Trekking Ladakh: Markha Valley

The first real trekking expedition I ever went on was the Markha Valley trek in the Ladakh Region of Northern India. We had to cross over the Himalayas, in jeep, before entering Ladakh. Nestled between the Karakoram Range and the Zanskar / Himalayan Mountain Range, Ladakh offers rare and stunning natural beauty. And the trekking? Fantastic! I was hooked!

When I got back to civilization, I felt very inspired and had a crazy writing frenzy and wrote down the following account of my trekking experiences. It's a long trekking account and will probably take you 10-15 minutes to read. So get a cup of coffee or something. But it's worth it. Re-reading it now, 6 years later, it still stand out as a great piece of travel writing!

Markha Valley Trekking in Ladakh, August-September 2003 Now, most people that come here it would seem, go on guided tours with donkeys to carry all their shit over the passes and paying 20-30 US Dollars a day for the whole package tour. But the concept of guides doesn't really appeal to me. I don't want somebody telling me where to go and holding my hand when I'm in the wilderness. It's simply against the basic spirit of trekking. So I started making preparations for an independent trek, but to my surprise there weren't any good outdoor-equipment stores in town. I did, however, manage to round up a compass and a map and a sleeping bag and a kerosene stove and some warm clothes and a lot of dried food. Tofu's and powdered soup and rice and instant noodles and dried apricots and raisins and nuts and sun-dried tomatoes and such. And I made some posters and put them up around town to find somebody to go with me, and that's how I got in contact with Tom from Holland and Stefan from Germany. They both had all the equipment and trekking tents that I hadn't been able to find and so, on the 4th of September, we set out on the path to the mountains.

The sky was cloudy that morning, but as we crossed the Indus river, the spirit was high and the expectations great. We followed the river downstream for a couple of hours, walking across a barren plateau of rocks and dust, before turning south into a gorge. The trail was relatively easy and the scenery was fantastic to behold. Once we got up close to these giant cliffs and mountains, they revealed a fantastic range of colors, shapes and structures. I felt like Gulliver in the land of Brobdingnag. The first difficulty, which also turned out to be the greatest difficulty on the entire trek, came in the afternoon. We were walking on the floor of a narrow gorge and came to a place where we had the option of either wading through the cold, roaring river or make our way up and down the side of a steep mountain wall. Tom and I chose the latter option which, looking back, we probably shouldn't have done. The cliffs were wet from the beginning rain and there were only a few razor-edge ledges to gain foothold on and grab hold of, randomly scattered here and there. But very carefully, with complete and undivided attention, one step at the time, we made our daring way along the side of the mountain and half an hour later, safely made it down on the other side. After that little adventure, the trail was easy to follow again, but the heavy backpack was starting to make it's impact. I got drained of energy, and when we finally reached the camp spot near the village of Rumbak, it was starting to get dark and I was exhausted to the point of nausea. We had ascended 500 meters that day, and covered a distance of 22 km. Now, in 4000 meters height, we put up our tents, cooked some food, ate and hit the sack. There was nothing more to be said or done that day.

The next day was an easy one. We only walked for two hours before we set up camp at the foot of the Ganda La. No trees were in sight, the sparse vegetation consisting only of small, grassy areas and sage bushes, among which we put up our tents. The afternoon was spent lingering in the grass, resting, acclimatizing, meditating and doing tai-chi exercises. Not many words were spoken between us, we had all walked the same grounds, seen the same scenes and we all understood the task at hand tomorrow: Ganda La. Life was simple. Walk, eat, sleep.

So Saturday morning was the morning of yet another great day of walking. We left the camp shortly before 8 o'clock and spend the next three hours ascending the Ganda La. The bag still felt heavy and the air was thinning out. For every single step I took, I had to take a deep breath in and out. Next step, breathe in, breathe out. But the trail was merciless, just kept on going up, up, up.
- Who got this crazy idea anyway? To walk up this infernal rock, carrying all this equipment and food?
Well, unfortunately, it was my own idea, so I couldn't really blame it on anyone but myself. There was only one thing to do and that was to keep on keeping on, to continue going up. And suddenly I saw the flag-decorated stone-setting of the summit and was able to walk the final fifty meters quite easily.

Mani wall and prayer flags on the Ganda La summit

I reached the top of the 4920 meters with a loud YEE-HAA-exclaim and there it was, the stunning view over the Zanskar Range to the south and the Ladakh Range to the north, and behind them, the distant peaks of the two highest mountain ranges in the world, the Himalayas in the south and the Karakoram in the north! We spent a quarter of an hour on the wind-swept top, taking pictures and admiring the view, before we started our long descent.

The Zanskar and Himalayan mountains

It turned out to be longer than any of us had expected, so the entire afternoon were spent walking down through the gorgeous gorge that grew more and more narrow for every step we took, the vegetation slowly reappearing, culminating down in Shingo-town with a virtual thickening of bushes, willow-trees and poplar. As the sun started setting, the mountain walls slowly turned to walls of murky gold, warm colors radiating everywhere from their sides. It was like walking in an clay-oven, with the narrow cleavage of the mountain generously dispersing all the accumulated warmth, gathered from every ray emitted from the sun during the day and I was having revelations about how my life had changed and how everything is constantly changing. Even the mountains don't last forever.

