Photo Link:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/NzdCRwiAmgRUwQ9C6
Ladakh is quite simply the most visually stunning place that I have ever been to. It is an incredibly desolate and stark landscape, and it’s amazing how people have managed to settle in and live there for so long. It’s a part of the Tibetan plateau and culturally is incredibly similar to Tibet, so it really did feel like visiting another country – to me it just underscores how incredibly diverse India is.
Even moreso than Nepal, Ladakh really reminded me of the video game Uncharted 2 (which makes sense since that was set in Tibet). In many ways, Ladakh was sort of a “better” Nepal for me – the high desert, barren rocky mountains to the north and snow-capped mountains to the south, the prayer flags and stupas located in the most inaccessible yet gorgeous locations, and the monasteries were all straight out of a story book. I went with my uncle, aunt, and my cousin’s friend on a week-long trip here to track snow leopards. While we unfortunately did not see any, it was still an incredible trip. It was pretty cold (temperatures dipped to -20 Celsius at one point, before factoring in windchill), but for the most part I was comfortable in my 3-4 layers. Winter is definitely tolerable in quick spurts like this but I am so glad that I don’t live in the cold anymore and won’t be seeing anything resembling this weather for a long long time.
We flew into Leh, which has an elevation of ~3.5k meters, so spent the first few days acclimatizing to the altitude. We were based in this really nice hotel called the Grand Dragon, and did some road trips the first few days to check out some monasteries, scenery, and look for some (non-leopard) wildlife. We also attempted to drive to a lake, but a little over halfway there (at an elevation of ~5k meters) the road was snowed out so we had to turn around…this was definitely the single coldest part of the trip, with the winds actually making almost my whole body go numb in the brief time we went outside for pictures.
In terms of the starkness, the only real comparison I have is the Black Rock Desert, but the extremes of the temperature in Ladakh definitely made it seem even more barren. It legitimately looked like an alien landscape at times, and it’s pretty cool how literally every single view you had while driving around was jaw dropping. Speaking of driving around, the Border Roads Organization (BRO for short) had some fantastic road signs to discourage speeding. My favorites included “After Whiskey Driving Risky”, “I Like You But Not So Fast”, and the amazingly sexist “Don’t Gossip He’s Driving”. There were literally Indian army outposts every ~5-10 km on the road (Ladakh was a part of Kashmir until recently, and borders both China and Pakistan), so the roads were actually fantastic, especially considering the geography and landscape.
Probably the coolest thing I saw on this trip was the convergence of the Indus and Zanskar rivers. The Indus was a turquoise blue and the Zanskar was a dark blue – these colors are due to mineral content in the rivers and some other science stuff that is way above my head. It legit looked like paint mixing and did not look real at all – really one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.
The tour was done through this incredible organization called the Snow Leopard Lodge, which is based in a small (7 households, for reference) village called Ulley, which is a few hours northwest of Leh. The wildlife viewing here is much different than what you see in Africa – the sightings are not as common, and the distances are vast (if you see something closer than 500 meters, that’s considered “close”). It really makes you appreciate the sightings more. Some of the highlights here included seeing some massive vultures and eagles fly relatively close to us near the point where we got snowed out of the road, seeing blue sheep scale run around on nearly vertical cliff walls, and seeing seven wolves play around with each other (very similar to the time my sister and I saw the cheetah cubs playing with each other in Kenya!). Though the highlight of the wildlife for me was our very last day, when we found the tracks of a female snow leopard and her two cubs and spent all day tracking it. We unfortunately didn’t find the leopard and cubs, but it felt like real Rangers of the North shit from LOTR. The guys who worked for the lodge as spotters (all locals) were incredible, and I cannot recommend this operation enough. One of the spotters literally scaled a 500 meter hill/mountain and came down while tracking the tracks on the last day, and was barely panting after this ~30 minute adventure of his.
On a separate occasion, we also saw some snow leopard fur and urine spray (the spray according to Stenzin, the tracker with us that day), which they use to mark their territory. It was pretty eerie and cool to be so close to such an elusive cat, while still remaining so far from it.
Here are four articles written specifically about Snow Leopard tracking at the lodge that we stayed at, and these are all much better written than this post and help convey the feeling of hunting for the snow leopard:
https://www.ft.com/content/6de6630e-342b-11e8-a3ae-fd3fd4564aa6
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/asia/india/articles/snow-leopards-in-india-ladakh/
http://www.natgeotraveller.in/tracking-the-snow-leopard-in-ladakh/
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/asia/india-s-himalaya-tracking-the-elusive-snow-leopard-a6924891.html
Overall, this was definitely one of the most unique trips I’ve ever taken, and definitely one of the highlights of my retirement so far. The utter desolation and gorgeous mountain backdrop to the Tibetan Buddhist architecture and culture was, for me, really cool, and while we unfortunately didn’t spot a snow leopard the entire experience of looking for one was exhilarating.