You can read the previous enteries
Ladakh Trip - Planning here
Ladakh Trip - Day 1 (Delhi) here
I am certain waking up at 4 am in the morning isn’t something that anyone would enjoy, but this was going to be an exception. Each one of us was up and ready without a slightest of complain. Day 2 was here and we were all set to head to Leh, Ladakh!
It’s close to an hour and half worth of journey by flight from Delhi to Leh. Our flight was scheduled from Delhi at 6:45am and scheduled for arrival in Leh at 8am. Having a hotel booked near Delhi airport meant we were in the airport all checks cleared and waiting for flight well within the scheduled time. We were absolutely glad to leave behind the hot Delhi weather.
Once we had boarded the flight, we realized there was another very important aspect of the trip that we hadn’t really planned on and this particular point was going to lead to a lot of heart burn and elbow shoving. The very important question of who is going to get the window seats! Trust me on this, you want this planned and sorted out, because there is going to be lot of pushing around to catch that first glimpse of the Himalayas and the sight is not something you would want to miss. So here was our dilemma, we were 6, we had been given the whole row (3+3) so we had only 2 windows seat ( the fools we were, we insisted that we all get the same row, alas, if only we had insisted on 6 window seats).
The system had allotted window seats to Jayant and Sundeep, Saritha and Shilpa each got the middle seat myself and Abhishek were the unfortunate aisle seat occupants. It was agreed immediately though, that me and Abhishek will sit window seats while flying back from Leh to Delhi, thus partially satisfied we took our seats. (Not that we really had a choice, as no one else was willing to give us their seats, but enough of that!)
Once airborne when the moment actually came, the whole of the flight was up on their feet and shoving each other to catch the first glimpse of Himalayas through whichever windows they could manage. What made it unfortunate is, there was a cloud cover on the left side of the plane (that’s where myself, Saritha and Jayant were seated), pretty much ruining any hope of seeing anything from our side and this while from the right side we kept hearing all the gasps and sighs and oooh and aahs about how beautiful a sight it was outside. This meant all the folks sitting on the left side of the plane were out of their seats, and leaning over the right aisle seats to catch a glimpse. It was probably a miracle that the plane did not perform a roll considering everyone was leaning towards one side. I tried amidst all this to take turn to peek outside and the sight was definitely worthwhile all the shoving I had to do. (I am generally a nonviolent person otherwise).You will spend considerable time standing and leaning if you are unfortunate enough to get an aisle seat, so if you do plan the Ladakh trip via Delhi flight ensure you work out the window seat problem.
When it was time to land, it’s the flight attendants turn to shove us back into our seats, and amidst that I managed to get myself the middle seat. As you are about to land, you see more and more of the village valleys at the outskirts of the city which is quite a peculiar sight, patches of green amidst abundance of grey, sign of life in the middle of all the barren land. And then the mighty Indus river. The Leh airfield as you approach for the landing is quite a sight by itself, it nestles in the middle of the valley with the Indus River running horizontal on bottom side, the mountains on either sides of the runway and the city of Leh on the fourth side.
If not all, most of us had imagined we would feel a little bit wobbly as we get out of the flight due to lack of oxygen or the high altitude(courtesy all that we had been informed about), but it was not to be so. We got out quite steady to a very bright and clear sky, not too cold either. Infact quite warm contrary to what we had expected. The airfield consists of a single runway, and once you get out, you have to wait for a mini bus to pick you up and take you to the terminal. Photography is prohibited so no selfies! After short trip on the bus, you are dropped at quite a small terminal. (Almost a bus terminal). The airport is named "Kushok Bakula Rimpochhe Airport", and can claim to be one of the highest commercial airport in the world at almost 10000 ft. The security at this place is quite tight considering its strategic value, so resist from making any bomb or terrorist jokes. Once we had all our luggage we were all set to get out of the airport.
Courtesy the Ezeego travel agency, everything had already been set in place for this trip. This meant our driver for the 7 day trip was already waiting for us as soon as we were out. Anchuk was the person who was awaiting us with his Innova and in course of the 7 days it was going to be an absolute pleasure to have him around.All loaded up we started towards the city. The hotel booked for us was 10-15 minutes worth of drive from the airport. The road leading to our hotel from the airport seemed to have little traffic. Turns out, as Anchuk explained that we had landed in Ladakh during the last days of Kalchakra festival. So most of the people in Leh were in a different part of the city and we were quite lucky to be put up quite far away from there as it would have been quite crowded at just about now. (Almost 1.5 lakh people were expected to be visiting during the course of Kalchakra festival) You can read more about Kalchakra here.
