LADAKH

The ethereal lakes and colourful Buddhist monasteries of the remote Himalayan region of Ladakh take the breath away – and not just because of the altitude, as Peter and Maria Speechley discover

 

Across the distant horizon lay the mountains of the Karakoram Range, a panorama of glinting glaciers and snowy peaks stretching from Nanga Parbat to K2. Our plane swooped down before them, towards a wide valley, and landed at the town of Leh. Our young guide Jigmet (Jimmy), a student and mountaineer, was there to meet us.

The bare, craggy hills surrounding the city didn’t look particularly high. But this was deceiving – they are the peaks of a highaltitude plateau, towering 3,795m. Walking made this clear – we soon got out of breath after only a few steps.

So we took it easy on the first day, resting in the hotel’s poplar-filled garden and browsing the nearby shops. Over the next few days Jimmy took us to several gompas (Buddhist monasteries), impressively perched on rocky prominences along the Indus Valley. Ladakhi monasteries are all the more important because the Chinese destroyed most of the Tibetan ones.

Having acclimatised to the altitude, we set off on a three-day drive south-east to the Rupsu Valley. The stark mountain scenery changed at every turn, and the more we drove through the lunar-like landscape the more fascinated we became with its beauty. We saw boilinghot water gushing from a spring right by the side of a cold stream and passed a magnetic mountain, where a car parked nearby will not roll downhill, but will be pulled uphill by the invisible force.

That night we camped by the shore of the 30km-long Tso (Lake) Moriri, less than 80km from Chinese Tibet. Perhaps it was the thin air – we were at 4,200m – but with the fading daylight the bare, rocky hills changed colour every few seconds, as did their reflection on the dark blue waters of the salt lake. It verged on the unreal.

The following night was even more magical. We camped by the smaller Tso Kar (Salt Lake). Our crew put up the tents, including a particularly big one – the dining room for our 40th wedding anniversary feast! The cook regaled us with his speciality Western food, cooked on the Primus stove, and we opened the bottle of champagne we’d brought from England just for the occasion. I thought back to our wedding breakfast in Lisbon in 1966 – not in our wildest dreams did we imagine that 40 years later we’d be celebrating in a field in the wilds of Ladakh at an altitude of 3,000m, sitting on mats in a tent and drinking Moët from stainless steel cups!

Next morning, just after leaving camp, our sharp-eyed driver spotted a rare kiang (wild ass), bringing back childhood memories of a picture of a russet-coloured specimen I’d seen on a cigarette card. We were heading for Taglang La, the secondhighest motorable mountain pass in the world, driving past the most dramatic scenery of the trip along the winding, steeply climbing, narrow road.

Higher than Mont Blanc, the pass reaches an altitude of 5,317m. The views on the way up were stupendous, incomparable. And although I don’t have a head for heights, the drop over the edge – which must have been a mile in places – held no fear, even though I was looking directly down. It was similar to sitting by the window on a plane – astounding views but without the fear of falling.

The descent was not quite so dramatic; the valleys narrowed and blocked the distant views. However, the road passed through a great gorge, full of contorted and multicoloured rock formations, all deep purples and dark greens. At one point we passed a ‘crop’ of sulphur emerging from the ground near what looked like a meadow full of white flowers – brilliant-white salt glistening in the sunshine.

At the bottom of the valley we picnicked in a little green meadow and chatted to Jimmy and our driver, thanking them for looking after us so well on our remarkable journey. Jimmy told us that he uses his earnings to fund his studies in Delhi which, for me, made our whole trip even more special. I’d had the pleasure of visiting this remote, beautiful area, but now I had the knowledge that I was helping people like Jimmy too.