Who among us has not had the odd flight
of fancy, yearning to get past our daily lives and be transported to
mysterious, faraway lands? Go tumbling down the rabbit hole, perhaps, like
Alice into Wonderland, or walk the lands of middle earth with Frodo. Who among
us has not had a lump in our throat as we watched intrepid explorers scale
jagged peaks, or traverse the long grass of the Savannah? The quest for travel,
exploration & nature is one of the more enduring legacies of Man, one
that’s buried deep within all of us.
My own secret destination, closer to home perhaps than the Shire, but none the less alluring for it, has always been Ladakh. I was hooked when I chanced upon photos of a seemingly magical land – towering mountains, pristine lakes and surreal landscapes. A place so unlike anything I’d ever seen before that it was hard to believe it existed on the same planet, leave alone the same country.
But exist it does. In a little corner of Kashmir bordering China & PoK, landlocked by the mighty Himalayan & Karakoram ranges and accessible by road for only 4 months a year, lies the erstwhile mountain kingdom of Ladakh. Owing to the harsh weather, rugged terrain & remoteness of the land, it harbors an ecosystem endemic to itself and remains separated from the rest of India in terms of both nature and culture.
For six years I waited, my burning desire constantly smothered by the constraints of everyday life. Finally this year, circumstances relented and I had my chance. A chance to spend 3 weeks on a motorcycle amidst the mystical mountains of Ladakh.
We were two couples, each on their own motorcycle with our possessions strapped to the back. This is the mode of travel I prefer most, as much for the freedom & flexibility as the promise of romance and adventure. On a bike you don’t just pass the landscape by, you feel its essence and commune with it. You truly experience every inch of the journey without compromising on speed or distance.
The first leg of the journey is a 2-day ride from Delhi to Manali. It is usually the most mentally taxing; your verve and enthusiasm are put to the test as you scramble to get past the dusty, crowded plains. You’re constantly telling yourself to enjoy the ride, but cooked in the sweltering heat and trapped in the traffic of wayside towns, your heart aches for first sight of the hills. As the day wanes you also start to inevitably distance yourself from your regular routine. Amidst the passing milestones and surging memories of rides gone by, the concerns and worries of city life fade out. It resembles a different, parallel life that has no bearing on the present or immediate future.
By evening we bade goodbye to the plains, and opting to go past the charmless hill-station of Shimla (essentially a bedlam of hotels and surfeit of touts advertising said hotels), we halted at the quaint little hill town of Fagu. Inquiries for rooms at the local PWD guest-house led to an unexpected and hugely pleasant homestay at the caretaker’s house, where we were lavishly pampered by our hosts. We spent the evening wandering our hosts’ apple orchard, inhaling the crisp, rejuvenating mountain air and looking at the twinkling lights of the town far below. The next morning we continued our ride up the countryside, crossing the 8000 ft high, completely unpaved and deceptively steep Jalori pass, before finally joining the highway and making our way into Manali.
Manali is a classic example of the proliferation of commercialism. The once charming hill-station has now been reduced to an ugly mess of hotels, shops and unceasing traffic, and mere traces of its natural beauty remain. Nevertheless, we spent a day there stocking up on provisions and tending to the bikes.
The real journey to Ladakh starts from Manali. The 3-day journey to Leh, past the high-altitude passes of Rohtang-La, Baralachala-La and Tanglang-La is one of the most anticipated legs of the trip.
We left Manali at 4am, and took our place, teeth chattering and shivering beneath multiple layers of clothes, in the winding procession of tourist taxis making their way to the pass. The roads were slushy, the visibility poor and the traffic pileup infuriating, but we reached Rohtang in good time and without incident. At the top we had our first sight (and feel, and taste!) of vast snow-covered vistas.
