Leh — When the Mountains Became Real

Leh was not my first visit to Ladakh. I had been there once before, in April 2011, on a trip with my colleague and friend Manish. Eight years later, I returned with Pragati.

The two journeys could hardly have been more different. The first was an early-season adventure with a colleague, built around mountain roads and the excitement of discovering Ladakh for the first time. The second was a much more comfortable journey with Pragati, shaped by Army hospitality, better preparation and the experience of returning to a place I already knew.

Together, they tell a more complete story of my relationship with Ladakh.

April 2011 — The first Leh adventure

Manish and I had planned our Leh trip a year earlier, but had to cancel after the devastating 2010 cloudburst in Leh. A year later, we finally made the journey.

Our original idea was quite ambitious: we had considered renting bikes and riding all the way from Delhi. Eventually we decided to fly to Leh and rent bikes there instead.

We arrived in April, right at the beginning of the Leh season. Many of the attractions and mountain passes were still not open, so the bike plan was not practical for the main circuit. We decided to stay put initially, acclimatise and use the time to arrange the Inner Line Permits for Khardung La, Nubra and Pangong Tso.

Once the permits were in place, we hired a cab and planned a circuit from Leh to Khardung La, Nubra Valley and Hunder, returning to Leh before continuing towards Chang La and Pangong Tso.

There was one complication. Our original plan was to visit Pangong first, but the locals told us the lake was still frozen. We decided to reverse the itinerary and travel to Nubra first, hoping that Pangong would clear by the time we returned.

That small change captured something about the trip as a whole. We had travelled to Ladakh with an idea of what we wanted to do, but the mountains and the season dictated what was actually possible.

Khardung La and Nubra

Khardung La was my first experience of travelling at that altitude. I had a mild headache when we reached the pass. The Army personnel told me that it was normal and that it would disappear as we descended. Fortunately, that is exactly what happened.

From there we continued into Nubra Valley. We stopped at the large Maitreya Buddha statue and visited Diskit Monastery before reaching Hunder.

We found accommodation for the night in Hunder and went for a camel ride. The night itself became one of the unexpected highlights of the trip. There was almost no light pollution and the surroundings were incredibly quiet. Looking up at the sky and seeing so many stars so clearly was something I still remember.

The next day we returned towards Leh, crossing Khardung La again.

There was another small but memorable detail about our stay. We had booked Hotel Tsokar in Leh for the entire duration of the trip. When we left Leh for the Nubra and Pangong excursions, we even left part of our luggage in the room. The hotel owners simply adjusted the booking and charged us only for the days we actually stayed there. That kind of flexibility was something we had never expected from a hotel in a city.

Pangong Tso

From Leh we headed towards Pangong Tso, now hoping that the lake had opened up enough for us to see it.

It had.

The excitement around Pangong was already high in those days, and the location had become even more popular after the movie 3 Idiots showcased it. We took plenty of photographs.

The lake is said to stretch across India and China. We asked our driver to take us as far along the lake as he could. Even after travelling that distance, it felt like we had seen only a small fraction of the enormous lake.

On the return journey we passed Thiksey Monastery before heading back to Leh.

Once back in Leh, we finally rented a bike and explored locally, riding towards the Zanskar River and Shanti Stupa.

That first visit was short — just five days — but it introduced me to a landscape that would stay in my mind for years.

July 2022 — Returning to Leh

Nine years later, I returned to Leh with Pragati.

This time, she was coming with me.

Leh had been a distant dream for her. In her mind, it was almost an inaccessible place — somewhere far away in the mountains that required a great deal of effort to reach. I had a feeling that actually going there would change that perception.

It did.

We flew from Chennai to Delhi and then onwards to Leh.

The first two days were deliberately kept for acclimatisation. At high altitude, the best thing to do is often nothing at all. We took medication, slowed down and allowed ourselves time to get used to the altitude rather than immediately trying to conquer the place.

It worked. The altitude sickness I had built up in my own mind as something to be feared never really became a problem for either of us.

Our initial plan was to stay in a hotel in Leh. That changed when Pragati’s college friend, who was serving in the Army, heard that we had booked accommodation. He immediately asked us not to worry about hotels and arranged Army guesthouse accommodation according to our route.

That changed the character of the trip completely.

We stayed in Army accommodation in Leh, Partapur and Tangtse. Because we were in our late forties and were staying around Army establishments, some of the soldiers assumed we were senior officials. They would salute us whenever they saw us.

