Ladhak - India's Tibet

We arrive in high altitude desert town of Leh, in the Indian Tibet and are greeted by a first day of rain… ! The rest of the time, we have perfect sunshine this altitude of 3500m and views over the freshly snowed peaks. The days are particularly warm with about 25°C whereas the night temperatures fall down to 5°C. Leh, and all the villages around here are like oasis irrigated with glacial water. We are closing the season which ends on September 15th, so each day more tourists leave and the shops close which makes the villages really genuine and full of local life. All Inhabitants are really friendly and smiling and seem to enjoy warmly greeting us in the streets in their local language with “julley julley” (translates into “hello hello”! but also thanks and goodbye, depending on the context obviously).

We found the nicest little guesthouse at the end of a small street for 5USD the night. That’s the street to reach the guesthouse.

The town has frequent power outages or internet cuts, so we really feel at the end of the world.

The guesthouse has a lovely flower garden with apples and tomatoes and we can enjoy the terrace for breakfast.


The landlady prepares sundried tomatoes for the winter.

Entrance to the road to our guesthouse, the "Chow" Guesthouse.

On our first sunny day here, we went to explore Leh and its Palace. It’s quite famous and look a bit like a small version of the Topala in Lhassa.


It’s only from up there that we really realize the nature of the landscape and the contrast between the irrigated center of town and the arid surroundings.



For sunset we walked up to another symbol of Leh, this huge Stupa.

Stupas are structures representing a sitting Budha. From there we had amazing contrasted views of the town and the palace where we spent the morning.

This one shows a “Forest of Stupas” on the other side of town.

We went on exploring the Ladhak valley to the site of Thiksey. Thiksey is not just a monastery but a whole complex built on a small hill.


A couple of little monks were cleaning the floor of the main praying hall and tried to teach me a few Tibetan prayers, syllable by syllable.

Here's a nice example of a "low-cost" prayer mill, made from a tin...

Here is Thiksey viewed from the other side on our way back.

Here Caro is in another one of these "Stupa Forest".

Our second step in Ladhak was the monastery complex of Alchi. We took a local bus for a couple of hours, to reach the nearest bridge to the village. It was another 5 km uphill from there… Luckily just as we started walking up, a truck passed by and let us ride on the back.

Caro on the back of a local truck going up the steep 5km up to Alchi.

Caro in a Stupa Complex in Alchi.

Locals using the prayer mills in Alchi on their way to and from the fields.

Our final destination in Ladhak is the amazing village and monastery of Hemis, high above the valley. The place is like a living museum with tiny mud brick houses.



On the way back to Leh, we stopped at these brand new stupas.

Little monks on their bikes on the way back.

We also took some time in between the monastery visits to explore the town of Leh. In the middle of town we came across this most random thing: an apparently never used box for complaints against corruption.... This should rather go in some place like the train station in Delhi....