From Trailguru
Overview
| Trip Title: | Markha Valley Trekking in Ladakh India |
| Date: | June 24th to July 6th, 2007 |
| Trip Members: | Tpark |
| Points of Interest: |
Trip Report
Organization in Leh
We chose to avoid 2 days in a bus and just fly to Leh in the Ladakh region of India. As we climbed from Delhi, the ground below us gradually changed from flat farmland to green monsoon fed foothills to huge snow covered peaks towering through broken cloud cover. As we grew closer, the clouds parted and exposed the vast sides of dry brown mountains stretching over dry rocky valleys.
We could immediately feel the altitude when we landed. Leh is the base town for many of the trekking opportunities in eastern Ladakh and although the Himalayan mountains tower above it on almost all sides, the center of town is still at 11,500 feet (3200m). Nazir, who had met us at the airport and brought us back to the Hotel Zar La where he worked, was insistent in that we use the next couple of days acclimatizing to the altitude. I had scoffed at suggestions in the trekking guidebook that we should take 3 days to just lie around and acclimatize but it was clear now that the Himalayas are a different animal. With minor headaches and a general feeling of lethargy, it wasn't hard to convince either of us that we should take a rest and gaze out at the Stok Range that we would trek over in just a few days time.
I had expected that Leh would be a typical trekking dive town but was pleasantly surprised by how nice the people were and how beautiful the fantastic palace and gompa (buddhist temple) are that hang on the rocky hillsides over the town. The chief problem in Leh, like many third world towns, is garbage -- there just isn't the infrastructure developed (not to mention the money) to collect and transport it out of the city. In particular, there were hundreds of crushed plastic water bottles just about everywhere.
Fortunately, we discovered an entrepreneurial business called Dzoma that recycles and refills old plastic waterbottles with high pressure heat treated water and does so for less than the cost of buying a new bottle. They have two locations and I recommend looking them up first thing -- they also have some great snacks.
We also discovered a great German bakery that we would visit pretty regularly. There are a number of these self styled "German bakeries" but the one that I liked the most was attached to the Peace Cafe (same ownership so you can carry over baked goods to have with a coffee) and had a yellow Pumpernickel German Bakery sign. The Sikh proprietor was incredibly friendly and had a wide array of snack and breakfast items, which he proudly informed us were baked every morning by a team of Nepalis. Ok, so perhaps it isn't authentic, but good food is good food. We also enjoyed the food at the Tibetan Kitchen and the views and pizza at Il Fornio.
While we acclimated we organized the two trips that we wanted to tackle while we were in Ladakh: doing the Markha Valley Trek and going over the Khardung La by bicycle. It is harder to organize these trips than you would think, especially if you are traveling by yourself, so I would recommend getting started when you arrive. We chose to go whole hog and hire a pony man, guide, and cook which runs you about US$45/day all inclusive if you are two people and you organize this in Leh (it is more expensive if you organize this in Delhi or outside of India but the international firms do tend to have better equipment and people).
The organized tour companies will also try to press you to take more people on your trek as this obviously improves their profit margin. We "accepted" two women (one French and one Polish) on our trip in exchange for a drop to US$35/day for the trip.
Day 1: Spitok to Jingchan
Eco Adventures picked us up at 8:30am and transported us out to Spitok where the trek started across the bridge. Day 1 from Spitok to Jingchan (Image:2007-06-27 Ladakh Spitok to Jingchan.gpx) was designed to be short and easy to give us more time to acclimate. It was easy, but it was also pretty boring, starting out as a double track road that the Indian government had started but not finished and to make things more enjoyable, we were promptly attacked by a swarm of flies because there was no breeze to keep them hunkered down.
Fortunately, they evaporated as we turned the corner and followed the Indus river up into a valley. We lunched near the river on what would be repeated more or less each lunch with only slight variations: boiled whole potato (surprising good), hard boiled egg, and cucumber sandwich.
We reached camp shortly after this and had to wait briefly for our ponies to arrive. When they did, I took a icy cold bath in the river in my bathing suit. Our group of 4 then played our first round of many rounds of cards to pass the time.
The campsite in Jingchan is nothing to write home about. In fact, if I were doing it again I would push on to Rumbak, which would be a long day but would let you sleep much higher and acclimate better for the hike over the Ganda La.