Crossing Rohtang is like entering a new world, one that is dominated by silence and rugged beauty. The road, treacherous and inviting in turns, winds past the valleys formed by the Chandra and Bhaga rivers. These lands are sparsely populated; the towns are few and the mountains are barren. The passes are severe with sub-zero temperatures at the top, but they leave you witness to grandeur and beauty of a scale hitherto unseen. The road meanders past ice-cold streams & frozen lakes amid landscapes carpeted in white. Lower down there are stunning, seemingly alien rock formations and vast unending plains that unexpectedly appear just above circuitous mountain roads.
Over the next 3 days we reveled in the surroundings. We crossed vast swathes of uninhabited land, our minds and bodies became more accustomed to the biting cold and we witnessed snowy landscapes that left Rohtang far behind. We had our first flat tire and broken spokes as the bikes grappled with the rocky terrain. We spent our first night in a tent on the plains of Sarchu, we marveled at the More plains, we crossed the border into J&K and finally felt like real travelers as we approached Leh.
The first sight of Leh is like a painting etched in time, nestled as it is below a row of chocolaty brown mountains, their tops a delicate, powdery white, like icing sugar on a cake. Once an untouched haven, Leh is now a bustling little mountain town where tradition still manages to go hand-in-hand with increasing modernity. It serves as a temporary halt with all the creature comforts one could expect, and is a gateway to the lands beyond.
We spent the next few days eating, drinking and making merry. We spent the days regaled by the stories of the guest-house proprietor, Otsal and his dad. In the evenings we wandered around the Tibetan market, bargaining for bric-a-brac. We took in the sights around Leh, visiting the Hemis & Thiksey monasteries and Shey palace. Sadly, we also contended with government bureaucracy as we had to make multiple rounds of the DC office to collect our Inner Line Permits to visit the rest of Ladakh.
The destinations to visit are plenty, but then Ladakh has never really been a land of destinations. Although beautiful in their own right, it is largely the journeys that make Ladakh magical – riding past the ever-changing landscapes and interacting with the locals; some of the kindest, simplest, yet culturally most advanced people in the country.
Tarmac is frequently non-existent, for the most part you ride on sandy dirt-tracks or bounce along on rocky terrain on what you hope is the right path. There are whorls of dust, like miniature tornadoes, that dance across the landscape, swiveling, turning, intertwining and separating again. The odd passing truck raises clouds of brown dust. Just as you get used to the arid landscape, the monotony is unexpectedly broken by the most brilliant, deepest flash of blue that seems to emanate straight out of the ground. The lakes in Ladakh are, quite literally, breathtaking. They glisten like sapphires under the sun, they subtly change colors depending on their distance or time of day. Some are so achingly beautiful, with little cottony specks of clouds, their surface a polished mirror that perfectly reflects the mountains and grasslands around, that you can’t help but think you’re inside a painting. Others dwarf you with their sheer size and color, oceans of blue that stretch on endlessly into the distance.
There is the vast Changthang plateau, a grassland that is the sustainer of life in this deserted land. Within its environs you can go hours, sometimes a day without seeing another vehicle, but have instead for company herds of Kiangs, wild asses nearly as large as horses. They galloped alongside our speeding bikes before cutting us off and thundered across the road to the other side, leaving us spellbound and wondering “Did I just see that”?
There are, of course, the mountain passes. Ladakh, in its native tongue, literally means “The land of high passes”. Towering peaks that rise up into the sky, nature’s own boundary line. You say a little prayer as you manoeuvre your bike up narrow broken roads to the top, between ice walls, over gushing streams and patches of snow, your fingers numb, your breath a dense fog and your heart pounding furiously as you peer into the valley far below. The tallest one, Khardung-la is officially the highest motorable pass in the world. Others may be of lesser height but are far more intimidating.
Its not unusual to find significant differences in topology and culture between two sides of a pass. We found Nubra valley, the other side of Khardung-la an oasis of peace. Its inhabitants are largely Muslim, as opposed to the Buddhism that is omnipresent elsewhere. It boasts of a vast desert of rolling sand-dunes, home to double-humped Bactrian camels. Where else but in Ladakh would you be able to witness the amazing sight of a sandy desert in the lap of snow-capped peaks?
