Ladakh

Ladakh -

The land of Gompas and Lamas.

A cold and difficult tarrain at very high altitude. Wild and Beutiful, Tough and fragile all at the same time.

Nothing that we had visited before prepared us for the wild and lonely beuty that is Ladakh. These are memories from our visit to Ladakh in May 2009.

Thiksay Hemis1 The team consisted of seven Ranades.  starting with a short visit to Delhi and then an exciting one week in Ladakh.

Geography - Ladakh is the highest altitude plateau region in India (much of it being over 3,000 m), straddling the Himalayan and Karakorum mountain ranges and the upper Indus River valley.

 

How to get there –

By road 

  • from Manali, The journey will take around 14 hours. Its a winding road with spectacular vistas.
  • From Srinagar, again it would take you 12  hours.

By Air  There are  Delhi – Leh flights from Indian airlines, Jet and Kingfisher, Monday to Saturday.  The flights are in the morning. Our observation is the Weekend flight rates are almost double the weekday rates. Interestingly the fare to go to Leh are considerably lesser than the return. 

Accomodation -  We stayed in the NHPC guest house. Which had good aminities. They also served very decent basic north indian food. You can get very good accomodation in Leh. There are hotels from basic guest house to three star hotels.  Some of the hotels that looked decent (though we did not stay in them) were

  • Hotel Lotus  – Near the Leh Market ( We had dinner here. They have good food, and good garden with a great view)
  • Kaal - This is in Scara, 2 Kms from the market. This is an upmarket hotel.

What to see -  There are number of places to visit:

  • Leh – District HQ
  • ChangThang and Pangong Tso
  • Shay Thiksey and Hemis
  • Khardung La and Nubra Valley
  • Sindhu – Jhanskar Confluence and Lamayuru Gompa
  • Tso Moriri

Where to Eat -

 Basic north indian food is available in hotels in Leh market and also in road side dhabas till Karu.

Thuk pa is the local concoction of noodles, momos and meat in a soup like consistancy. Also available were Noodles and Momos.

We found the bottled apricot juice to be quite delicious. Leh Berry juice has a bitter tinge and would be an acquired taste.

Leh market has number of eating places. DreamLand had OK indian and especially Kashmiri cousine. A dhaba in a bylane from dreamland serving indian, continental and even sizzlers is a good place to eat.  German bakery is also a known eatery but seems to be open only in the foreign season from July to September.  

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