Karakoram hotel was where we were going to be put for the course of the trip. Seemed to be centrally located as it took us only few minutes passing through the market to reach this place while driving. We could also see the Leh Palace close by and Shanti Stupa at some distance in another direction. So all in all, seemed to be quite strategically located. Once we got down from the car, the view that welcomed us was that of a very small pond right outside the hotel and in the horizon a beautiful panoramic view of the Himalayas. We were barely half an hour in Leh, and we were already quite impressed by the sights.
After completing the necessary formalities of check in, we were shown towards the pantry area for breakfast. Having had 1 round of breakfast already in Delhi airport didn't stop us from quickly grabbing another here. While we sat down to have a bite, the hotel owner sat down with us to quickly run through the details of what was planned for the 7 days we would stay with them. He insisted right away that we don’t step out on day 1, and went about telling us few stories about how folks had to cancel their whole trip because they didn't give themselves enough time to acclimatize. He had our attention alright, we were not really feeling sick or wobbly at the moment, but it made us a bit more hesitant as it was in line with whatever we had heard prior to the trip . Still, we kept our options open and insisted that by evening if we were not feeling any adverse effects, the least we could do is drive up to relatively closer, Leh Palace. A slightly disappointing news atleast for half the group was, that due to Kalchakra event, there won’t be any non-veg meals anywhere in Leh. Our group of 6 had 3 non vegetarians, and this news definitely didn’t go down quite well.
Having finished breakfast we were taken to our rooms on the top most floor (the hotel has three floors including the ground floor). We absolutely fell in love with the room we had been given simply because of the huge open sit out all our 3 rooms shared where you can sit and enjoy the beautiful panoramic Himalayan view. If you guys decide on Karakoram hotel, insist on getting the top most floor and the rooms adjacent to the sit out area, you would love the sight.
Once we had settled in and freshened up, we spent most of the morning outside in the sitout clicking away photos. After a while, as we still seemed quite steady on our foot and none of us seemed to be having any headaches or drowsiness we decided to test the water further by going for a short walk just around the hotel to buy snacks and fruits for the trips planned in the subsequent days. Most of the shops however were closed due to the Kalchakra festival so we were left roaming around in mostly empty streets and doing window shopping in the few open souvenir shops we could find. Finding nothing more to do, we returned back to the hotel for lunch.
A light lunch considering only veg menu followed in the afternoon, and as we seemed to be fairing just fine in terms of acclimatizing to Leh, we finalized to visit Leh Palace and Shanti Stupa in the evening. Having nothing more to do till evening, the group sat down to chat and relax enjoying the view from the sitout. Me and Abhishek however wanted to still explore a bit more, so we decided to head out again. We wandered off randomly in one of the alleyways that opened up closeby to our hotel. The narrow alley way took us through a maze of houses and beautiful gardens and finally opened into city market. The shops on this road varied from tourist agencies to hotels to souvenir shops and several bike hiring. We also came across a poster that advertised itself to be the world’s highest paint ball arena, after strolling through the main road for around 15-20 minutes, we again took a turn into another smaller alley that ran parallel to a small stream with heavy tree cover. Within few step to our pleasant surprise we seemed to be in a clearing that had an old Stupa complex. Unfortunately there was no one around to tell anything about the history of the place, so we made do with exploring the area ourselves. After a while of clueless roundabouts searching for anything that may explain to us the significance of the place, we decided to give up and head back as it about time we had planned to go to Leh Palace.
Back at hotel Anchuk was waiting for us with his car, so we didn't really waste much time getting ready and off we were to Leh palace.
Leh palace is a 17th century palace, modelled on the same lines as the Tibetan Lhasa palace. The Palace consists of 9 different levels and consist of several big and small rooms used ages ago by the royal family. The roof top of the palace provides a beautiful panoramic view of the whole valley and the city below and as such a beautiful lure to any photographer. The Palace also houses a museum that showcases several items used by the royal family. The palace is now maintained by ASI.
Tesmo Temple\Fort
At slightly higher elevation on the same hill is the Tesmo temple\fort. You have two options either you can walk the steep rise from Leh palace to Tesmo temple which is a good 20-30 mins hike, or there is a slightly longer but definitely easier road option, and any vehicle can drive you till here in matter of 10-15 mins. The Hike route consists of walking a hike trail that does not consists of any vegetation or support to hold onto but a well-trodden path, advisable not to attempt unless you are well acclimatized to this altitude. The Road option is what we took, as it was just day 1 and we still had all the warnings at the back of our mind.