Day 2: Jingchan (3300m) to Ganda-La Basecamp (4300m)
I awoke today to the sound of one of the donkeys "heehawing" and the pony men subsequently yelling at it. On a horse supported trek like this you certainly get an education on horses. We saw horses getting new horseshoes, learned how the horsemen put them out to pasture and bring them back with a shout (sometimes way way up on alpine passes), and "motivate them" on the trail (by throwing laser accurate small rocks at their rumps if they get lazy and stop to eat grass).
Todays trek from Jingchan to the Ganda-La basecamp (Image:2007-06-28 Ladakh Jingchan to Ganda La Basecamp.gpx) was a steady 1000m climb up the valley to Rumbak and on to the base camp with a steady flow of spectacular views of the surrounding ridges and of the Stok Kangri. One of the most memorable points was a Ladaki family working in the field against a background of their house and a set of chorten in the foreground.
After resting at the tea tent at Rumbak, the rest of the hike took us less than a half hour to complete. The Ganda-La basecamp was cold and had moderate AMS from the fast 1000m climb up to 4300m but we had an amazing view right down the valley to Rumbak from our tent flap so a spent most of the afternoon resting and looking at that.
Dinner was in the tent to protect us from the elements and I had a real feeling of claustrophobia with 4 of us in there. Karma, our guide who was Nepali, made us one of his Mom's recipes for unleavened bread, which I wish he hadn't served at altitude because I had almost no appetite.
I slept terrible -- my headache kept me up for half the night and the cold rain pelting the side of the tent kept me up for the other half.
Day 3: Ganda La Basecamp (4300) over the Ganda La (4900m) to Skiu (3400m)
I awoke feeling better -- only a slight headache. Karma brought coffee and tea to us at our tent which was much appreciated as it was very cold at 6:30am. We trudged over to the dining tent for a French Toast (which was great at 4300m) and French Fries (which was revolting at 4300m) breakfast and then gingerly packed up our tent to try to keep it as clean as possible in the muddy campgrounds before slowly setting out at 7:30am for today's hike over the summit and down into Skiu (Image:2007-06-29 Ladakh Ganda La to Skiu.gpx).
We made our way up the pass, taking baby steps -- not because my heart was pounding but I felt like I would black out if I went faster. The valley was fogged in so we did not have expansive views but it did open up a bit as we climbed. At the summit of the pass the clouds closed in and it rained on us and we didn't linger on the summit for more than a photo and a snack.
We quickly descended the other side of the pass -- for me it was a way of warming up by jogging down -- and we arrived into Shingo for lunch. We were in an expansive valley here with nice views but as we descended further we went into a pretty tight and vertical valley that had been wiped out last summer by heavy rains so it was necessary to do some bushwhacking to stay on trail. The rocks on the walls of this canyon had an amazing sheen to them that made the colors absolutely amazing in the filtered sunlight.
At the end of the valley, we stopped at a tea tent in Skiu proper for a celebratory beer. The proprietor sat out with us working over a furnace making traditional spoons. Karma talked with him and it turned out that he had lived in that same house for all 71 of his years. His kids had all moved to bigger cities and when they came to visit they would have to hike two hours from the nearest road trail head in Chilling to visit him. Tough work but it sure beats two hours in O'Hare!
The camps at Skiu were not amazing -- but we lucked out and were able to camp off of the dirt back in an overflow area of the campground under a canopy of trees.
Day 4: Skiu to Markha
Today's route from Skiu to Markha (Image:2007-06-30 Ladakh Skiu to Markha.gpx) was more or less gradual climb up the Markha Valley to its namesake town. The day was partly cloudy again with a few spitting rain episodes that now seem to be more of the rule than the exception on our "desert trek." However, the partly cloudy skies also meant fairly continuous color changes in the surrounding rock walls.
We forded the Markha river today for the first time. I did it barefoot because I didn't bring Tevas -- I would recommend bringing these highly for this trek.
We had a nice campground tonight on a nice green area adjoining to the Markha river. The river was unfortunately still too silty to clean off in.
Day 5: Markha to Tahungste
We started the trek from Markha to Tahungste (Image:2007-07-01 Ladakh Markha to Tahungste.gpx) by checking out the moldering gompa on the hill next to our campsite. This monastery dated from the 7th century and looked it from the advanced state of decay that it was in, but it still had a functional prayer wheel that rang once with each spin.
