Ladakh High-Altitude Circuit

About this pack

A 7-day premium trip to Leh, India, taking in Pangong Lake, Nubra Valley dunes, Thiksey Monastery and Khardung La pass.

Inside the Ladakh High-Altitude Circuit trip

Ladakh High-Altitude Circuit opens at Pangong Tso, an endorheic lake stretching across eastern Ladakh and into Tibet's Ngari Prefecture at an elevation of 4,300 metres. Some 134 kilometres long and up to 5 kilometres wide, the lake sits in a landlocked basin separated from the Indus river system by a low ridge, its saline water freezing over in winter despite the altitude; the western reaches run more saline than the shallower, more alkaline waters to the east. Historically the name Pangong Tso applied only to the westernmost of five interconnected sub-lakes, known collectively in Tibetan as Tsomo Nganglha Ringpo, and today the lake is bisected by the Line of Actual Control between India and China, with roughly two-thirds of its surface lying on the Chinese side and the remainder within Ladakh.

From the lake the circuit crosses into Nubra, a historical region of Ladakh whose Tibetan name, Dumra, means "valley of flowers," carved by the meeting of the Nubra and Shyok rivers into a tri-armed valley separating the Ladakh and Karakoram ranges. Sitting at an average elevation above 3,000 metres within a high desert landscape, Nubra's irrigated villages nonetheless produce wheat, barley, peas and fruit, including apricots and walnuts, and its dunes near the village of Hunder still support a small population of Bactrian camels, a legacy of the valley's role on the historic caravan route linking Leh with Yarkand in Central Asia. The main road into the valley, and the route most travellers take, climbs over the Khardung La pass from Leh.

The route continues to Thiksey Monastery, a Buddhist monastery of the Gelug school set on a hilltop about 19 kilometres east of Leh and noted for its resemblance to the Potala Palace in Lhasa. Founded in the 15th century following the visit of the Gelug teacher Sherab Zangpo, who is said to have carried a small relic statue as a gift from Je Tsongkhapa himself to the King of Ladakh, the present monastery was established soon after by Palden Zangpo on the right bank of the Indus, in line with a prediction attributed to Tsongkhapa. Rising twelve storeys up the hillside, the monastery houses a 15-metre statue of Maitreya, the largest such figure in Ladakh, built to commemorate a 1970 visit by the 14th Dalai Lama, alongside an assembly hall whose walls carry murals of the Wheel of Life and 225 volumes of the Tengyur wrapped in silk.

The trail closes at Khardung La, the mountain pass 40 kilometres north of Leh that carries the main road into the Nubra Valley at an elevation of 5,359 metres. Historically part of the caravan route linking Leh to Kashgar, along which some 10,000 horses and camels once travelled annually, the pass was opened to motor traffic in 1976 by the Border Roads Organisation and remains a vital supply route for the Indian Army toward the Siachen Glacier as well as a principal artery for high-altitude tourism in Ladakh — a fitting close to a circuit that has already carried the traveller across a disputed high-altitude lake, a Silk Road valley of orchards and dunes, and a twelve-storey monastery modelled on the Potala itself.

• Pangong Tso — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Nubra — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Thikse Monastery — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Khardung La — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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