Several rows of colourful and beautifully fluttering prayer flags greet you as you approach the Tesmo complex. One end of the prayer flags is anchored on a smaller hillock closeby which you can walk upto on a narrow pathway, the other end of the length is anchored to the Tesmo temple. The complex itself houses 2 temples and a fort (This is the highest building in the Leh skyline). The climb upto the temple complex is quite well laid, but the walk upto the watchtower is much more fun as it’s mostly gravel. The fort itself consists of brick laid walls, wooden rooms and wooden staircase that has survived the onslaught of time and the weather. Once you have reached the top there is a watch tower, where a wooden pathway that juts out from the wall of this tower lets you walk around the tower to catch a 360 view of the Leh skyline. The wooden pathway is barely wide enough for a person to walk around the tower, and would have served sentries to keep vigil over the city in the past. Abhishek who is scared of heights did manage to take a round around this He did this however, looking the opposite side(not facing the cliff) and hugging the wall with all his life. A foreign lady also helped him by ensuring she blocked his way back every time he decided to chicken out, while encouraging him instead to keep walking baby steps ahead. All in all, I would say nice little adventure hike to start Leh trip, or atleast we thought so till the time we saw a Ladhaki family with several kids walk in and completely made us look like amateurs. The kids seemed hyper and were running around all over the place and even looked amused looking at us trying to walk steady in the loose gravel of the watch tower.
It was already past 7 PM, and we were told we had barely an hours’ worth of daylight left. Yes, the days last longer in Leh during summer, which is a good thing for tourists as you get to spend more time exploring around. We decided to quickly head off to Shanti stupa and make the most of what was left of the day.
Shanti Stupa is a recent addition to Leh landscape. It was constructed around 1991, by a Japanese Buddhist. The stupa is supposed to contain few relics from Buddha’s life at its base. The stupa complex was open only from outside while we reached as the inside complex had closed off for the day. However the outside complex is still a beautiful place to be as this too provides another panoramic view of Leh city. The Stupa itself consists of a Buddha status and several relief depicting stories from Buddha life. The shanti stupa was built to promote world peace and prosperity and also to symbolize the close ties between Japan and India specifically Ladakh.
We finally called it a day and headed back to hotel to have dinner. The food atleast in day one was your regular food that we will get anywhere in India consisting of rice dal and rotis. We had no luck getting Ladhaki food atleast today and still looked forward to it. Although it was quite a long day already, we still decided to push it a bit longer by spending some time sitting in the open terrace looking up at the vast number of stars. Abhishek, showed his photography skills by clicking some awesome night photos. Finally at 11 Pm we were ready to hit the bed and brought an end to a very exciting day that started 4 am in the morning.
Ladakh Trip - Day 3(Leh) will follow.
Ladakh Trip - Planning here
Ladakh Trip - Day 1 (Delhi) here
I am certain waking up at 4 am in the morning isn’t something that anyone would enjoy, but this was going to be an exception. Each one of us was up and ready without a slightest of complain. Day 2 was here and we were all set to head to Leh, Ladakh!
It’s close to an hour and half worth of journey by flight from Delhi to Leh. Our flight was scheduled from Delhi at 6:45am and scheduled for arrival in Leh at 8am. Having a hotel booked near Delhi airport meant we were in the airport all checks cleared and waiting for flight well within the scheduled time. We were absolutely glad to leave behind the hot Delhi weather.
Once we had boarded the flight, we realized there was another very important aspect of the trip that we hadn’t really planned on and this particular point was going to lead to a lot of heart burn and elbow shoving. The very important question of who is going to get the window seats! Trust me on this, you want this planned and sorted out, because there is going to be lot of pushing around to catch that first glimpse of the Himalayas and the sight is not something you would want to miss. So here was our dilemma, we were 6, we had been given the whole row (3+3) so we had only 2 windows seat ( the fools we were, we insisted that we all get the same row, alas, if only we had insisted on 6 window seats).
The system had allotted window seats to Jayant and Sundeep, Saritha and Shilpa each got the middle seat myself and Abhishek were the unfortunate aisle seat occupants. It was agreed immediately though, that me and Abhishek will sit window seats while flying back from Leh to Delhi, thus partially satisfied we took our seats. (Not that we really had a choice, as no one else was willing to give us their seats, but enough of that!)
Once airborne when the moment actually came, the whole of the flight was up on their feet and shoving each other to catch the first glimpse of Himalayas through whichever windows they could manage. What made it unfortunate is, there was a cloud cover on the left side of the plane (that’s where myself, Saritha and Jayant were seated), pretty much ruining any hope of seeing anything from our side and this while from the right side we kept hearing all the gasps and sighs and oooh and aahs about how beautiful a sight it was outside. This meant all the folks sitting on the left side of the plane were out of their seats, and leaning over the right aisle seats to catch a glimpse. It was probably a miracle that the plane did not perform a roll considering everyone was leaning towards one side. I tried amidst all this to take turn to peek outside and the sight was definitely worthwhile all the shoving I had to do. (I am generally a nonviolent person otherwise).You will spend considerable time standing and leaning if you are unfortunate enough to get an aisle seat, so if you do plan the Ladakh trip via Delhi flight ensure you work out the window seat problem.
