Why should you travel for 2 days, acclimatize for 3, and walk for 8 more?
For me, it was the wildly changing landscape, surreal high-altitude desert land, and the solitude of walking in spaces that are so evidently ancient, it feels like you’ve travelled through time. Along with the joy and meditative discomfort that walking for hours in rough terrain brings, of course :)
I have images from our trek that are burned into my brain, and I will be in awe of them for the rest of my life, I am so grateful I got to witness them!
For the first three days, we walked mostly uphill. Initially, we struggled, took breaks….and then found our rhythms. Once it turned into a rhythm, it was a meditative experience. And WHAT AN EXPERIENCE! We started from the lush green grasslands of Ladarcha to walking in between ancient rock structures at 14,000 feet to snow-and-ice-filled mountains and the gorgeous Parang glacier at 18,293 feet.
Day 1-3
On our first day, halfway to our camp, we crossed Tenzin’s (our homestay owner) donkey who had decided that he was done walking a few weeks ago, and wanted to live and chill on this particular grassy patch of land. So Tenzin decided to let him be until he was ready to come back. He looked happy. Our first camp was lush and green, filled with little fossils that were beautiful reminders of how young we are, and how ancient our planet is. That night, it started raining and we got stuck there for another day! None of us minded the pause as much as the biting cold that the rain brought with it (which would only go on to become more biting.)
The slight drizzle and rain followed us for the next couple of days, and it ended with us crossing the pass on a day when it snowed! We got up at 3 am to walk for the next 12 (give or take?) hours. It was white, it was cold, wet and uncomfortable! Yet, it was one of the most awe-inspiring and beautiful experiences for all of us (if I can speak for all of us lol).
The summit push is the day that brings out the beauty of hiking and trekking in the mountains for me. It’s the experience that begs the question - ‘WHY do we put ourselves through pain and discomfort?’, and then answers it beautifully.
The answer is in the discomfort of starting early, the lack of sleep, the cold (and wet from the rain), resisting the urge to rest more, pushing through the urge to stop (it’s too cold to stop) until you get lost in the beauty around you, your rhythm of walking, and even finding a rhythm in pushing yourself more.
This day, we got lost in the dark (for a minute), watched the sunrise, and then pushed through every urge to stop, because stopping meant losing body heat. The last push to the top was all white, and foggy, and one of the most beautiful and surreal surroundings I’ve witnessed. Mohit told us that usually, this pass is empty, but we had long-range patrol trainees of the ITBP to give us company. Reaching the top was only half the day, and the next bit was spent making sure the horses and donkeys crossed the La (the path was snowed out, and that made it more dangerous) because no load-bearing horses meant no point in us going ahead.
After waiting at the top for some time, surprisingly, it was our cute donkeys and our guide who bravely went on to make a path for all of us (including the border patrol guys) to come down, and then the next few hours were spent sliding down fresh snow and walking on precarious, cracking glacial ice.
Day 4 -8
Once we crossed the ‘La’, the next few days were loooong never-ending walks on (mostly) flat land. It’s strange because you don’t expect a flat desert-like land at this altitude, and the distances are SO misleading visually, but still SURREAL. Now, we were essentially walking from Spiti to Ladakh, on ancient trade routes. The landscape changed every few hours, and each one was more alien-looking than the last. At one point, I felt convinced that Star Wars was shot here. It constantly felt UNREAL. In this region, everything is alien, including the flora and fauna.
Typically the last campsite is next to the gorgeous, expansive Tso Moriri lake (which feels like an ocean) But, due to intense blisters and shoe bites that some of us experienced, we shifted our last campsite to a little before the tsomoriri. This turned out to be a great decision, because we reached our campsite early, while it was warm, and got to witness and sit in this magical oasis in the middle of the desert. We shared our campsite with a cute Pika colony and spent most of our day looking at the sudden variety of life after days spent walking on extremely barren land. We saw Khiang (wild donkeys), wild hares, marmots, and bar-headed geese. Wolves are also known to frequent that area but (thankfully?) we saw none.
Last but not least, The Tso Moriri is a gorgeous expansive ocean-like lake, and I so want to dive in it properly one day!
This trek is an extraordinarily beautiful, surreal trek with views you will probably not witness anywhere else. Even though I have written so much, there are no words that can truly describe what we got to witness. Travelling with Banjara made it even more beautiful, filled with scrumptious food, chai, and hot water in the morning brought to our tent (which felt like a luxury in the crazy low temperatures) and a sense of safety because Mohit and his team knew this land so well!