one of the highest airports in the world. Our descent will commence with some manoeuvres, and they are entirely normal. Please do not be alarmed.” This was reason enough to be alarmed!
The Jet Airways 737 aircraft banks hard to port – images of sand and rocks fill the windows; then it’s a hard bank to starboard. We fly level for a few minutes and again bank hard to port – clear blue sky on one side and ground on the other, this time closer! But, there is nothing to worry about – the pilot said so. Soon we are on the ground at 3,500m above mean sea level. The air is thin. The guidebooks tell you to take it easy until you acclimatise. They reckon it takes around 24-48 hours, and they are not kidding. Leh is seriously high. Even if you are fit, it’s a good idea to rest for a while and not go striding off into the mountains as soon as you land.
Passengers disembark. Most are well equipped and dressed to kill – warm polar tops, sophisticated walking shoes, back packs with lots of pockets, altitude watches and cool sunglasses. I look down in dismay at my jeans, t-shirt and ill-fitting jacket, concerned at my lack of preparation for this trip. It was a last minute decision to join friends who were travelling through Ladakh – an opportunity too good to miss. The temperature was close to 25°C when we landed that morning in September and quite comfortable. Leh’s temperature varies between -5 to 25°C during the summer months but sometimes during the middle of the day, it climbs to 30°C. The bright sun stings in the thin, dry air. It feels like zero humidity. Anything synthetic crackles, and pretty soon so does my skin.
Leh, the capital of the former kingdom of Ladakh, is about a 20-minute taxi ride from the airport. We are in the fabled Indus valley, a barren, lunar landscape flanked by high mountains and steep valleys with patches of green interspersed with snow-melt rivers and streams. The district is said to have a population of around 110,000, but it’s hard to see where everyone is. The old centre of Leh is a small area; one can walk around it within 30 minutes. But there is an outlying area that is more modern and spreads out much further. Leh is a medieval town with little alleys, streets that wind between ancient mud-brick buildings and external walls. Up a mountain is the Leh fortress which dominates the landscape and further up, a monastery.
Leh has serviced travellers on the ancient silk route and still has the feeling of a place that provides respite for weary travellers moving through the Himalayan mountains and deserts. Craggy-faced, friendly Tibetans mix with fast-talking Kashmiri traders who turn up for the tourist season that lasts about three to four months. Foreign visitors amble up and down the streets – shopping, eating, ‘Internetting’, preparing for or recovering from treks – or simply hanging around. When the days grow shorter – it turns freezing cold in the autumn, around October – and Leh assumes a less welcoming ambience, the Kashmiris make the long journey to the south to places like Goa and the Malabar coast where the southern tourist season gets underway.
The main bazaar is lined with shops, cafés, restaurants, travel agencies and Internet cafés – haunts of tourists where you can get German cakes and bread and even a nice cup of coffee. Many visitors seem to be trekking – at least their clothes say so! Leh’s markets sell everything from hiking gear and imported Chinese electrical goods to dried fruit, meat and vegetables and Kashmiri shawls and rugs, Tankas (silk paintings) and brass statues. All the familiar adventure and outdoor brands were in abundance and I discover that many of these had versions made in India, much cheaper than those available in Western countries, but comparable with Chinese prices in China. Shop owners say the beautiful Tankas, statues and paintings are made by artists trained in the dozens of monasteries around Ladakh. They hone their skills by maintaining ancient monastery paintings.
Money can be a problem. Although there are three ATMs in Leh and one on the way to the airport, often one or more of these are out of action or dispense small denominations, and there are usually queues of people waiting patiently to obtain cash. Some cards don’t work.
The Leh polo field is a feature visible from space on Google Earth. Tough, ruddy men riding small stocky, highly manoeuvrable polo ponies play a hard and competitive game. Polo was taken to the West from this region and not the other way around as is popularly believed. Stone tablets in Gilgit, north of Kashmir, indicate its origins well before the dawn of the Christian era. Descendants of these ancient polo players compete with alacrity amidst roars of approval and howls of disappointment from locals. They obviously have a clear idea of what’s going on, in complete contrast to the foreigners who scatter as riders and horses thunder into our midst, polo sticks swinging with scant regard for whoever is standing around.