Nearly immediately after the monastery we had to ford the Markha River 3 times in succession. Karma had forewarned us of this before the day started so I wore my running shoes instead of my hiking shoes and just waded into the river with these. This worked much better than going barefoot but I would bring Tevas next time to switch to so I didn't need to walk in wet shoes.
After the river crossing we checked out to Techa Gompa which is the "new" gompa (from the 9th century) for the "red hats" which is a different sect of Buddhist from the "yellow hats" (which the Dalai Lama is part of). It was about 200m above the trail so the best part of it honestly was the wide views of the valley.
Back on the trail, we passed a water driven mill used to grind flour (or "tsampa" in Ladaki). In general, the Ladakis had some pretty amazing water canals near their rivers. They would cut a canal starting from sometimes half a kilometer upstream and have it proceed on a more gradual course and inland to irrigate their crops. I thought these were pretty amazing -- some of them looked like they were flowing uphill to get to their crops.
The campsite in Tahungste was very nice -- it is very large in a wide section of the valley with a number of large boulders to pitch your tent behind for cover. It also had a nice clean stream that Shannon and I used to take (very quick and very cold) baths in.
Day 6: Tahungste to Nimaling (4900m)
The weather was fantastic for our hike from Tahungste to Nimaling (Image:2007-07-02 Ladakh Tahungste to Nimaling.gpx). We climbed fairly steadily through a canyon and followed a ridge with two to three ranges worth of mountain views that we could see behind us while the huge Kongmaru La loomed in front of us and the Kang Yatse to the right of us. We passed an alpine pond and then dropped down into Nimaling for a fairly short 8km of hiking for the day. Shannon was of the opinion that we should continue on given the very nice weather but the pony men are pretty stuck in their ways and the other two in the group didn't want to "rush things." If I could have done this again, I would have gone over the summit if there was good weather like this again and sleep on the other side in a narrow canyon campsite that exists on the way down at roughly the same altitude as Nimaling. I realized that clearly the pony men don't like that campsite as there isn't range for the horses to roam over and they would have to break out feed for them. In general, this is the downside of the guided/porter approach -- you lose your flexibility and are at the whim of what you can convince the group of.
We cut a balance by hiking down the canyon some and camping a bit away from the pack (we were one of about 3-4 groups hiking the route with a full contingent of ponies). We also hiked up the opposite side of the valley from the pass we would go over tomorrow up to about 5000m to try to get a different view of the Kang Yatse. It was a nice view and calmed us down a bit from the conflict with the rest of the team.
Day 7: Nimaling over Kongmaru La (5150m) to Shang Sumdo
The night was bitterly cold and when I awoke and opened the tent flap I understood why -- overnight it had become a winter wonderland and we had about and inch of heavy wet snow. What a desert vacation! We shook off the snow and packed up the tent and then Shannon and went our own way, with Shannon doing the pass early and solo to get away from the crowd and I heading back to the rest of the party in order to have breakfast.
Today, we were going over the final pass (the Kongmaru) to Shang Sumdo (Image:2007-07-03 Ladakh Khardung La.gpx) and as par for the course, we were the last party moving. I didn't feel great this morning but compared to the way Nadesh (the French women) looked, I felt great. I improved as I climbed and overtook many of the earlier groups. Our guide Karma however, was just amazing. He must have left a half hour after me but I only managed to beat him by 5 minutes. Must be nice to have grown up in Nepal.
The summit of the pass was a complete whiteout but we still lingered up there for a bit congratulating each other. Then we went down the other side and as quickly as we could with the pony trails in front of us.
The valley on the way down was completely different to those we had been hiking in on the other side. They were verdant for one thing but then also they all seemed to have been formed such that the earth's crust had been rotated 90 degrees -- there were a sets of spines running down the majority of them from the harder rock that made for a really neat visual effect.
We didn't catch up with Shannon until the campsite for the night and once we were there, of course, the rain rolled in. That really made it anticlimatic to stay at this campsite for the night knowing that just 3km away was the road back to Leh -- so we had a final supper with Karma and called for a Taxi back to Leh. I would recommend to people to negotiate with their guide to have a pick up waiting -- a couple of teams did this and that was the way to go.
Map
Photos
 Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |
Submitted by: Tpark |