When it was time to land, it’s the flight attendants turn to shove us back into our seats, and amidst that I managed to get myself the middle seat. As you are about to land, you see more and more of the village valleys at the outskirts of the city which is quite a peculiar sight, patches of green amidst abundance of grey, sign of life in the middle of all the barren land. And then the mighty Indus river. The Leh airfield as you approach for the landing is quite a sight by itself, it nestles in the middle of the valley with the Indus River running horizontal on bottom side, the mountains on either sides of the runway and the city of Leh on the fourth side.
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| Abhishek got to be the first to set foot in Ladakhi Soil :P |
If not all, most of us had imagined we would feel a little bit wobbly as we get out of the flight due to lack of oxygen or the high altitude(courtesy all that we had been informed about), but it was not to be so. We got out quite steady to a very bright and clear sky, not too cold either. Infact quite warm contrary to what we had expected. The airfield consists of a single runway, and once you get out, you have to wait for a mini bus to pick you up and take you to the terminal. Photography is prohibited so no selfies! After short trip on the bus, you are dropped at quite a small terminal. (Almost a bus terminal). The airport is named "Kushok Bakula Rimpochhe Airport", and can claim to be one of the highest commercial airport in the world at almost 10000 ft. The security at this place is quite tight considering its strategic value, so resist from making any bomb or terrorist jokes. Once we had all our luggage we were all set to get out of the airport.
Courtesy the Ezeego travel agency, everything had already been set in place for this trip. This meant our driver for the 7 day trip was already waiting for us as soon as we were out. Anchuk was the person who was awaiting us with his Innova and in course of the 7 days it was going to be an absolute pleasure to have him around.All loaded up we started towards the city. The hotel booked for us was 10-15 minutes worth of drive from the airport. The road leading to our hotel from the airport seemed to have little traffic. Turns out, as Anchuk explained that we had landed in Ladakh during the last days of Kalchakra festival. So most of the people in Leh were in a different part of the city and we were quite lucky to be put up quite far away from there as it would have been quite crowded at just about now. (Almost 1.5 lakh people were expected to be visiting during the course of Kalchakra festival) You can read more about Kalchakra here.
Karakoram hotel was where we were going to be put for the course of the trip. Seemed to be centrally located as it took us only few minutes passing through the market to reach this place while driving. We could also see the Leh Palace close by and Shanti Stupa at some distance in another direction. So all in all, seemed to be quite strategically located. Once we got down from the car, the view that welcomed us was that of a very small pond right outside the hotel and in the horizon a beautiful panoramic view of the Himalayas. We were barely half an hour in Leh, and we were already quite impressed by the sights.
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| Panaromic view that greets you at the hotel. |
Having finished breakfast we were taken to our rooms on the top most floor (the hotel has three floors including the ground floor). We absolutely fell in love with the room we had been given simply because of the huge open sit out all our 3 rooms shared where you can sit and enjoy the beautiful panoramic Himalayan view. If you guys decide on Karakoram hotel, insist on getting the top most floor and the rooms adjacent to the sit out area, you would love the sight.
 |
| Leh palace, as seen from our sit out |
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| Tesmo Complex, as seen from the sitout |
Once we had settled in and freshened up, we spent most of the morning outside in the sitout clicking away photos. After a while, as we still seemed quite steady on our foot and none of us seemed to be having any headaches or drowsiness we decided to test the water further by going for a short walk just around the hotel to buy snacks and fruits for the trips planned in the subsequent days. Most of the shops however were closed due to the Kalchakra festival so we were left roaming around in mostly empty streets and doing window shopping in the few open souvenir shops we could find. Finding nothing more to do, we returned back to the hotel for lunch.