The journey to the Nubra and Shyok valleys takes us north over what is reputed to be the highest motorable pass in the world: Khardung La, at 5,570m. Soon the warm days and cool nights give way to cool days and very cool nights, but winter is still a few weeks away. The road winds its way up to Khardung La pass and the change in temperature is palpable as is the air density. This is seriously high altitude and the domain of altitude sickness with attendant headaches and nausea. Despite my reasonable level of fitness, I was quite frequently short of breath. Many travellers affected by altitude sickness are sometimes administered oxygen at Leh hospital. Snow has fallen on the road. Gnarled, weather-beaten trees cling to life on the hillsides. Reaching the top of the pass, the snow is quite thick for such a short snowfall, around 30cm. Fog blankets the pass. An Indian tourist is having his picture taken and lies nonchalantly in the snow. There are several rusty buildings on the mountain pass. One sells souvenirs, but is closed. The other sells tea, just tea, nothing else, and it was tea with no milk or sugar. How I wished for a cappuccino and a nice piece of warm apple cake! Plain black tea was a poor substitute, but this is the high Himalayas and trading is brisk. Several rugged-looking characters, mostly truck drivers, converse noisily as the wind rattles the corrugated iron roof.
Surrounding Khardung La are steep, sharp, dark granite mountains thrusting upwards and geologically alive, meaning that they are still growing as part of the Himalayan tectonic plate that contains the majestic Everest and the mystical and legendary giants such as K2 and Kanchangunga. These mountains are so steep that snow has trouble staying on them until it is sufficiently heavy.
The descent from Khardung La into the Shyok and Nubra valleys is behind a convoy of vehicles with high ground clearance – with good reason. From time to time, the road is simply washed away or smashed by rockfalls. When this happens, the legendary “Roadbuilders of Ladakh” leap into action and fix things. They also erect pithy signs urging drivers to drive carefully with such epithets as “better late than dead” and “better to be Mr late than the late Mr”. The road unfolds like an unravelling ribbon from the high mountain pass into the valley. We share the road with goat-herders and military transports taking soldiers to an army camp on the barren hillside. Near the camp are Dhabas, little cafés that serve more than black tea. They sell warm meals of Chapatis, rice and snacks. Behind the line of shops is a mossy meadow with snow-melt rivulets and the snow mountains in the background. Travellers attending to calls of nature dot the landscape – a common, unappealing sight around much of India! Tablelands slope gently towards the river with fields of barley adding splashes of gold to the arid landscape. Dotted here and there are little huts with apparently no roads leading up to them. Surviving here seems hard.
We descend into Pullu, a little village nestled in a valley. It’s drizzling. Sticky mud is everywhere. A tea shop sits humbly alongside other shops lining the road. The fare is sparse: a few packets of biscuits, a row of dusty soft-drink bottles and some posters of Indian movie stars, one in tight pants, wielding a tennis racket! But the tea is hot, with milk – it’s wonderful! Funny how things taken for granted become so important when not available. The village is surrounded by rugged mountains rising sheer from the river, forming a gigantic impenetrable granite wall.We arrive at the confluence of the two river valleys: the Shyok and the Nubra. Both rivers run between two huge mountain ranges, forming a v shape. The Shyok valley looks rather like a high altitude desert replete with sand dunes; but, strangely, it has swampy patches of snow melt. At the end of this road is a little monastery after which the road runs over a bridge across Shyok river and continues to the Pakistani border. Further up the Shyok valley is the Siachin Glacier across which the Indians and Pakistanis occasionally exchange fire. We are not allowed to travel any further as we are close to the Pakistani border. We had to obtain special permits even to get to this point.
Bactrian camels, famous for their two humps, make loud noises and munch contentedly as they wait for their rides. They have long fur and look quite cuddly. A goat-herder appears with his flock, a subtle movement across a darkening landscape. Our driver, fastidious about cleaning his car, strips down to his shorts and commences a furious car wash while we walk around the river valley. It’s freezing. A red-robed monk stands impassively on the roadside and watches, his robes flapping in the breeze. I offer him a ride back to the village and he invites us to his monastery at Diskit perched part-way up an imposing mountain. He speaks hardly any English but we manage to make ourselves understood with sign language. He is friendly and jovial and urges us upward. His apartment on a high vantage point with a panoramic view across the whole valley is crammed with books and personal effects. He offers tea and biscuits and shows pictures of pilgrimages in India and travels around Europe, the people he met, including his Holiness the Dalai Lama.
I wonder how he keeps warm in the bitter winter: there is no visible form of heat and the roof is thatched. We spend the night in Diskit, a tiny village with a hotel that seems to employ most of the young men in the area. At 3,158m the temperature is well below zero in the evening. Just outside the entrance to the hotel, a large prayer wheel spins. An elderly man sits nearby gazing into some other world, seemingly at peace. Dark, leaden clouds draw a curtain over the mountains that form one side of the Shyok valley as a fine dusting of snow starts to appear on the mountain tops. By morning, the heavy clouds are replaced by light cotton-wool fluffy clouds that pull back to reveal the ice-cream snow atop the mountains where the gods dwell.