About 8 a.m. on the 23rd we left for Zanskar, to the southeast of Kargil, an area that was reached by road only in 1981. The jeep for the trip cost us 10,000 rupees (over $200), while a public jeep might have cost something like 1500 a piece, but we wanted to make photo stops. We first headed south up the Suru Valley, along the Suru River, a Moslem area that was converted from Buddhism in the 16th century. About 15 miles up the valley we passed a huge Indian Army base, the biggest I've seen since the one east of Leh in the Indus Valley. In the lower part of the valley there are quite a few villages and towns, with barley fields (or maybe they are wheat at this lower elevation) and quite a few trees, poplars and willows and others. It is a fertile valley. We stopped to see a big mosque described as Tibeto-Saracenic in design. The road was paved for only the first 10 miles or so.
About 40 miles up the valley, just before the town of Panikhar, we caught our first views of Nun and Kun, wreathed in clouds and both over 7000 meters (over 23,000 feet). From Panikhar we made a big loop along the river through an increasingly deeper and more scenic canyon to the village of Parkachik, the last Moslem village, and then headed east along the river higher and higher into much more remote and uninhabited area. We passed a black glacier just beyond Parkachik. The views were spectacular despite the now cloudy sky. As we got higher the grass was almost all yellow, with lots of orange bushes interspersed on the lower areas near the blue-gray river.
About 12:30 we reached the very small village of Rangdum in a wide, gravelly valley where another river joins the Suru. Rangdum Monastery is 3 miles away on a small hill before the barren brown mountains behind it. From the village, the views of the wide, gravelly valley with barren brown mountains, some snow and ice topped, all around were spectacular, and the sun was now shining. We had planned to spend the night in Rangdum, to break up the long journey to Zanskar, but despite the sun, the wind was blowing and it was very cold in the wind. We checked out the "Tourist Bungalow" and it was very unappealing, with broken windows letting in the cold. Plus, the altitude given in the guidebooks was about 3760 meters, about 12,000 feet, but in reality, according to my altimeter, it was more like 13,000. Rather than spend a very cold night there, we decided to head to Padum, the main town of Zanskar.
We had a rice and dhal lunch and left about 2:40, passing the monastery and heading up the Penzi La, 4400 meters, or about 14,400 feet. The clouds partially blocked the views of the snow covered mountains, but still the scenery was great. It was cold and windy on Penzi La, and right after the pass we could see the very large white glacier called Drang Drung, quite close to the rocky road. We descended into the barren valley below and followed the Stot River, with mountaintops above mostly hidden by clouds. After an hour or more, villages began to appears, with Tibetan style homes and barley fields. We reached the village of Phey about 6:30 and it became dark a little before 7. Soon a full moon arose over the massive mountains to the east, with a very bright planet to the right and a little lower. In the dark we crossed the Stot and arrived in Padum, 11,500 feet in elevation, about 7:30. It had taken us eleven and a half hours to travel the 145 or so miles from Kargil. It was very cold and windy in Padum. We found a cold hotel and a fairly good restaurant, and after dinner I went to bed under two heavy coverlets.
I got up and out about 7 the next morning. It was 52 degrees in my room and colder outside. The sun had not yet risen over the high mountain to the east. The sky, however, was clear. I walked to the old town, about half a mile from the new town, in the cold and climbed up the rocky hill there to the small monastery on top. The sun made its way over the mountain about 7:45 and there were great views of the town and wide valley. The Stot River comes in from the northwest and joins the Tserup River coming in from the south or southeast (we had traveled along the upper Tserup on the way to Leh from Manali, just before the Gata Loops).to form the Zanskar River which flows generally north to the Indus. They say that in the winter, when the passes are blocked with snow, the only way in or out of this valley is along the frozen Zanskar, but that in recent years the ie is hard enough during only one month, in comparison to several months in the recent past. From the hill in old Padum I could see across the valley to Karsha Monastery wedged onto a mountainside, and to small Pipiting Monastery on a small hill on the plane, and up and down the three river valleys leading into and out of the wide valley.
After breakfast, we left about 10:30 on a jeep tour with a very interesting driver from Karsha. First, he took us down the Zanskar River about 20 or 25 miles, past marvellously twisted strata of rock on the mountains, to the small but picturesque village of Zangla, with a ruined fort on a pinnacle above and a nunnery above the other side of the village. They are continuing to build the road from here to the Indus along the Zanskar River and the driver said they have completed about a third of the 150 kilometers, and that he thought they would take 20 more years to finish, though I have read more optimistic estimates.
We spent almost two hours at the nunnery, with 13 nuns, plus an American male teacher staying there for six weeks. They showed us around and then shared their lunch of new potatoes (that they had grown) and rice, plus butter tea, with us. They were very nice and great fun. We saw one old nun darning her red socks.
It had clouded up by the time we left between 1 and 1:30. We drove back the way we had come, stopping at the Songde Monastery about 700 feet above the valley floor. It was cold and windy up there, with great views of the valley, mountains and the village below. All the barley fields in Zanskar had already been harvested before the approaching winter. In fact, the driver told us it had become noticiably colder just in the past two days. We looked around the monastery and then had sweet tea and biscuits with a monk who was our driver's wife's uncle. We gave him a ride down to the village below with his bag of a fragrant juniper-smelling plant that they burn for its agreeable odor.
We then headed back towards Padum, but before reaching it crossed the Stot River to get to Karsha, also about 700 feet above the valley floor. It is a much larger monastery than Songde, with 70 versus 35 monks and many more buildings wedged against the steep mountainside. We made the steep climb to the prayer halls near the top, with great views over the valley. About 5:30 we got back to Padum, where it was very windy and cold. We spent another cold night there, without electricity as the power was out all over town. Padum is the Zanskar's biggest town, with 1500 people. I saw only three other western tourists there.
I would have preferred to spend another day there, but Phil and Kirsty were cold, as was I, and wanted to leave. We left the next morning, a bright and sunny morning with great views of the snow capped mountains above the town, about 7. It was a spectaclar ride back, with great views all the way under sunny skies. The Stot Valley was magnifient under the ice and snow capped mountaintops now visible. It was cold all morning, though. It was interesting to see the activity in the villages.
We reached the Drang Drung Glacier about 10:30 to see it gleaming white in the sunshine, with magnificent snowy mountains above it. Fresh snow speckled the lower mountainsides and the Penzi La had quite a bit of snow. There had been none when we first came over it. It is getting late in the season in Ladakh. Usually, the passes stay open until October, but sometimes they can be blocked by snow as early as late September.
We came down along the Suru on the other side of the pass through more magnificent scenery, with the snow topped mountains towering over the Suru and the rocky areas or orange-yellow grasslands along it, and stopped at the Rangdum Monastery for a short look in the cold wind. About 12:30 we reached Rangdum for another rice and dhal lunch. It was sunny and not very windy, much more pleasant than on our first stay, and we had our lunch out in the sun. We continued down the scenic Suru Valley, and had pretty good views of Nun and Kun, with only a few clouds, from a little lower than Panikhar about 4. As we came down through the lower Suru Valley villages there were boys playing cricket in the now barren fields. We got back to Kargil about 6:30 (another eleven and a half hour trip) and it was considerably colder here now than on our first stay. Autumn has arrived and winter is on the way.
I am really enjoying your blogs!!!
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