As I plan and prepare for my second visit to Ladakh this winter in search of a frozen Pangong Lake, here is a short take on Chadar Trek and experiencing Ladakh in winter months.
Every year, ‘Ladakh Season’ begins some time in June and ends in September-October months. This is the fair weather time in Ladakh and is the best time to visit. This is also the time when the roads leading to Leh from Manali and Srinagar remain open. From late September or early October, weather gods cast their angry-eyes on this region and let the clouds play havoc on the mountains. Rains bring down tonnes of slush on the roads to Ladakh and snowfall makes things worse at high passes. Temperature dips closer to zero and goes further down with the progress of winter. Temperatures twenty below zero become an everyday affair from December to February. Naturally, the streets of Leh that used to be filled with visitors in summer now go nearly empty. Very few people make it to Ladakh in these months, thanks to the difficult weather and closed roads.
Landscapes of Ladakh in winter with Indus flowing through the mountains.
The landscape too, gets transformed during the winter months. Rivers that were running full in summer, thanks to the melting glaciers, now slow down. The barren mountains are now adorned with snow. Whatever few trees that exist in the valley shed their leaves and go naked. The fields that were filled with barley too, become either brown or white with snow. The sky however, becomes unpredictable: it is either stark blue or masked with clouds that precipitate powdery snow.
In summer months, Ladakh’s clear blue skies, stark landscapes and the deep valleys appear magical. As the temperature dips and the mountains prepare for a long winter, the transformation creates another kind of magic. It is made of deep blue rivers lined with ice on either banks, tall poplar groves that stand bare and parallel to each other, mountain peaks that keep changing colours from brown to white depending on the weather.
When it comes to people of Ladakh, life takes a slower pace in winter. The markets that cater to tourists shut down. The tourists walking on the street, who could be from any part of the world, disappear completely. The few people who are on the street are all round-faced, apple-cheeked Ladakhis going around doing their daily shopping.
In 2011 January, I made a winter visit to Ladakh and was amazed by the transformation that the landscape went through. I had seen it in pictures and knew what to expect, but as it always happens, the magnificence that unfolds in front of your eyes can’t be substituted by a two-dimensional post-card sized splash of colours. I was overwhelmed. I was taken. The winter time Ladakh had conquered me as soon as our aircraft landed at the airport in Leh.
Thiksey Monastery in winter.
I spent two weeks in Ladakh then, visiting a few monasteries that are typical tourist hangouts during the summer months, and then walking on the frozen Zanskar River in the excellent stewardship of Manish Lakhani, whose name is highly respected on the unpredictable tracks of Chadar. Having spent more than two months in Ladakh, I had assumed that I know plenty about the region. But this time, it all looked new. And different. The monastery at Thiksey was unpeopled, but for the caretaker monk in the Buddha Room who smiled at us genially. Empty landscapes and a super-blue Indus welcomed us at Stakna. The river that was in a great hurry during summer months, then filled with sediments it brought from faraway Tibet, was now clear and challenged the sky in its blueness.
Chadar Trek–the walk on the frozen Zanskar River–showed me a world that I had never known, a world that is hard to imagine it exists. Even when I had seen it in pictures. We lived for twelve days camping by the river during the night and walking on it during the day. On the way, we encountered waterfalls that had given in to the cold and had frozen on their way down the cliff. We saw whirlpools of water in Zanskar forming lily-like plates at the edge of the water. We walked on sections of the river where the it formed deep gorges, flowing between steep vertical walls. There were places where the river was frozen hard, forming a thick ice that could not even be broken by tonnes of heavy stones that fell from the mountains. At places, air bubbles showed through the transparent-blue ice. There were places where the ice was so fragile, we ended up having to walk in the frigid waters (not an experience I would want to repeat!).
Chadar Trek – walking on the frozen Zanskar River.
As the days progressed over the Chadar, the landscapes changed one day and the steep inaccessible mountains made way to a wide open valley. Near Hanumil Village, where the habitation begins in Zanskar Valley, we could leave the river bed and walk on the gentle slopes. It is astonishing to see a civilization thriving in a place so remote and forbidden.