 |
| No wasting time :P |
A light lunch considering only veg menu followed in the afternoon, and as we seemed to be fairing just fine in terms of acclimatizing to Leh, we finalized to visit Leh Palace and Shanti Stupa in the evening. Having nothing more to do till evening, the group sat down to chat and relax enjoying the view from the sitout. Me and Abhishek however wanted to still explore a bit more, so we decided to head out again. We wandered off randomly in one of the alleyways that opened up closeby to our hotel. The narrow alley way took us through a maze of houses and beautiful gardens and finally opened into city market. The shops on this road varied from tourist agencies to hotels to souvenir shops and several bike hiring. We also came across a poster that advertised itself to be the world’s highest paint ball arena, after strolling through the main road for around 15-20 minutes, we again took a turn into another smaller alley that ran parallel to a small stream with heavy tree cover. Within few step to our pleasant surprise we seemed to be in a clearing that had an old Stupa complex. Unfortunately there was no one around to tell anything about the history of the place, so we made do with exploring the area ourselves. After a while of clueless roundabouts searching for anything that may explain to us the significance of the place, we decided to give up and head back as it about time we had planned to go to Leh Palace.
 |
| A statue in the old Stupa complex |
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| The Stupa we stumbled into! |
Back at hotel Anchuk was waiting for us with his car, so we didn't really waste much time getting ready and off we were to Leh palace.
Leh palace is a 17th century palace, modelled on the same lines as the Tibetan Lhasa palace. The Palace consists of 9 different levels and consist of several big and small rooms used ages ago by the royal family. The roof top of the palace provides a beautiful panoramic view of the whole valley and the city below and as such a beautiful lure to any photographer. The Palace also houses a museum that showcases several items used by the royal family. The palace is now maintained by ASI.
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| Entrance to Leh palace |
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| View of Leh from Palace. |
Tesmo Temple\Fort
At slightly higher elevation on the same hill is the Tesmo temple\fort. You have two options either you can walk the steep rise from Leh palace to Tesmo temple which is a good 20-30 mins hike, or there is a slightly longer but definitely easier road option, and any vehicle can drive you till here in matter of 10-15 mins. The Hike route consists of walking a hike trail that does not consists of any vegetation or support to hold onto but a well-trodden path, advisable not to attempt unless you are well acclimatized to this altitude. The Road option is what we took, as it was just day 1 and we still had all the warnings at the back of our mind.
 |
| Tesmo complex and the hiking path as seen from Leh palace |
Several rows of colourful and beautifully fluttering prayer flags greet you as you approach the Tesmo complex. One end of the prayer flags is anchored on a smaller hillock closeby which you can walk upto on a narrow pathway, the other end of the length is anchored to the Tesmo temple. The complex itself houses 2 temples and a fort (This is the highest building in the Leh skyline). The climb upto the temple complex is quite well laid, but the walk upto the watchtower is much more fun as it’s mostly gravel. The fort itself consists of brick laid walls, wooden rooms and wooden staircase that has survived the onslaught of time and the weather. Once you have reached the top there is a watch tower, where a wooden pathway that juts out from the wall of this tower lets you walk around the tower to catch a 360 view of the Leh skyline. The wooden pathway is barely wide enough for a person to walk around the tower, and would have served sentries to keep vigil over the city in the past. Abhishek who is scared of heights did manage to take a round around this He did this however, looking the opposite side(not facing the cliff) and hugging the wall with all his life. A foreign lady also helped him by ensuring she blocked his way back every time he decided to chicken out, while encouraging him instead to keep walking baby steps ahead. All in all, I would say nice little adventure hike to start Leh trip, or atleast we thought so till the time we saw a Ladhaki family with several kids walk in and completely made us look like amateurs. The kids seemed hyper and were running around all over the place and even looked amused looking at us trying to walk steady in the loose gravel of the watch tower.
It was already past 7 PM, and we were told we had barely an hours’ worth of daylight left. Yes, the days last longer in Leh during summer, which is a good thing for tourists as you get to spend more time exploring around. We decided to quickly head off to Shanti stupa and make the most of what was left of the day.
Shanti Stupa is a recent addition to Leh landscape. It was constructed around 1991, by a Japanese Buddhist. The stupa is supposed to contain few relics from Buddha’s life at its base. The stupa complex was open only from outside while we reached as the inside complex had closed off for the day. However the outside complex is still a beautiful place to be as this too provides another panoramic view of Leh city. The Stupa itself consists of a Buddha status and several relief depicting stories from Buddha life. The shanti stupa was built to promote world peace and prosperity and also to symbolize the close ties between Japan and India specifically Ladakh.
We finally called it a day and headed back to hotel to have dinner. The food atleast in day one was your regular food that we will get anywhere in India consisting of rice dal and rotis. We had no luck getting Ladhaki food atleast today and still looked forward to it. Although it was quite a long day already, we still decided to push it a bit longer by spending some time sitting in the open terrace looking up at the vast number of stars. Abhishek, showed his photography skills by clicking some awesome night photos. Finally at 11 Pm we were ready to hit the bed and brought an end to a very exciting day that started 4 am in the morning.
Ladakh Trip - Day 3(Leh) will follow.
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