Up to Little Tibet

We couldn’t decide on whether to eat breakfast or not; precious minutes could mean missing a minivan to Leh and having to wait hours for the next one to fill. We ate anyway, in the hotel restaurant, before taking the short walk to the taxi stand.

As with yesterday, we were the first again. We waited for about 90 minutes from 0800 till 0930 when the driver decided that he wanted to commence his journey home to Leh, regardless of only having four (out of seven) seats filled.

Much of the journey was through brown parched mountains with tufts of green grass, with a couple of brown or grey rocky canyons. About 90 minutes into the journey, we started seeing Buddhist temples in addition to just mosques.

The highest point of the journey was Fatula Pass at 4108m (13,479 ft). I was dozy for part of the highest part of the journey, but strangely Kim was on the verge of throwing up (he normally handles altitude better than me.Six hours later, we arrived into Leh (elev 3520m, 11,549 ft)and was dropped off at the driver’s recommendation, the Mehak Hotel. It was nice and central, clean and cheap.

We had a walk around town. The mosque is in the middle of town, while the Buddhist palace on the hill behind forms the perfect backdrop. It is a reflection of the mixed Buddhist and Shi’ite Muslim nature of Ladakhis.We then organised our excursion to Pangong Lake; it was a choice between that and Nubra valley. As either excursion required a special permit which had to be applied for in one day advance, we couldn’t spend time hesitating.