Driving to Zanskar
I didn’t fully appreciate the joy of driving in Ladakh until I drove from Kargil to Zanskar.
Not to say there weren’t moments of spectacle:
- The chiaruscuro on the range when driving around Stok
- The Sakti Warila road with the gradient of snow, vegetation and rocks and dirt with mountains in the distance.
- The Apricot blossom decorated Aryan valley with massive rocks in all kinds of poses and the river.
- The wide road flanked by mountains all around when driving from Lekir back to Leh
- The pure white all around when passing Khardungla.
But they were also long patches of mundanity which any road trip has, like “ho gaya bahut mountain, ab let’s reach”, or other parts that are just pure hell. Like the road from Nubra, with mud all round and beneath and a black smoke spewing truck ahead of you. And of course the treacherous beds and precarity of it it all, where you feel one wrong thing can sent you careening off a curve into the air.
But Kargil to Zanskar in May, uff, the road is so good past a point and there is snow all around, and it is all flat still, with one mountain peeking through from behind as you keep going, patches of snow waving to you like little zoo zoos, and then the sight of the glacier and the Zanskar valley, uff, and that goes on for hours, that’s the spectacle and wonder that I now understand Ladakh offers.
