At Khardung La, the sky is an improbable shade of blue — deeper than sky has any right to be, something closer to the blue of old Persian tiles. The air is thin. Standing still requires a small effort of will. The prayer flags snap in a wind that has come, it seems, from the roof of the world itself.
I had been in Leh for three acclimatisation days before attempting this pass. Those three days were not optional.
Why Ladakh Must Be Approached Slowly
Ladakh sits at an average elevation of 3,500 metres. Leh, the main town, is at 3,524 metres — higher than almost anywhere in the Alps. Acute Mountain Sickness is not a fringe risk. The standard protocol: fly to Leh, rest for 48 hours minimum, no strenuous activity, drink four litres of water a day, take Diamox if your doctor recommends it. Travellers who ignore this spend their first Ladakh morning horizontal with a splitting headache. Those who respect the altitude find that after two days the body adapts and one of the most extraordinary landscapes on Earth reveals itself.
Leh: The Town at the Centre of Everything
Leh’s main market is a single long bazaar of dry-goods shops, pashmina sellers, and trekking equipment stores. The old palace rises above it on a ridge, modelled after the Potala in Lhasa, lit beautifully at night. In the narrow lanes below, monasteries are tucked between houses and the sound of a singing bowl being struck is a constant background note.
Thiksey Monastery, 17 kilometres east of Leh, rewards an early morning visit above all others. The monks’ prayer service begins at 6 a.m. — red robes, low chanting, butter lamps, and a view over the Indus Valley through open monastery windows. There are few more grounding ways to begin a day of travel.
The mountains in Ladakh are not green. They are brown and red and grey and occasionally striped with minerals in ochre and rust. They look ancient in a way that green mountains do not, because there is nothing soft to obscure the geology — every fold and fault is visible, every age of the earth exposed at once.
The Road to Nubra: Crossing Khardung La
The Nubra Valley lies north of Leh, on the other side of Khardung La at 5,359 metres. The road climbs through switchbacks above the treeline into a moonscape of scree and snow patches. At the summit you step out and feel genuinely dizzy — from altitude, from cold, from the view of mountains extending to every horizon with no sign of human habitation.
The descent into Nubra is the reward. The valley is green, irrigated, warm. Poplars line the villages. The Shyok and Nubra rivers meet in a wide braided plain. And in the sand dunes near Hunder village, the Bactrian camels — double-humped, shaggy, prehistoric-looking — stand against a backdrop of 6,000-metre peaks with complete indifference to the absurdity of the arrangement. It is one of the most improbable scenes in Indian travel.
Pangong Tso: The Lake That Defies Description
The drive to Pangong takes four hours from Leh over Chang La pass. The moment the lake appears — an impossible turquoise, stretching 134 kilometres into Tibet — there is an involuntary intake of breath. Every photograph of it looks colour-graded. It is not. The colour comes from depth, altitude, and sediment, and it shifts from turquoise to blue to grey-green as the day progresses.
Camp at the lake. Waking at 5 a.m. to see the stars reflected in still water at 4,350 metres, with no sound, no light pollution, no other presence, is worth every layer of every sleeping bag you carried.
When to Go
- June–September: The main season. Roads open, weather mostly stable, the landscape at its most vivid. July and August bring some rain.
- October: Crowds thin dramatically. Nights are very cold (below −10°C at altitude) but days are clear. Pangong freezes at its edges from late October.
- Winter (November–April): Roads to Nubra and Pangong close. Leh is accessible by air. For experienced high-altitude winter travellers only.