Leh, Ladakh and Khardung-La

Finally in Leh, we took an easy day of exploring the sights while recovering from three hard days on the road. Our first sight was Thiksay monastery, a typically Tibetan-style Buddhist monastery.

A wander through the main bazaar of Leh.

Then we climbed the hill in the centre of town towards the 16^th Century Royal Palace, which dominates the skyline of the town.

Inside is disappointing decrepit and empty, although there are spectacular views over the town, and some traces of its past glory can still be found.

Other monastaries and forts are perched on other hilltops, keeping watch over the town.

Fully rested, we set off further north, towards the Line of Control with China (there’s no ‘border’, as all this territory is disputed). On our way to the Nubra Valley, we would conquer Khardung-La, reputed to be the highest motorable road in the world!

Like so many other of the high passes we’d experienced in the past few days, the climb is never terribly steep – it just relentlessly pushes you uphill through switchbacks and hairpins, from one valley into the next.

I had my first ‘off’ of the whole trip here – after a minor water crossing I picked a bad line through some rocks, and got hung up on the big one in the centre track. No damage to myself or the bike, just a few minutes delay while I righted the bike and got myself sorted again.

With ominous clouds closing in, we climbed up to the snow line and finally, after some 1800 metres of altitude gain, we reached the top.

As I said earlier, Khardung-La is only ‘reputed’ to be the highest road in the world. In fact, while they claim it is over 5,600m in altitude, my GPS only showed 5,339m; additionally in the last few years the Indian Army has built a few other roads that are higher – access for civilians and foreigners can be difficult though. Nevertheless, it’s an achievement to make it here!

Coming back down from the pass, the snow was much thicker, and the streams much deeper, until we dropped back into the fertile river valley on the far side.

Yaks!

The road continued to wind its slow course around the edges of the mountains, passing through verdant irrigated fields, tiny villages and barren slopes of rocks.

As the sun sank low and the shadows grew long, we entered the Nubra valley, where the mountain ranges spread out and allow a different, even more beautiful scenery – where the rivers flow more lazily, grass spreads out over the vast plain, and even sand dunes exist near the town of Hunder, less than 50 kilometres from the disputed border with Pakistan.

After a nights’ sleep in perhaps the oddest homestay we’ve been in yet (very hard to define what made it odd, it was just the feeling we both had), we headed out to the sand dunes to see the camels. Yep, there’s a leftover tribe of Bactrian (two-humped) camels that have lived here since the ancient Silk Road days, now used for tourism.

After indulging our inner ‘Laurence of Arabia’, we headed back the way we came, revelling in the mountainous surroundings.

Leaving the Nubra Valley behind, we climbed back up and over Khardung-La and back to Leh. It’s amazing that you can go from sand dunes to snowfights in only a few hours.

With our time running short, we spent one more night in Leh and set off back down the Leh-Manali Highway. This time, the northernmost pass, Tanglang-La, was open, so we had a more direct route south. The damage that had closed the road was still very visible, and we were delayed by an hour while they blasted and cleared more of the route.

On Tanglang-La itself, we came across a stricken bus – its brakes had failed on the downhill run, and the driver ploughed it into a rocky slope to stop it and the 15 or so kids on board going off the cliff.

As we neared the summit (some 5,300m in altitude) the clouds rapidly built up, and a thunderstorm started. We hurried to get over the pass and down the other side, while fighting hail, sleet, and a layer of ice on the road a centimetre thick.

Out the other side, we were back to sand as the wind blew up a sandstorm, limiting visibility – fortunately just as we were stopping for a warming Chai.