The breathless beauty of Ladakh

I will always remember Ladakh for its colours. The mountains, rivers, lakes, gompas (Buddhist monasteries) and even the quaint little houses have distinctive hues. But more importantly, believe it or not, I too changed colours in Ladakh.

My lips turned red, burgundy and black, palms turned a shade of green and fingertips blue. My black hair turned brown and cheeks turned pale white. My recent trip to Ladakh has left me red-faced, literally.

So the first advice I would give anyone going there is to carry all their woollens, and then some more.

There’s an oft-quoted Ladakhi saying, or should I say, warning: Anyone whose head is in the sun and feet are in the shade in Ladakh will endure both heatstroke and frostbite at the same time. You’d do well to heed it.

The second advice is to carry is two bottles of sunscreen — you’ll need them both.
Ladakh means ‘the land of high passes’ and these passes — Khardung La, Chang La, Tanglang La, Baralacha La, Lachulung La — are at an amazingly high altitude.

Khardung La, at 18,380 ft, to give you an idea, is the world’s highest motorable road.
There is a distinct possibility that you may be battling a blizzard in one of the passes and half-an-hour later you may encounter a sandstorm in the desert valley. And the
temperature, which in the winter dips to minus 50 degree centigrade, may rise to zero in summer. Make sure you dress appropriately or say hello to  chillblains, frostbite and hypothermia.

If the extreme temperatures don’t rattle you, there’s always the altitude. Ladakh, most of which is upwards of 3,500m above sea-level, is a high altitude cold desert which means apart from no food, water and vegetation you also deal with lack of oxygen.

Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS), which you will definitely suffer from, causes among other things, vomiting, nausea, headache and hallucinations. You take five steps and you halt for five minutes. If you take 10, it warrants a 10-minute halt. You get the picture. “The beauty of Ladakh leaves you breathless,” gasped a friend, while doing the step-halt-routine. She was obviously hallucinating under the influence of AMS.

And if you are appropriately attired for sub zero temperatures and you manage to acclimatise yourself, then there is always the possibility that you may die of starvation. You have the option of having Tibetan momos stuffed with mutton, thenthuk, thukpa and chutagi, which sound like words  not be uttered at a family dinner table, or good ol’ ‘Maggie’. Worry not, for Maggie will keep her date with you for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Now let me clear some misconceptions. For starters, Ladakh is very much a part
of India. The last time I checked you  didn’t need a passport to go there. For the uninitiated, Ladakh is, in fact, a part of Jammu & Kashmir, with Pakistan and
China eyeing it with greed on either side.

This explains the heavy presence of the army in the area. In fact, so strong is the presence that lines of olive-green military trucks often cause unbelievably long traffic jams along the highways.

Army men from across the country, wearing special gear and boots that weigh 4 kg each, huddle together quite forgetting their religious, linguistic and regional differences, offering each other protection from the forces of nature. But each time an Indian tourist shows up, their eyes sparkle with hope — the hope that the tourist may turn out to be from their hometown.

Movies like Border, Lakshya and LoC, you then realise, though portray the army life, scarcely do justice to these sons of the soil. One armyman I spoke to said he was from Kolhapur, and insisted that we speak to him in Marathi. “My parents, even though they know that I am posted in Siachen, have no idea where it is,” he said. Sadly, that is how ignorant the rest of the country is too.