A bit of greenery around Shingo

We were all walking on our own, with 100 meters or more separating us. Down ahead was Tom, who was always the fastest of us. Always very efficient. In the mornings he had usually already packed his bag and was ready to go while Stefan and I were still goofing around with water bottles, tent-parts, stoves, pots and pans. But as we were going down, I was usually close behind him, and further up the scree, Stefan was struggling with pain, wounds and exhaustion, partly because he had only just got rid of a cold, partly because his backpack was much heavier than ours. Most of his equipment seemed to be a little more advanced than mine, but at the same time also heavier. A goose-down sleeping bag, a big SLR camera with UV-filter and all, metal thermo water bottles and all sorts of different little bags with emergency and repair equipment. Eventually, Tom and I ended up carrying some of his stuff, we had to lighten his heavy burden.

We set up camp just outside Skiu about 6 o'clock in the evening, after nearly 10 hours on the trail. The evening wind was picking up now as the sun was setting and the ground was getting colder, but by the time we'd finished eating, it was all quiet again and I laid down on the ground and looked at the stars and the moon that was slowly rising to a point just above the peak of the mountain that mightily stood in front of us, at the end of the gorge, on the opposite side of the Markha River. Tom hit the sack, while Stefan and I were sitting up on a couple of rocks and enjoying another hour of the quiet, serene, almost-full-moon-lid night, circled by the fluorescent mountain walls rising to all our sides, glowing in the light of the moon.

The next three days were easier, we walked maybe four-five-six hours a day, following the Markha River upstream heading south-east, climbing some 500 meters pr day, crawling sometimes on hands and knees through the bushes, at other times wading through the river, crossing vast valley plains, passing stupas and small villages on our way. The fourth night we spent outside the village of Markha, where we made a bond fire and sat up and talked quietly for a few hours after dinner.

Along the Markha River

On the morning of the fifth day, we hadn't walked more than twenty minutes before we ran into an old friend of mine! The good old, usually stoned, Mexican fisherman, Haime, who I had first met on the beach in Goa some five months earlier and then ran into again a couple of months ago in a crazy nightclub in Kathmandu. Of all the places in the world that you bump into old friends, this has got to be one of the more unlikely ones, on a mountain slope in the remote Trans-Himalayas. He was together with two other guys and they were two days away from completing their 19-day trek! Haime, who's usually a pretty stout guy, now looked gaunt and worn down, but seemed to be in a good shape. So we spent a few minutes catching up on each other's itineraries and then exchanged road advices with each other, since we were now going in opposite directions. And so we parted again, but surely we would bump into each other again, back in Leh and maybe somewhere else, later in our lives.

Just a small village somewhere

We had light rain a couple of times that day, but to our luck, there was always a little shed within our reach when the rain came, so we took shelter in these cozy sheds, usually used for horses, donkeys, goats and the likes, judging from the smell. By the end of the day, we caught sight of the snowcapped Kangyatze Mountain, the highest one in the area, with it's impressive 6400 meters, and later we set up camp in Thochuntse. And that night we cooked pasta and soya-chunks in a hot-and-sour Knorr soup and devoured it with delight and sat outside until we were driven to bed by the bitterly cold night.

And so also the sixth day went. We reached Konmaru La base camp at Nimaling early in the afternoon, now very close to the opening jaw that makes up the crest of the Kangyatze, only separated by a 'minor' hill. Here, in the thin air of 4700 meters, we settled down and tried to acclimatize for the night and the next day. I decided to make a solo attempt to go up on the hill, that separated us from Kangyatze. It didn't look too difficult. Just carrying my binoculars and my camera, I set of in a quick pace, but was soon reminded of the significant altitude I was in. After twenty seconds, I had to stop and catch my breath again. So I had a little taste of what was in store for us tomorrow. So in a more moderate pace, I made my way to what looked like the ridge of the hill, when you looked up from the base camp. But there was another ridge further up, further in towards the Kangyatze. So I proceeded to reach this ridge as well, only to see that there was yet another little ridge to pass further up. I went half way up there and could see a fourth ridge in the distance. This could go on for a long time and I didn't want to waste too much energy before tomorrow, so I settled for the view I had right then and there, looking into a good chunk of the Kangyatze jaw. And when I turned my head around, looking back, I couldn't see the camp anymore, but I had a grand view of the entire Nimaling Valley.

The sun would be setting soon, so I headed down again, back to base. It became an early night for all of us due to the hostile climate. We all went to our sleeping bags about 7 o'clock even though we weren't really tired, and we stayed there almost 12 hours. Nobody slept very well that night, I was waking up every 15 minutes, turning around, trying to find a not-wholly-uncomfortable sleeping position, gasping for air, being thirsty or waking up by the barks of the packs of dogs, roaming the empty valley floor. But at least I kept warm all night, sleeping in all my clothes, in my thick woolen socks, and thick, knitted cap.