It was extremely awkward.

We were simply guests, but explaining that to every person we met would have been even more awkward, so we quietly accepted the salutes and moved on.

The food was another pleasant surprise. Meals in the Army establishments were simple, home-like and exceptionally good. After a day of travelling in the mountains, sitting down to that food was something we genuinely looked forward to.

Khardung La and Nubra

Once we had acclimatised, our Innova became our transport for the entire circuit — Leh, Nubra, Thang, Pangong Tso and back to Leh.

Khardung La was our first major encounter with the high mountain roads.

The pass itself was far more crowded than I had expected. Bikers and tourists were everywhere, patiently taking turns to photograph themselves beside the famous Khardung La sign.

The altitude, however, did not trouble us. Two days of acclimatisation had done its job.

From there we continued towards Nubra Valley.

Hunder was one of the memorable stops. The double-humped Bactrian camels were something I had wanted to see again, and the landscape itself was striking. We also tried some of the go-karting-style rides in the valley, which added a lighter side to the journey.

The Maitreya Buddha statue in Nubra was another sight that stayed with us. Its scale and setting made it feel completely different from anything we had encountered elsewhere in the trip.

We continued towards Turtuk and then Thang, moving progressively closer to the border.

Thang and the last post

Thang is not a place one simply drives into as a tourist. Access requires Army permission.

Our Army friend had arranged the permissions for us, including a visit towards the last post.

The experience was unique.

At one point we could see Pakistani Army posts across the landscape.

There was something almost surreal about standing there looking towards another country’s military positions and realising that while we were looking at them, they were quite possibly looking back at us.

Our driver was not particularly happy about going there. He appeared to prefer taking us to another tourist location from where we could have seen a similar landscape. But we had come specifically for this experience, and we stuck to the plan.

His irritation was evident for some time afterwards, until the journey eventually took us towards Pangong.

Pangong Tso

Pangong Tso was the highlight of the trip.

There are plenty of photographs of Pangong. They show the colours, the mountains and the enormous expanse of the lake. But photographs don’t really explain what it feels like to stand there.

Its beauty is something that has to be experienced.

The landscape seemed almost unreal — the lake stretching out between the mountains, constantly changing character with the light and the sky.

After seeing it, I understood why people speak about Pangong with such fascination. Even having visited Leh before, this felt like a completely different experience because I was seeing it through Pragati’s eyes as well.

Back to Leh

We returned to Leh after completing the circuit.

With the long-distance driving finished, we rented a Royal Enfield Meteor and spent the remaining time exploring around Leh together.

We rode towards Magnetic Hill, Gurudwara Pathar Sahib and the Sangam, enjoying the freedom of moving around at our own pace.

This part of the trip was different from the circuit in the Innova. The car had taken us across the major distances, but the motorcycle gave us the feeling of actually being on the road and in the landscape.

A different Leh for Pragati

For me, one of the most satisfying parts of this trip was seeing Pragati’s perception of Leh change.

She had imagined Ladakh as an inaccessible, almost unreachable destination. After actually spending a week there, the mental barrier disappeared.

Leh was not inaccessible.

It was simply a place with a very different geography.

There were roads, hotels, tourists, bikers, markets and all the other things one associates with a tourist destination. But surrounding all of that was an extraordinary landscape that made Leh unique.

Two journeys, one place

The contrast between my two visits is what makes Ladakh particularly meaningful to me.

In 2011, I was discovering the place with Manish. We were dealing with the early-season conditions, changing plans because of frozen roads and lakes, arranging permits and figuring out how to make the journey work.

In 2022, I returned with Pragati. The journey was more comfortable, better prepared and helped by the extraordinary generosity of an Army friend. We had already learnt how important acclimatisation was, and we were able to travel deeper into Ladakh than we had on the first visit.

Yet some things remained unchanged: the scale of the mountains, the clear night sky, the feeling of distance and the sense that every road was taking us somewhere extraordinary.

My 2011 visit introduced me to Ladakh.

The 2022 journey made it special because I could experience it with Pragati.

And somewhere between the early-season mountain roads, the clear Hunder night sky, the Army guesthouses, the awkward salutes, the Royal Enfield ride and the vast blue expanse of Pangong Tso, the two journeys reminded me of something I have learned repeatedly through travel: sometimes a place becomes more memorable not because it is new to you, but because you return to it years later and see it through someone else’s eyes.