Footlooseinme will take you on an incredible Ladakh trip travelling through the Zanskar Valley and to the highest motorable road in Umlingla Pass. Ladakh trip has its own challenges in the form of high altitude terrain, extreme weather and unpredictable roads. Proper planning and proper packing are the foremost essential things to keep in mind before the Ladakh trip. This being our second Ladakh trip, we were prepared to a certain extent but very high temperatures this year with uncertain climatic conditions made it more demanding. We were on a Ladakh trip again, primarily to explore the Zanskar Valley with a wishful thought to capture the night sky in its glory.
Read about my previous Ladakh trip where you will find a complete guide for the first timers travelling to Ladakh. Once you read my series of blog posts on Ladakh you will come to know about my previous itinerary. We had to let go of the Zanskar Valley last time with limited time. So this time it was our target location.
During our initial phase of Ladakh trip planning, we thought of flying to Leh, acclimatising ourselves for a couple of days and then taking the roads to the Zanskar Valley via Kargil. With our tour planned we got in touch with our trusted friend Dorjay Namgail who drove us through Ladakh during our previous trip. Our guide cum driver, Dorjay who is based in Leh informed us about the new agreement of the Taxi Association.
According to the new agreement, taxis registered at Leh are not allowed to operate in Kargil and vice-versa. They can only run on the highways and drop the passengers at their desired location but cannot take them for sightseeing. With this new rule in place, Dorjay couldn’t drive us to Kargil and Zanskar Valley. He referred a driver registered at Kargil who could take us around the Zanskar Valley and drop us at Leh.
Settling down with the initial hiccups, we replanned the Ladakh trip and changed our starting point from Leh to Srinagar. The Kargil driver was supposed to pick us up from the Srinagar Hotel tour us through the Zanskar Valley and drop us at Leh. From Leh, Dorjay would pick us up and complete the remaining part of our Ladakh trip to Hanle.
With the plan sorted and the tickets booked, we were all set to travel to one of my favourite destinations – Ladakh. A couple of days before our journey there was the news of a flash flood causing landslide and consequent Srinagar-Leh highway closure at Ganderbal region. I was tensed and was just hoping things to settle down by the time we reached there as this time our trip was too tight and we had no extra days in our plan (which is a definite no-no while touring Ladakh.) Despite this fact, we planned to go ahead and make the tour happen at any cost. 😀
Ladakh is comprised of two districts, the Kargil district and the Leh district. The Kargil district comprises the Dras, Suru and Zanskar Valleys while the Leh district comprises the Indus, Shyok and Nubra river valleys. My previous Ladakh trip was focused on the regions within the Leh district. While my travel this time is primarily based on the Kargil district. To keep my posts short I will segregate my posts into parts and share them in the way my itinerary progressed.
I planned my itinerary in a way where our starting point was Srinagar airport. We reached Srinagar, stayed there for a night and the next morning we ventured for our tour to the Ladakh region. We had little time in hand and no extra days to spare for Srinagar. (Read about my previous trip to Srinagar.) We had so little time that we couldn’t even acclimatise properly before reaching the high-altitude region of the Zanskar Valley. The Srinagar to Leh road trip is considered better than the Manali to Leh road trip for proper acclimatisation. In our case, the Srinagar to Leh road trip (with night halts at Zanskar) gave us very little to no opportunity for acclimatisation with sudden gain in altitude. My personal preference would always be to fly to Leh, acclimatise properly and then tour around the higher altitude destinations.
Our planned route was Srinagar – Kargil – Padum – Purney – Leh in the first leg of our journey with the driver from Kargil. The second leg of our journey was from Leh – Hanle – Umlingla Pass and back to Leh with our friend Dorjay from Leh. (Read more about Dorjay from my previous post.) Stay tuned for my upcoming posts for a virtual Ladakh trip focused on the Zanskar Valley.
A Complete Guide to Tour Ladakh
Ladakh Part 2 – Julley Lamayuru
Ladakh Part 4 – To Nubra Valley, via Khardung La
Ladakh Part 5 – To the Lush and Cropwise Rich Village of Turtuk
Ladakh Part 6 – The Hyper-popular Pangong Tso
Ladakh Part 7 – The Cloudy Story of the Starry Night at Hanle
Regular travelers recommend Srinagar Leh route over Manali Leh route because of AMS problems at some of the stopover points like Sarchu. Love the first few pictures.
Yes, you are absolutely correct Arv. If you are on a road trip to Leh then Srinagar to Leh is always a better option than Manali to Leh for acclimatization.
In our case we travelled from Srinagar to Leh via Zanskar (which is at an altitude much higher than Leh) and that gave us little to no opportunity for proper acclimatization.
Thanks Arv, for pointing out. I missed to mention ‘via Zanskar’ on my post, which I have edited now. 🙂
Zanskar is still a big draw, even now; Leh and rest of Ladakh is not what it used to be. From what I have heard, once the road connectivity improves, Zanskar will have the same fate. Well, there are two sides of every coin, locals will benefit. All of us miss, at one point or another, something, Sarmistha. 🙂
You are absolutely correct, Arv. These days there are utterly no area that can be called untouched. With the tourism industry booming, every destination attracts great number of tourists these days. It is inevitable that Zanskar will eventually have the fate similar to other parts of Ladakh. Being the citizen of the most populous country, these things hardly matters now. The only concern is the over tourism and the hyper development coming along is creating a disturbance in the ecosystem which in turn is leading to various other disasters. What can be the solution to this problem? For me, personally there is no solution. Every person has the right to travel and when they travel it is their basic right to have proper infrastructure. So the big question is what can be a control situation for this whole cycle?