Ladakh
Once part of the Silk Road trade route, Pangong Lake sits on the India-China border in India’s sublime Ladakh region.
Is Ladakh the new Tibet?
By Geoff Raby
Once part of the Silk Road trade route, Pangong Lake sits on the India-China border in India’s sublime Ladakh region. From September to November, dense vegetation on the steeply sloped hills is a variegated sweep of yellows, gold and browns. Late blooming flowers in old Mughal and colonial British gardens are a mass of colour. When I arrive, expansive Dal Lake is glistening.
And so it begins…
My guide from January, Usman Qayoom of Kashmir Walks, is waiting at the airport to welcome me with an exaggeratedly colourful bunch of local roses. It’s noon and the prayers from the muezzins have begun as we thread our way through the traffic.
It feels good to be back in a Muslim country. Since my first encounter with these incantations in Java nearly half a century ago, they always stir images of far-distant lands in hard-to-reach places; of unfamiliar customs and ritual.
It’s a Friday, and Qayoom leaves to attend Friday prayers after he’s dropped me off at the Karan Mahal Hotel, high above Srinagar on an old royal estate with uninterrupted views of Dal Lake.
The hotel is one of many gems to be found around Kashmir. Most visitors think of staying on houseboats, but other options are just as charming, and typically more comfortable. Built in the 1920s, Karan Mahal was the former residence of the Crown Prince of Jammu and Kashmir.
Modernised throughout, fit for a king, it is a veritable museum of 1920s and ’30s interior design and decoration, surrounded by a garden and an old apple orchard.
When Qayoom returns, we head to Hazratbal Mosque: it happens to be Kashmir’s holiest day when the Grand Iman displays to thousands of the faithful a single hair of the last prophet, preserved in a glass vial. As he chants prayers, the crowd sings in response. I glimpse the prophet’s hair from 60 metres away and three storeys up.
Kashmir is captivating in so many ways, but it’s the interplay of history, culture and religion that hooks you. Saffron – known locally as red gold – from Persia brought by Sufi saints turns fields purple in late October. Willow trees from England line water channels and streams, initially to provide valuable wood for building and for cricket bats, favoured by Sachin Tendulkar, the highest run-scorer in history.
The pleasure gardens of the Mughal (Persian rulers of India) remain sanctuaries for calm reflection 400 years on, sporting ancient Persian chinar trees over 50 metres high. There are mosques based on the square wooden architecture adopted from Tibetan Buddhists whom the Muslims replaced.
Srinagar remains a popular retreat from the stifling heat and humidity across the north Indian plain that builds relentlessly until monsoon breaks, and Gulmarg (Meadow of Flowers) has become an attractive winter skiing resort.
However, it remains a city under occupation by security forces. Things have vastly improved, and Kashmir’s tranquillity today contrasts with the “times of troubles”, as locals call the period from 1991-2003. Secessionist movements, both home-grown and supported by Pakistan, conducted terrorist actions to which Delhi responded forcefully.
Security remains ubiquitous, but it has become like the wallpaper against which people calmly go about their lives. As Qayoom says, his generation of those born in the early 1990s “grew up under the shadow of the gun”. While residents still reflect on Kashmir’s independent past, they want a more peaceful life. People are friendly and welcoming, and I always feel safe.
On a lighter note, a visit to Srinagar wouldn’t be complete without at least one night on a houseboat. Like many romantic ideas, houseboats have their downsides as well, and not just in winter. Given you can only reach them by small wooden boats (shikaras) and an oarsman, they’re inconvenient for daily touring.
I spend a night on the Mascot Houseboat. Comfortable and serving tasty home-cooked Indian meals on board, it’s on Nigeen Lake, a bit out of town and quieter than the famous Dal Lake. Sunset brings families of chestnut teal ducks returning home, and the morning sees shikaras drifting by on the luminous lake, providing moments of ethereal transcendence.
