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....

Highway to Tibet

It may seem strange to write about a piece of road rather than a place, but that’s also what life on the road is about, and this 470-km-20-hours-ride was definitely a highlight. The ride starts at 2000m in Manali and goes straight up to the first pass at 3900m: Rohtang la. Up to this pass, we’re still on the southern face of the Himalayas so rainfalls are very frequent, making the road in the worst state possible.



Straight after this pass, change of scenery: almost all the trees have disappeared and after each pass, the landscape becomes more arid.



Here we are after a few hours ride for a Thali (mainly rice, lentils and curry potatoes) for lunchbreak.


One of the highlights of this journey is definitely the high camp at 4300m after the second pass at 4900m. it’s not what you could call luxurious but it’s a 10 hours drive in either direction to the next place, so anything will do in order not to freeze and especially to break the journey in two (note that some people do make the journey in 1 day, that is: leaving at 2 am and arriving around midnight). All the “hotels” consist of tents or ondulated steel plates.

Arrival at the camp, this is the police “station”.

In spite of the altitude sickness, the atmosphere is really good and we throw a game of monopoly with our fellow travelers from the US.


Here is our room, which we shared with another 7 people, so at least it wasn’t cold… we were just lacking oxygen the whole night.


The second day offers amazing lunar landscapes between 4300m and 4600m for most of the day.




The way is dotted with “adrenalin” obstacles such as “weak bridges”, road works or recent landslides.



Here is our breakfast break the second day, in another one of these “improvised” camps.


After a snow shower at 5000m, we finally make it to the highest pass of the journey at 5300m (the world's second highest motorable pass: note that the highest (5600m) is just another 100km from there....) before going down to the Laddakh Valley.


As we approach the valley, we finally find a bit of human life after 2 days of solitude.


And of course, we start to see the first Tibetan buddhist monasteries.


Here in this valley, plastic bags are legally banned from the system. This would be really a good thing if all the other manufactured products were not made out of plastic as we found out in this shop arriving in the Ladhak valley….

For lunch break we could observe how momos are being prepared before they are steamed.

Here I’m turning an XXL prayer wheel.