let’s begin by addressing the elephant in the room. i abandoned the Ursula K. Le Guin novel after 2 chapters. it was an absolute chore getting through it, and then i mentioned what i was reading to a friend, and she made a face, and that was all the validation i needed to officially drop it.
maybe i’ll get into fantasy fiction some day, but today is not that day. that day is not even on the horizon
so after my last newsletter a few of y’all emailed me to say, and i’m paraphrasing here, “it’s really cool that you read an email every day for a week or whatever it is you did but all we really care about are Ladakh pics” which was hurtful but ok, you can’t choose your subscribers, etc
so here, have a photo essay on Ladakh
p.s. this email is a little lengthy, so if you’re reading this in your inbox it’s gonna be truncated. to read the entire newsletter in your browser, click here (recommended) OR click the link at the end of this email.
i usually don’t care about being yelled at but in Ladakh the signs don’t say “trespassers will be prosecuted” they say “trespassers will be shot dead” so i figured i could do without the selfie
we didn’t do much on day 1 because we had to acclimatise, although i did walk ~10 metres out of our hostel and found a cosy place to read. i think i was reading ‘The Refugees’ by Viet Thanh Nguyen. it was pretty good
in the airplane i had asked M “do you think the mountains will be, like, everywhere when we land?” and she had said yes and she was right
there are no pictures of this but on our first night at the hostel this dude gave us an honest-to-God PowerPoint presentation on his experience climbing Mount Everest. it was insane. i can’t believe people like him just wake up one day and decide to attempt to climb the tallest mountain in the world.
on day 2 we had acclimatised well enough to venture outside. we tried climbing up to Leh Palace but got a little turned around and ended up having to do some rock climbing to get where we wanted to go. super worth it, though.
‘tingmo’ is a Ladakhi bread made from rice flour (i think?). it tastes very… bready. also M tried the Ladakhi butter tea and hated it, although she did her best to pretend like she didn’t
we rented bikes and rode to Likir. the wind whipping against us made it freezing cold, and the terrain was otherworldly. like i kept looking around and thinking to myself, “there’s no way we’re still in India. there’s no way this isn’t Mars.” mountains are dizzying up close.
we asked the monks if we could chill there for a bit, and they happily obliged
we booked a taxi to Pangong lake. the drive there was a little ridiculous. we just kept going higher and higher. here’s the same valley from a higher altitude:
and the roads were so bad from rockfall and landslides, it felt like we were sitting in a washing machine
we saw a few passes when we were in Ladakh, but i’m still not entirely sure what a pass is
you’ve probably already realised this, but Pangong lake is really pretty. the water is so blue, even up close, that it feels a little surreal (most things do in Ladakh).
a few things happened at Pangong. we sat by the lake for a while and tried skipping stones on the surface, although that quickly devolved into me dropping rocks into the lake just for the satisfying sounds they made when breaking the surface. then i looked over my shoulder, and the sky on the other side of the lake was a dark, dark grey. and then we blinked, and those clouds were upon us, and it had begun to rain. not only that, but the wind had picked up, and as we ran upslope to our van, we found it harder and harder to breathe. it was like the wind was whipping away whatever little oxygen was in the air. it was rather terrifying. we stopped running and huddled under one umbrella to catch our breath, and in the meantime our driver very kindly brought the van to us so we didn’t have to walk any further ourselves.
it’s a very disconcerting feeling to gulp in huge amounts of air but still feel like you’re holding your breath.
the lake is so long that every room you book will have a view of the lake. we were extremely cosy in the room so we watched the sunset through the window.
we had an interesting chat with our homestay owner over dinner. he told us about how last year, when things with China got a bit tense (Pangong is about 50km from the Indo-China border), he assisted the Indian army in transporting utilities up to the border, where the army was camping. he was very proud of it, too, and i realised not for the first time how people tend to be more patriotic closer to the border.
back in Leh, we went for a little trek North of our hostel. we didn’t really know where we were going, but a local friend we made in the city gave us a general direction to walk in, so that’s what we did.
for the sake of your sanity i’ll let this be the only picture of apricots i share, but guys, we ate a lot of apricots there. especially while cycling. i must have eaten upwards of a hundred apricots, and i never had a bad one.
J and M decided it would be fun to try and climb a mountain, so we did that. or at least attempted to. J made it to the top, but i panicked halfway through and sat on a large rock until they came back down.
we found a little stream to eat our chicken sandwiches by. the water was freezing cold, and twenty minutes by the stream left the tips of my fingers numb. the numbness didn’t go away until the evening.
and the day wasn’t over yet. we saw a little path going up the mountain in the general direction of Leh Palace, which we’d been to before, so we thought, hey! we can climb that! except that J and M wanted to do the rock climbing bits, while i wanted to do the regular-steps-like-a-regular-person bits. so we said goodbye to each other as we began our chosen paths, expecting to meet again at Leh Palace. boy, were we wrong
i climbed the steps along the side of the mountain and reached the top. i wasn’t at Leh Palace, though. i had reached Tsemo Goenkhang, another palace significantly higher than Leh Palace. and to top it all, i couldn’t find my friends. Tsemo was deserted. i climbed to the top of the palace, since i was there, and felt a little dizzy looking down. i’m not usually scared of heights, but that’s just how high up i was. i called out for J and M but received no response, so i waited for a bit. finally a fellow tourist showed up, a friendly dude who was also from Pune. he kindly lent me my phone so that i could call M.
