Ladakh - A Visit to Himalayan India

After a fair bit of time traveling through the heat and humidity of South and Southeast Asia, we longed for a respite from the weather. We also wanted to see a different part of India, and so we headed to the Himalayas, and to Ladakh. This region of India shares a border with Tibet and much of the local population is Tibetan Buddhist. It was an amazing flight into Ladakh - our plane sliced through a range of snow-capped Himalayan peaks as it descended into Leh, the region’s main city.

This was an opportunity to experience some of India’s considerable diversity, since the culture was nothing like what we had seen in other parts of the country. Oh, cows and donkeys still roamed the streets and the hotels all experienced daily power outages, but otherwise you’d be hard pressed to know that you were still in India. The colorful saris on the women were gone, replaced by shawls and long dresses. The local restaurants advertised Tibetan fare. The city was ringed by mountains. Here was the view from the terrace of our hotel (a $28 room):



We enjoyed the cooler air and even the chance to put on a sweatshirt in the early mornings or evenings. Of course, at more than 13,000 feet the air is also considerably thinner, which made walking up hills and stairs a chore. But the thing to do in Ladakh is to explore local Buddhist monasteries (gompas), which are seemingly all perched high above local villages. So we spent a lot of time walking slowly up hills. ;-) But the views from the gompas are incredible and were worth the effort.

One morning, we arose before sunrise in order to catch a ride to the Thiskey gompa in a nearby village, where the monks allow outsiders to observe their morning puja. There, we sat on the cold stone floor of their prayer room, as the sun rose slowly in the sky above the Himalayan peaks, and watched as the monks chanted, played music, prayed, and greeted the day.