It’s not all landscapes; the people of Ladakh are as amazing as the place they live in. There are the Rongpas, village-dwelling folk, and the more enigmatic Changpas, nomads who spend their lives wandering the high slopes, feeding their livestock on the sparse grasslands that dot the desert. Their simplistic lifestyles, living in yak-hair tents among their sheep and goats, do not limit their largesse. Ancient monasteries dot the land, practicing different lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, and the morning air reverberates with the chants of monks.
At the village of Hanle we found the PWD guest-house bereft of water or electricity, and were instead welcomed into the house of Padma, a young villager. The family vacated their bedroom-cum-dining room for us, gave us three square meals, a wholesome snack of Ladakhi bread and unlimited butter tea, and shockingly refused any payment when we departed. In sleepy Rhongo, we had the good fortune of staying with Tsewang, an elderly Chang-pa, now too weak to roam the grasslands but who stubbornly refused to leave his nomadic roots - he lived in a Rebo (yak-hair tent) erected in the compound of his concrete house. He, along with his aged wife, hosted us for a day and treated us to delicious food & drink. He went a step further from Padma and offered to pay me for a pair of gloves that I had lost somewhere in the vicinity of his tent. The thought that a guest could leave with one of his possessions missing was unbearable to him. If only we, who live in the land of plenty and yet turn a suspicious eye to our neighbor, could learn a thing or two from them!
Sadly, this paradise hasn’t escaped the lure of progress. Bikers roar past, seeking to prove their manhood by “conquering” Ladakh. Lakeside villages are dotted with luxury tents, famous passes routinely witness traffic jams and Buddhist prayers are accompanied by flashing cameras. Adventure & spiritualism, it seems, have their own fast-food equivalents. Ladakh is like an innocent village belle dropped into the heart of the city; she yearns for her pastures but cannot resist the neon lights; her inborn charm still holds out but will, eventually, be lost.
But for now, I’m glad to have been there. To live, if only briefly, a lifestyle that’s completely different from my own. To have the chance, finally, to see the other end of the rabbit hole.
My own secret destination, closer to home perhaps than the Shire, but none the less alluring for it, has always been Ladakh. I was hooked when I chanced upon photos of a seemingly magical land – towering mountains, pristine lakes and surreal landscapes. A place so unlike anything I’d ever seen before that it was hard to believe it existed on the same planet, leave alone the same country.
But exist it does. In a little corner of Kashmir bordering China & PoK, landlocked by the mighty Himalayan & Karakoram ranges and accessible by road for only 4 months a year, lies the erstwhile mountain kingdom of Ladakh. Owing to the harsh weather, rugged terrain & remoteness of the land, it harbors an ecosystem endemic to itself and remains separated from the rest of India in terms of both nature and culture.
For six years I waited, my burning desire constantly smothered by the constraints of everyday life. Finally this year, circumstances relented and I had my chance. A chance to spend 3 weeks on a motorcycle amidst the mystical mountains of Ladakh.
We were two couples, each on their own motorcycle with our possessions strapped to the back. This is the mode of travel I prefer most, as much for the freedom & flexibility as the promise of romance and adventure. On a bike you don’t just pass the landscape by, you feel its essence and commune with it. You truly experience every inch of the journey without compromising on speed or distance.
The first leg of the journey is a 2-day ride from Delhi to Manali. It is usually the most mentally taxing; your verve and enthusiasm are put to the test as you scramble to get past the dusty, crowded plains. You’re constantly telling yourself to enjoy the ride, but cooked in the sweltering heat and trapped in the traffic of wayside towns, your heart aches for first sight of the hills. As the day wanes you also start to inevitably distance yourself from your regular routine. Amidst the passing milestones and surging memories of rides gone by, the concerns and worries of city life fade out. It resembles a different, parallel life that has no bearing on the present or immediate future.
