The Trails of Ladakh - Day 1
This is a belated piece on a trip we took a few years ago, pre-pandemic. It’s taken me a while to organise and process the thousands of images I took and also try to put the whole experience into words. Rather than writing one very long journal entry, I’m going to create an entry for each day spread over the next 10 days.
Sunday 10th, Delhi to Ladakh
We were woken by a 3am alarm call, and we were soon up, showered and ready to go.
The flight into Ladakh was amazing. The approach was cloudy but as we dropped out of the clouds, the mountains came into view. Words literally failed me because it was like nothing I’d seen before. The sheer scale of mountains in the Himalayan range was astounding.
Arriving in Ladakh had the real feeling of being at a frontier. There's an army base here and the runway has been carved out of the rugged terrain. The terminal building is small and we were met by our smiling guides who told us that there today was the Ladakh marathon. I found that just walking up steps was hard work so running 26.2 miles sounded like an impossible task!
Ladakh is in the far North of India and one of its most sparsely populated regions. Because of location its culture and history are closely related to that of Tibet. It has also been the subject of dispute between India, Pakistan, and China since 1947 when India was partitioned.
It’s renowned for its remote mountain beauty and culture. Much of Ladakh is also over 3,000 metres (9,800 feet) above sea level and many places are higher.
Recently there’s been an increase in tourism and many homes now take in paying guests. This is called ‘Home Stay’ and the locals have been trained to make sure they can cater for guests. There’s also an emphasis on responsible tourism to ensure that traditional ways of life are preserved rather than destroyed by too many visitors. I hope this never happens because experiencing the way these people live is truly humbling.
The Ladakhi diet is mainly vegan / vegetarian but because it's difficult to get vegetables in the winter they also eat meat. This is interesting because the people here are mainly Buddhists and their religion forbids killing animals. But pragmatism comes into play otherwise they would probably starve because there are no supermarkets to pop into! They must grow the food they need to eat and in winter although they live off the crops they've stored, these sometimes don't last throughout winter. So they generally kill the oldest and biggest animal rather than killing many small animals because this will feed several families.
There are also Stupas like the ones below, everywhere in Ladakh. These are mound-like or hemispherical structures containing relics (typically the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns) that are places of dedication and meditation.
#travel #ladakh #india #himalayas #trekking