One of the greatest road trips
Time passes quickly up here, and winter is coming. Leaving Nigeen Lake, we cross the Indus River, ascending the Sindh Valley – it’s thick with conifers under the watchful eye of imperious 4760-metre-high Thajiwas Glacier. It’s like Ticino, Switzerland, but on a vastly grander scale.
After lunch in Sonmarg, we ascend for over an hour, inflicting severe punishment on our vehicle’s straining gear box as yet more vast mountainous vistas open up with every sharp switchback.
This is one of the world’s greatest road trips. Closed half the year, the 434-kilometre road to Leh crosses three high passes that range from 3550 to 4078 metres – Zojila, Hambuting-La, and Fatula – and it’s heavily used by trucks and military transports. Two days are a safe minimum, we take four, as there’s much to see along the way.
Trucks travel along the daunting Zojila mountain pass in Kargil district. Bloombergnone
Zojila Pass is known as “zero point” – the border between verdant lush Kashmir and the deserts of Ladakh; some 180 kilometres further east from the pass, Tibetan Buddhism takes over from Islam at Rangdum Monastery.
Next is Kargil – an important trade centre in the 18th and 19th centuries, it’s now often left off tourist itineraries. The Silk Road Museum, reminders of the 1999 Kargil War, and the old town where now dilapidated caravansaries once accommodated weary traders are worth seeing. The Kargil Hotel (with its own bomb shelter) has a delightful, shaded garden, comfortable rooms and friendly staff.
About 180 kilometres east of Zojila Pass, you’ll spot the Rangdum Buddhist monastery in Ladakh. Alamynone
Fourteen kilometres out of town, the Indian and Pakistani armies face each other along a 5000-metre-high ridge. The Line of Control marks the frontier. Ibrahim, a resident from the abandoned bombed-out village of Hunderman, tells me he was 16 or 17 when war broke out. His village was shelled over four months and about 120 villagers sheltered in a cave perched above the valley floor. ”This is why the tribal people from the mountains share a bond with each other,” says the guide employed by Qayoom for his specialist knowledge of the area. “Everyone has to pull together to survive.”
Nearby is the Suru Valley, where, in the hamlet of Apati, you’ll find a magnificent and remarkably complete first-century AD sculpture of Maitreya, the Future Buddha.
To Kargil’s north, after crossing Hambuting Pass, is the Aryan valley – infamous for Hitler’s mad belief that the “master race” hailed from this
beautiful, utterly remote place. I saw no locals with blond hair or blue eyes, although a guide assured me they were there. Returning to Kargil, we stop to inspect another Maitreyan statue from the seventh century AD.
From Kargil to Leh, my new driver, Murtaza Ali, is a local Balti tribesman whose weathered skin and stoop belie his 42 years. Having driven these mountains for the past two decades, he happily navigates the most treacherous bends and knows every point of interest along the road.
Leh is home to about 31,000 people, of whom two-thirds are men. It’s now effectively a garrison for the Indian Army to protect against Chinese border incursions.
On an east-west ridge overlooking the Indus River, to Leh’s south, lies the enormous Zanskar range. I spend a few nights at the Grand Dragon Hotel, each day waking to breathtaking views of its 6000-metre peaks.
Significant Buddhist monasteries, temples and the ancient seat of government, copied from the Potala Palace in Lhasa, are east of the town. This area is littered with crumbling white stupas in their thousands. Leh is more Tibetan Buddhist than Lhasa these days. Religious freedom in India allows for a more authentic Buddhist experience in Leh than you will ever get in China-controlled Tibet.
With autumn well in retreat among the deciduous poplars and willows along the river, the background of high peaks makes for striking views. Climate change is being felt. Some 90 per cent of villages and farms in the region rely on water from glaciers that are shrinking rapidly each year.
In Leh, I reconnect from previous visits with Noboo Tsering, who owns Snow Man Tours. A couple of years ago, he took me out to spot snow leopards. His knowledgeable guide, Gyatso, and Noboo’s brother, Wang Chuk, this time take me deep into the Nubra Valley.
Nubra Valley and its Silk Road descendants
From Leh, a long day follows crossing Khardung La, the second-highest sealed road pass in the world at 5602 meters. It’s snowing, making the trip more treacherous.