By evening we bade goodbye to the plains, and opting to go past the charmless hill-station of Shimla (essentially a bedlam of hotels and surfeit of touts advertising said hotels), we halted at the quaint little hill town of Fagu. Inquiries for rooms at the local PWD guest-house led to an unexpected and hugely pleasant homestay at the caretaker’s house, where we were lavishly pampered by our hosts. We spent the evening wandering our hosts’ apple orchard, inhaling the crisp, rejuvenating mountain air and looking at the twinkling lights of the town far below. The next morning we continued our ride up the countryside, crossing the 8000 ft high, completely unpaved and deceptively steep Jalori pass, before finally joining the highway and making our way into Manali.
Manali is a classic example of the proliferation of commercialism. The once charming hill-station has now been reduced to an ugly mess of hotels, shops and unceasing traffic, and mere traces of its natural beauty remain. Nevertheless, we spent a day there stocking up on provisions and tending to the bikes.
The real journey to Ladakh starts from Manali. The 3-day journey to Leh, past the high-altitude passes of Rohtang-La, Baralachala-La and Tanglang-La is one of the most anticipated legs of the trip.
We left Manali at 4am, and took our place, teeth chattering and shivering beneath multiple layers of clothes, in the winding procession of tourist taxis making their way to the pass. The roads were slushy, the visibility poor and the traffic pileup infuriating, but we reached Rohtang in good time and without incident. At the top we had our first sight (and feel, and taste!) of vast snow-covered vistas.
Crossing Rohtang is like entering a new world, one that is dominated by silence and rugged beauty. The road, treacherous and inviting in turns, winds past the valleys formed by the Chandra and Bhaga rivers. These lands are sparsely populated; the towns are few and the mountains are barren. The passes are severe with sub-zero temperatures at the top, but they leave you witness to grandeur and beauty of a scale hitherto unseen. The road meanders past ice-cold streams & frozen lakes amid landscapes carpeted in white. Lower down there are stunning, seemingly alien rock formations and vast unending plains that unexpectedly appear just above circuitous mountain roads.
Over the next 3 days we reveled in the surroundings. We crossed vast swathes of uninhabited land, our minds and bodies became more accustomed to the biting cold and we witnessed snowy landscapes that left Rohtang far behind. We had our first flat tire and broken spokes as the bikes grappled with the rocky terrain. We spent our first night in a tent on the plains of Sarchu, we marveled at the More plains, we crossed the border into J&K and finally felt like real travelers as we approached Leh.
The first sight of Leh is like a painting etched in time, nestled as it is below a row of chocolaty brown mountains, their tops a delicate, powdery white, like icing sugar on a cake. Once an untouched haven, Leh is now a bustling little mountain town where tradition still manages to go hand-in-hand with increasing modernity. It serves as a temporary halt with all the creature comforts one could expect, and is a gateway to the lands beyond.
We spent the next few days eating, drinking and making merry. We spent the days regaled by the stories of the guest-house proprietor, Otsal and his dad. In the evenings we wandered around the Tibetan market, bargaining for bric-a-brac. We took in the sights around Leh, visiting the Hemis & Thiksey monasteries and Shey palace. Sadly, we also contended with government bureaucracy as we had to make multiple rounds of the DC office to collect our Inner Line Permits to visit the rest of Ladakh.
The destinations to visit are plenty, but then Ladakh has never really been a land of destinations. Although beautiful in their own right, it is largely the journeys that make Ladakh magical – riding past the ever-changing landscapes and interacting with the locals; some of the kindest, simplest, yet culturally most advanced people in the country.