she didn’t pick up. so i asked tourist dude where Leh Palace was, and he showed me, and also explained how to get there. it involved a steep downslope trek. i waved goodbye to tourist dude and embarked on my steep downslope trek. it involved a lot of playing worship music and telling God it was perfectly OK if i died right now, i just didn’t necessarily want to.
i reached Leh Palace, where J and M were not. great. ran into tourist dude again, used his phone to ring M, who said they’ll meet me in the city. so i trekked down to the city along with tourist dude. they weren’t there either. it took another hour of coordinating before we all met, tourist dude included, at a restaurant for lunch.
going anywhere in Leh involves climbing up at least four storeys.
that evening, we reported at the YHAI base camp in Leh. for our cycling program. you know, the entire reason we went to Leh in the first place.
if you can believe it, the day still wasn’t over. a little bit before dinner my ear began throbbing with pain. my left ear’s always been a bit dramatic so i’m used to it hurting from time to time, but this was some next level pain. after some time of trying to sleep it away, we decided it was best if we went to the hospital. one very chatty cab driver later, J, M and i were at the only hospital in Leh. yeah, there’s just one.
i paid a 10 rupee consulting fee to see the doctor on duty, who told me not to be so dramatic (i’m paraphrasing). she gave me a painkiller and nose drops, which i didn’t take. we got back to base camp at around eleven, and crashed.
the next day we climbed up shanti stupa for an acclimatisation walk. after everything we had seen and experienced in Leh, the stupa was a little boring.
the base camp was super bare bones. we slept in tents, ate out of tiffin boxes. the next day, we would be leaving for Lamayuru, where our cycling tour would begin.
packing at base camp was fun. there were only five girls in our group, so we very judiciously carried only one tube of toothpaste, face wash, sunscreen, etc among us.
can you see that little strip of mountain in the background that’s differently coloured from the rest? it’s called Moon Land. that’s where Lamayuru gets its name from. it might sound like an exaggeration, but when you’re facing that rock, it’s difficult to believe you aren’t on the Moon.
i’ll spare you the pictures from our test ride in favour of the real thing. the next morning, we embarked from Lamayuru on a 44km ride to Skurbuchan.
one meandering ride and many many apricots later, we reached our campsite at Skurbuchan
we camped in the wake of a huge mountain, and rubbed apricots onto our skin to get rid of sunburn and dried skin. it worked like a charm.
that night, the sky was full of stars. we even saw the milky way.
on day 2, we rode another 44km from Skurbuchan to Shakar-2. this was a challenging ride that culminated in a 10km stretch that was purely uphill. my average speed during this stretch was about 4 kmph (J and M were significantly faster).
although it was our toughest day of cycling, it was also my favourite. because everyone cycled at their own pace, i found myself on my own a lot, and didn’t mind it so much.
our campsite at Shakar-2 was in a J&K tourism bungalow. (although let me clarify that it was in significantly worse condition than whatever you’re imagining.) we were around 60km from Kargil, and this bit of Ladakh was less Buddhist and more Islam.
i spent a lot of that evening just sleeping, although i did get to see a couple of shooting stars.
day 3 of cycling. this was the easiest day. we covered a mere 33km from Shakar-2 to Heniskot, and reached our third campsite before lunch. here’s some of the things we encountered on the way:
after lunch, we trekked up a little mountain to catch a glimpse of the invisible village.
the green was greener in person, and the mountain was huger.
in case this newsletter has been giving you a wrong impression of my athletic abilities, this is me needing some hand-holding to come down a little dirt path. i’m holding up the entire line. embarrassing.
the next day was our last day of cycling. we had to climb up Fatu La pass, which was an almost 500 metre upward climb. i woke up that morning with butterflies in my tummy.
i don’t have many pictures from the climb up Fatu La, mainly because i stopped only once for water. it was a beautiful ride, though. the climb was a mere 12 kilometres, but seeing as it was all uphill, my pace was really slow. i had a ball of a time, though. the view was spectacular (this was the highest point, elevation-wise, of our entire tour).
and the entire time, i was just awestruck at my own ability. i’ve never been an athletic person. i just couldn’t really believe that this was me, cycling up a Pass like it was no big deal. y’all, i didn’t even lose my breath (probably because i was going so slow, but whatever).
and it was all downhill from there. no, really. we rolled down the mountain back to Lamayuru, and that was the end of our cycling tour.
but our time in Ladakh was not over yet. due to a happy series of events involving RT-PCR tests and free rescheduling of flight tickets, we had an additional two days in Leh. here’s what we did:
And let’s not forget the epilogue:
Courtesy of a highly cooperative Zomato delivery agent, and me running a half-marathon at the Mumbai airport.
OK, there you have it. i tried being as brief as possible, to varying degrees of success. if you didn’t read this to the end, please let me know so i can dedicate some time to bawling my eyes out in the coming week.
until next time!
krys
this was so nice, thank you for obliging and writing haha. rly wanna visit ladakh someday
wow I didn't know substack makes you pay like that for writing long posts. how rude