Nubra’s expansive landscape is virtually beyond imagination. At its widest, it is two to three kilometres across a flat river plain, a U-shaped valley carved out during the last Ice Age containing the Shyok River rising in the Karakoram on China’s border and the Nubra River fed by the Siachen Glacier on Pakistan’s – the “world’s highest battlefield”. At an altitude of 6115 metres and 75 kilometres long, it is India’s biggest glacier.
Stone Hedge Hotel at Hundar is a convenient base. An oasis fed by glaciers, surrounded by moraine, the hotel looks directly east towards a cluster of seven peaks over 6000 metres. The closest, Yamantaka, provides a spectacular canvas for the sun on which to paint its morning and evening colours. The hotel’s deck is made for admiring Yamantaka, while nibbling momos (dumplings) from the outdoor kitchen.
Here our search for Bactrian camels begins. Truth be told, we don’t have to look too hard – they’re now a tourist attraction. Shafi, a fifth-generation descendant from Xinjiang merchants, explains that camels were not used in the high mountains between Ley and Yarkand. Wealthy Xinjiang merchants introduced them for personal transport. In 1959, when China closed the borders, families were stuck in Nubra. Some went to Leh and Kashmir, others to Turkey; many left their camels behind, ensuring a pool of breeding stock, the results of which still delight tourists today.
Further up the valley is the start of the Silk Road route across the Karakoram mountains. Following the Nubra River north, after two hours is the hamlet of Sasoma, past which foreigners are forbidden. Here traders began their 30-day trek across the two major ranges to China. It was from this point that the first European explorers set off across the Western Himalaya in the 1850s.
It’s now physically (and politically) unusable. Locals say along this route, bleached bones of the dead provide a white-lit trail to follow. High above the banks on a near-vertical wall, the old track remains visible – until it disappears behind a sharp ridge.
And it’s here we strike gold. Tsering Wangyan, a weathered 77-year-old Ladakhi, worked as a civilian for the Indian Army for 16 years, carting supplies along the fragment of the Silk Road we are now gazing at.
He would make six trips each year to high-altitude military posts on the India-China border, his horse-and-mule train taking around five days.
Asked about Muslim descendants of former Silk Road traders, he tells a similar story to Shafi. Several Xinjiang families had settled in the region but fled to Kargil in 1949 fearing repatriation back to China. Chatting to Tsering through my guide Gyatso, the cold begins entering warm spaces, creeping across my skin with a tightening grip like a malicious vine. Here, in this desolate place, he seems like a tenuous link to a time when caravans of precious goods from Yarkand and Leh rattled across the high passes.
On the way back to Stone Hedge, we see urials, ibex and bharals (blue sheep), all favourite foods of the snow leopard.
On reaching the hotel, we’re handed a message from Shafi that his 90- year-old father, Hadji Abdulah Razza Jamshi, is on his way to meet with us.
Sitting in the late afternoon sun on carpets from Khotan, eating dried fruit and nuts while sipping salted milk tea, Hadji recounts his life and family background. He was from the region – from a moderately wealthy family, he was educated, and worked as a teacher of Urdu until his retirement. With chiselled features, smooth skin and sparkling eyes, he’s full of life.
Two years ago, Hadji published a small book on Silk Road traders now translated into English, in which he recorded the length and time each stage took from Sasoma to Yarkand.
His own father had married a local Ladakhi and stayed, while many others accepted Turkey’s offer of asylum. Some half-dozen descendant families remained in Hundar, but all are now mixed blood with Ladakhis.
Next morning as we are preparing for our return to Leh, we hear that near Stone Hedge, a snow leopard has just taken down an ibex, its carcass still warm.
The fringe of the Indian frontier is the edge of existence. What keeps me returning time and again isn’t just the scenery, people, cultures, history, wildlife and physical challenges. It’s the fact this region makes you feel small. It is, essentially, the exhilaration of insignificance.
Geoff Raby travelled at his own expense. He was Australia’s ambassador to China from 2007-11.