The Road to Ladakh: A Trans-Himalayan Motor Expedition Traversing Landscapes and Cultures - Past and Present

chillibreeze writer — Krishnakali Gupta

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The road to Ladakh began to deteriorate after the initial 20-kilometer or so. The heavy snow that covers these passes most of the year had damaged the asphalt lying underneath. As our journey progressed, more and more of the rocky underlay was exposed, forcing our 4-wheel car to lurch from side to side in order to avoid the deepest ruts and potholes. What was worrying was the status of the petrol in the 40-litre jerry can we were carrying in the car dickey. It leaked continuously filling the car with its nauseating fumes. Arijeet, the man behind the wheel was already suffering from acute altitude sickness and I could feel his heavy breathing as he strained to maneouver the wheel this way and that, ever watchful of the idiosyncrasies of the road. He was swearing under his breath. Our hired off-roader was called ‘gypsy’, reputed to be a sturdy vehicle, designed to negotiate precisely this kind of terrain. But there were no petrol pumps between Manali and Leh, our next destination a stretch of nearly 500-kilometer. I wondered how much of the petrol would remain in the car by the time we actually needed the next refill. The last vehicle we sighted was more than two hours ago when an army truck overtook us. Ever since then the only human encounter was the group of labourers engaged in repair work on the road (patching up little parts of the road here and there aided by rudimentary equipment and hampered by inefficient style of work). The upkeep of this road is done by the Border Roads Organization, an outfit of the Indian Army.

It was not as though we were breaking new ground. Traders had been crossing these formidable Trans-Himalayan passes for centuries. Guiding an entire battery of yaks laden with precious silk from China, pashmina from the highland steppes of the Tibetan plateau, they had to go over these las (narrow mountain passes) to descend to the Indian plains. How did they navigate in this wilderness?

Like them we were carrying no road maps and surprisingly never missed one! We were in this blissful land of one road. What it lacked by way of ramifying roads it made up with passes! First we crossed the Rohtang la, then the Baralach la, the Langalacha la and finally the awesome Tanglang la at 17,667 feet. There was an eerie silence inside the off-roader; both Arijeet and I were overawed by the sudden transition from the lush green landscape of Manali to the barren dusty brown moonscape.

We were breathless. The entire area is particularly oxygen-starved since there are practically no trees and any other kind of vegetation is also very sparse. The mountain slopes were shaped exactly like the “pleats” that I read about in my geography class! Fine sand in the shape of dunes accompanied us all along the journey.

Lack of human habitation is evident. Ladakh is perhaps one of the most difficult terrains in the world. Two mighty mountain ridges, the Great Himalayas and the Karakoram, bound it. Miles and miles of wasteland met our eyes. After driving on for about 50 or 60 km through this desert the occasional village showed up, a small hamlet of white flat roofed houses of mud bricks, not fired in the furnaces but simply sun-baked to rock like hardness. The sun does a good baking job out here; the day temperature in summer is 40 degrees. So at least theoretically the houses are water-insoluble! But we had no need to panic! It rains in Ladakh as much as it snows in Delhi! The monsoon clouds, which bring rain to, the rest of India hit against the Greater Himalayas and recoil back. So save for the occasional cloud that strays into Ladakh, the skies are wonderfully devoid of them and that explains the sparkling sunlight that bathes the entire region.

A small tributary of the Indus enters Ladakh and it is the principal river of the region. A thin strip of greenery hugs the narrow band of the river. Ladakhis grow a meager quantity of barley, wheat and millet on this precious gift of green.

From Leh we headed west towards Kargil, more in focus now after the recent war. Beyond Leh the landscape remains bleak but our vehicle got some relief as the road had an easy gradient. On the way we crossed two more monasteries, the monasteries of Alchi and Lamayuru. The Lamayuru monastery is perched atop a steep mountain slope completely camouflaged by the surrounding brown terrain. Only the flags fluttering gave away the fact that it was not a forbidding fortress but a welcoming monastery.

At Mulbek the chief attraction is the 9-metre high rock sculpture of Maitreya, the future Buddha right next to the road. While the people of eastern Ladakh are Buddhists, there is a sizeable Muslim population in western Ladakh. The village of Mulbek forms the religious and ethnic divide between these two populations. In fact the divide is so sharp that after wishing someone “Julley”, the customary greeting of eastern Ladakh to someone in a chai shop on this side, we were greeted with “Salam Ale- khum” ten minutes later on the other side! Talk of culture shock!

While we were strolling in the market place a group of people attracted our attention. Even the locals paused to track their movement. The women were very beautiful and they seemed to be carrying entire floral arrangements on their heads. One shopkeeper informed us with a condescending snigger that they never bathed! They were the Brokpas, a small community living in villages north of Kargil. Their racial features are pure Indo-Aryan and they seemed to have preserved their racial purity down the centuries. Gottlieb Wilhelm Leitner, ethnologist and linguist, Principal of the Punjab College in Lahore, discovered them 130 years ago. While exploring the northern frontiers of Kargil and Gilgit he came across this “lost tribe”. They actually have a complete abhorrence of washing. They burn pencil cedar twigs for a ritualistic cleaning.

Because of the greater humidity and rainfall, the pastures in the Suru valley are distinctly alpine with thick plantations of poplars and willows besides apricot, apple and mulberry. Suru valley is the grain bowl of Ladakh. When we arrived, Suru valley was celebrating summer. The gentle verdant mountain slopes were dotted with purple iris and yellow marsh marigold. and many other blooms that nobody knew the names of. The harvest season was just over and the people were busy drying, threshing and storing their produce.

The twin peaks of Nun- Kun massif tower over Panikhar, 67 km from Kargil. For the next few days we abandoned our car and strolled around the quaint township, which boasted of a single grocery shop, a tailor shop and a shop selling mutton. The people here are Shia Muslims. We did not find any women in burqa. Instead their heads were simply covered in white scarves. Even though we could not make it all the way to Zanskar, our stay at Panikhar amidst the beautiful people of Suru valley rounded off a most memorable motor expedition of Ladakh.

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Krishnakali writes for Chillibreeze.

The Road to Ladakh: A Trans-Himalayan Motor Expedition Traversing Landscapes and Cultures - Past and Present

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