When we got up the next morning, the little streams surrounding our camp were covered with ice and it was beginning to snow. But now in better shape than ever and with the weight of the backpacks lightened by our consumption, we ascended up the 5150 meter pass in a steady pace and reached the summit in less than two hours. The wind was cold and hard, and it was now snowing severely. And the view we had all been hoping for was blurred by the precipitation.

So we quickly proceeded down the northern side of the mountain, the first hour going down a huge pile of loose rocks making it out for a mountain. In my worn down, soft-soled sneakers, I kept slipping and sliding and I had difficulties maintaining my balance. Far below us, we could see the trail, down at the bottom of the gorge, in between the two red-earthed ridges. We were now on the more windy side of the mountain, the cold wind coming in from the north, but as we descended, the weather gradually turned warmer and the sky cleared up a bit, snow-fall lessening, instead turning into a light rain now and then. And joyfully, we wandered down. I was letting my thoughts run wild, contemplating the magnitude of our victory.

-We had conquered the mountains!
-No, even better, we had conquered ourselves. Reached our dreams!
But then I realized:
-No. The mountains are not a place for conquests and dreams, but a place for respect and realities. Naturally. What we had done was, we had plainly made our way over some mountains and across some difficult terrain, and from here, all we had to do was follow the trail downhill. So we did.

And this was one of the most stunning parts of the trip. We soon passed a flock of deer, grassing on a green meadow. They took little notice of us, just took a few steps further away from the trail. Later on, we came down the steep slope, down to the floor of the gorge, which was covered with debris rocks in red and bluish-grey colors. To both our sides, steep mountain walls stretched unbelievably towards the sky with smaller ridges going up in straight parallel lines, looking like some inverted fossil plough tracks. Red, purple, green, brown, grey. Separating these small ridges were bigger ones, stone walls traversing the entire mountain-side, from bottom to top, with smaller peaks and formations dotting out of the jagged cliffs everywhere.

Mountain slope

Somewhere, it was just paper-thin slices of rock, standing out the side of the mountain like napkins in a napkin-holder. Deep cuts and furrows cutting through every stone and dividing the whole picture into small, different-shaped rectangles, thereby creating a gigantic mosaic-painting. This performance just continued in front of our eyes for hours with new shapes and variations emerging around every little bend in the trail. Sometimes we'd be walking down on the rock bottom of the gorge next to the stream, sometimes we'd be walking up on the narrow foot-path along the hillside.

Red rock hillside foot-path

By late afternoon, signs of civilization started appearing. Telephone lines went as far up as to the village of Chukirmo and from there, we reached the village of Sumdo in a couple of hours, arriving early in the evening. As we were settling down and taking of our backpacks at the campsite, the minibus from Leh drove in and stopped just outside camp and we all looked at each other and considered for a moment just exactly how much we actually wanted to walk that last stretch to Hemis tomorrow when maybe we could be back in town tonight, in the soft beds of the Oriental Guest House. Inclined to take the bus, I went over and asked the driver when he would return to Leh, but he said it wasn't before next morning at 8 o'clock. So we set up our tents and tried to forget about the bus and we had a feast of all the food we had left. Tofu in soup as an appetizer, and chicken korma as the main course, washed down with a cup of warm tea. After dinner, we sat around in the grass and enjoyed the plentiful and warm air and told each other stories and riddles about a door to freedom, a naked corpse in the desert, a gun-slinging bartender, and a suicidal train-passenger in a non-smoking compartment.

The next morning, as we were eating our usual muesli in warm, sweet milk, I looked up the mountain, and noticed a mob of angry-looking peasants coming down, all carrying sticks and pickaxes and walking in a very determinate way.

- Oh Brother, I said, here comes the revolution!

However, it turned out to be a crew of road-workers on their way to clear up the road from some landslide.

So the bus left 8 o'clock without us, and we headed out on the final little stretch of our walk. After crossing a wide river with some difficulty, we could follow the dirt-road all the way down to Martselang, a smooth descent of 300 meters, after which we turned north-west and ascended a further 200 meters across an open stone-field to the village of Hemis. Here, we found a spot between a little hamlet of Tibetan stupas, across the bus-stand from the main gompa, and we sat down and prepared our last supper, consisting of four baggies of 'Maggies nudles' and ate them unceremoniously, exactly like the lunch we'd had the seven previous days. Everything went easily by now, we had our established routines and were just going through the motions. After supper, we took a light inspection of the gompa and it's main features, and then proceeded down the hill, all the way down to the Indus River where we found a bridge and crossed it and went up to the road-side and waited 5 minutes for the bus to come along and we rode the last 40 km back to Leh, on the bus together with a bunch of local men, women and children, starring wide-eyed at these three stinking, dirty, unshaven, white creatures coming in from the wilderness.

End of story. Thanks for reading it!

If you'd like to know more about Ladakh, here's some reading suggestions. They will surely help you get in the mood for a visit to Ladakh. And it doesn't have to be the rough way like I did it;-) If you're going, promise me to read some material first. You will get so much more out of your trip!

Good trekking!