List members , I finally ticked one of the most important items off my own bucket list - spent a week with family in Ladakh...all I can say is , that place is more mesmerising than all accounts , more mysterious than ever described and the views are breathtaking (literally , because of the high altitude and low oxygen levels !) , any direction you look in .
Ladakh is part of the erstwhile state of Jammu & Kashmir in India , recently made a Union Territory of India , in it's own right . It is as scarcely populated as Tibet and the Indian army is present in full force throughout this forbidding landscape - to counter the Chinese forces on the other side of the border...
The Ladakh region matches the elevation of the Tibetan plateau , even exceeding it in some places such as the formidable Siachen Glacier and the frigid Karakoram Pass .
You get to see the same stuff you see in Tibet - jagged snow peaks all around , enormously high mountain passes , remote mountain palaces and Buddhist monasteries , like the Potala Palace of Lhasa in Tibet (with sealed tunnels and chambers underground) , you see pristine lakes , you also see strange caves sitting on a mountain wall hundreds of feet from the ground (locals claim there are ancient sages/monks still meditating inside them) , or from the surface of a mountainous river , you see Yaks grazing on steep slopes...and so much more .
**As an Indian , I would never get permission to visit Tibet , but visiting Ladakh area of India (sandwiched between Pakistan and China) is the next best thing :))
***The icing on the cake came when the Dalai Lama himself visited Leh , the capital of Ladakh , on 23rd of July...interestingly , besides visting Buddhist Monasteries there , he also visited the Moravian Church in Leh and that is where I caught a glimpse of that great man as he was leaving safely in his car , accompanied by security forces...
Ladakh is a very enigmatic place , the domain of the mighty Indus river whose waters are sourced from China , India , Pakistan and Afghanistan - it forms the dividing line between the Indian subcontinent and the Eurasian continent...the extremely rare snow leopard also lives there .
Over a period of 8 days , I tried to absorb as much as I could about the place , accumulating memories that will last a lifetime , but it still seems small compared to the vastness of that surreal , Martian looking terrain !
Regards
