Days thirteen to sixteen of the Ladakh Sky Trail GHT, a three-week hiking adventure in the Indian Himalaya unique to The Mountain Company. Due to extreme weather — the first snow in August in Ladakh in 15 years — things didn’t go entirely according to plan…
We continued along more sketchy and scary narrow paths high above Niri Chu and Tsarap Chu. I don’t like exposure risk, so didn’t much enjoy this section, particularly when combined with rain and strong winds. Thankfully there were only two hours of it today, compared with four hours the previous day. Due to the weather I packed away my camera and just took a few photos on my iPhone.
It was a relief to see Phugtal Monastery in the distance.
This monastery is around a thousand years old, built around a large cave, which is believed to have been visited by numerous sages, scholars, translators, and monks around 2,550 years ago.
Walking on we got better views of how precarious the monastery is, clinging to the mountainside.
We sheltered in a tea house for lunch, home to a yak’s head. We then had a very wet, cold, and windswept one-and-a-half-hour walk up a new road under construction, watching for rockfall, though there were a few near misses…
We reached another tea house at Purney Village to wait for a couple of hours before a 40-minute drive to our campsite at Transe Village, a one-family village with a couple of houses. It was a welcome relief to get into my tent and access my bag full of warm clothes. Ladakh is a land of extremes — a couple of days ago it had been hot and blue skies; now it was the opposite!
The next day we had planned to hike up around 700m toward Phirtse La (4,750m) but this didn’t seem like a good idea after the rain continued all night and into the day. Instead, we had a welcome rest day, enjoying warmth inside the front room of the family’s home.
Due to the lack of sunlight there was little power (the house is on solar) and no mobile or internet reception. It was a good opportunity to do lots of sketching.
The forecast was for less rain and improved weather the following day, which proved to be totally incorrect! Overnight there was heavy rain, and we woke to snow falling. So we weren’t going to hike over a high pass, particularly as our horses would need to break a path through deep snow. Locals said that the snow was waist-deep at the nearest road pass. I quite enjoyed lying snug in my sleeping bag with a hot water bottle in the tent as it began to be buried in snow.
After lunch the family kindly (though we paid) let us use two rooms upstairs in the house to rest and sleep.
It continued to snow heavily and so we had to abandon any chance of completing the planned hiking route. Instead, the focus was on getting back to Leh in time to catch our flights out of Leh. Unfortunately, the road was closed due to landslips, and the road crews couldn’t come out until the sun stopped.
With no power or internet, I did some more sketching…
Overnight it stopped raining and warmed enough for the snow to start melting. Unfortunately, the road wasn’t opened until the end of the day, and our driver and bus were 3 hours away. So we spent a third day in Transe, thankfully with some power when the sun came out to charge devices.
The planned early start the next day also didn’t happen, as though some of the road was opened yesterday, there was a major landslide about 30 minutes from where we were. The bus was stuck there. The crew looked into hiring a vehicle on our side to take our bags to the slip and carry them across, but continued rockfall made that too dangerous. Instead, we had to wait until after lunch for the slip to be cleared, and finally, we were off on the long two-day drive to Leh.
The first couple of hours were quite terrifying, driving on a narrow and half-built road through a canyon.
The views were incredible but I was very glad when it was over.
We passed the photogenic Bardan Monastery.
It was a relief to reach Padum, a rapidly growing town thanks to all the new roads under construction. Most of the town seemed to be under construction.
It was surrounded by snow-capped mountains.
And home to a few prayer wheels and other things of interest.