Tarmac is frequently non-existent, for the most part you ride on sandy dirt-tracks or bounce along on rocky terrain on what you hope is the right path. There are whorls of dust, like miniature tornadoes, that dance across the landscape, swiveling, turning, intertwining and separating again. The odd passing truck raises clouds of brown dust. Just as you get used to the arid landscape, the monotony is unexpectedly broken by the most brilliant, deepest flash of blue that seems to emanate straight out of the ground. The lakes in Ladakh are, quite literally, breathtaking. They glisten like sapphires under the sun, they subtly change colors depending on their distance or time of day. Some are so achingly beautiful, with little cottony specks of clouds, their surface a polished mirror that perfectly reflects the mountains and grasslands around, that you can’t help but think you’re inside a painting. Others dwarf you with their sheer size and color, oceans of blue that stretch on endlessly into the distance.
There is the vast Changthang plateau, a grassland that is the sustainer of life in this deserted land. Within its environs you can go hours, sometimes a day without seeing another vehicle, but have instead for company herds of Kiangs, wild asses nearly as large as horses. They galloped alongside our speeding bikes before cutting us off and thundered across the road to the other side, leaving us spellbound and wondering “Did I just see that”?
There are, of course, the mountain passes. Ladakh, in its native tongue, literally means “The land of high passes”. Towering peaks that rise up into the sky, nature’s own boundary line. You say a little prayer as you manoeuvre your bike up narrow broken roads to the top, between ice walls, over gushing streams and patches of snow, your fingers numb, your breath a dense fog and your heart pounding furiously as you peer into the valley far below. The tallest one, Khardung-la is officially the highest motorable pass in the world. Others may be of lesser height but are far more intimidating.
Its not unusual to find significant differences in topology and culture between two sides of a pass. We found Nubra valley, the other side of Khardung-la an oasis of peace. Its inhabitants are largely Muslim, as opposed to the Buddhism that is omnipresent elsewhere. It boasts of a vast desert of rolling sand-dunes, home to double-humped Bactrian camels. Where else but in Ladakh would you be able to witness the amazing sight of a sandy desert in the lap of snow-capped peaks?
It’s not all landscapes; the people of Ladakh are as amazing as the place they live in. There are the Rongpas, village-dwelling folk, and the more enigmatic Changpas, nomads who spend their lives wandering the high slopes, feeding their livestock on the sparse grasslands that dot the desert. Their simplistic lifestyles, living in yak-hair tents among their sheep and goats, do not limit their largesse. Ancient monasteries dot the land, practicing different lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, and the morning air reverberates with the chants of monks.
At the village of Hanle we found the PWD guest-house bereft of water or electricity, and were instead welcomed into the house of Padma, a young villager. The family vacated their bedroom-cum-dining room for us, gave us three square meals, a wholesome snack of Ladakhi bread and unlimited butter tea, and shockingly refused any payment when we departed. In sleepy Rhongo, we had the good fortune of staying with Tsewang, an elderly Chang-pa, now too weak to roam the grasslands but who stubbornly refused to leave his nomadic roots - he lived in a Rebo (yak-hair tent) erected in the compound of his concrete house. He, along with his aged wife, hosted us for a day and treated us to delicious food & drink. He went a step further from Padma and offered to pay me for a pair of gloves that I had lost somewhere in the vicinity of his tent. The thought that a guest could leave with one of his possessions missing was unbearable to him. If only we, who live in the land of plenty and yet turn a suspicious eye to our neighbor, could learn a thing or two from them!
Sadly, this paradise hasn’t escaped the lure of progress. Bikers roar past, seeking to prove their manhood by “conquering” Ladakh. Lakeside villages are dotted with luxury tents, famous passes routinely witness traffic jams and Buddhist prayers are accompanied by flashing cameras. Adventure & spiritualism, it seems, have their own fast-food equivalents. Ladakh is like an innocent village belle dropped into the heart of the city; she yearns for her pastures but cannot resist the neon lights; her inborn charm still holds out but will, eventually, be lost.
But for now, I’m glad to have been there. To live, if only briefly, a lifestyle that’s completely different from my own. To have the chance, finally, to see the other end of the rabbit hole.
Comments
Life is changing is Laddakh ... explore it before its ruined..