People of Zanskar once lived with the help of their livestock and subsistence farming. They consumed what they produced, relying on external world for very few essentials like salt, which was traded for yak butter. While there were many routes to connect with the external world during the summer months, the mountains routes were buried in snow during the winter. However, the river came to rescue when the mountains would not. The frozen river provided a faster, easier access to people of Zanskar with the outside world. This remains true remains even today. Once the snowfall begins in November, the roads to Zanskar are cutoff and river becomes the road that connects people with rest of the world.
People of Zanskar, where life hasn’t changed much over the past centuries.
Much like the tradition of using the river for winter transport, lives of Zanskaris hasn’t changed much over the centuries. People still live largely on subsistence farming and depend considerably on their livestock. But income is supported by activities associated with tourism in the last few decades. In winter, a large pool of locals double up as porters for visitors who want to trek on Chadar. Business is generated in summer months by a continuous stream of visitors who come here to see places, go rafting or trekking. The roads, as long as they are open, also bring in modern facilities. Zanskar today has limited access to electricity, roads and reasonably good facilities to educate local children. Cooking gas cylinders have replaced cow-dung and wood. Yet, for a visitor who comes here in winter, it is difficult to digest the fact that a civilization happily thrives here despite the harsh conditions, living far more contented than the people in the plains.
This is how things changed with weather at Nimu, the confluence of Indus and Zanskar Rivers.
We had clear blue skies as we walked upstream into the heart of Zanskar. On our way back however, weather gods decided to show us their powers. One morning, we woke up to see that the sun had disappeared behind thick, low-hanging clouds. It kept snowing for a long time, rarely offering any breather all through our return journey. Once again, the landscape was transformed. Fresh, powdery snow took the place of hard ice. Blue skies had changed colour and visibility had dipped. The confluence of Indus and Zanskar Rivers, which was an aesthetic mix of deep blue and mountain-brown when we began the trek, had turned into shades of grey when we ended. During the drive back to Leh, we did not see the road but a thick white line with little bit of tarmac showing up once in a while. The mountains hid behind the falling snow and there was nothing visible except the falling snow right ahead of us. With a continuous snow fall, my Ladakh experience was as complete as it could get. I had spent a summer here, relishing the balmy weather and driving through the high passes. I had seen rainy days when floods washed away our roads. I had seen clear-blue-sky days in summers and winters. Now, just as I was ready to depart after a long and tiring trek, Ladakh had transformed again and showed me yet another face that I had not seen before.
Chadar Trek is an unusual expedition of walking on a frozen river. The Zanskar River in Ladakh freezes in winter, enabling walking on the ice sheet in a narrow gorge that is inaccessible in summer.
Here is the announcement on Chadar Expedition for January 2013. The expedition will be lead by Manish Lakhani, a chadar veteran who has been trekking on the ice-shelf of Zanskar River for seven years now. Chadar expert Lobasang, a Ladakhi with over a dozen chadar expeditions to his credit will be the tour guide for the trek.
The expedition is scheduled from January 12th to 29th of 2013. See more details on the expedition, including the full itinerary and pricing at the Chadar Expedition page.
I went on this trek in with Manish in Jan-Feb 2011. Below are some images from my trip. Also see Manish’s account of Chadar Trek 2011.
This article was published in Trino Magazine, Dhaka. At the end of this story is a slideshow of images, presented at the Open Show, Bangalore.
A sense of excitement overtook me as soon as our pre-dawn flight took off from Indira Gandhi International Airport in Delhi. I could see the first hills of the giant Himalayan Mountains once we were up in the sky, even before we left behind the crowded concrete boxes of Delhi. The sky above the jagged mountain ridges had already taken a gentle shade of orange, announcing the beginning of a beautiful day.
It was the third week of January and the air was nippy as we departed from Delhi. We were a small bunch of mountain-enthusiasts heading to Ladakh that day, ready to brave the super-freezing temperatures in Leh with a wish to walk side-by-side along the mountain people of Zanskar Region on a river that freezes during in the winter months.
Other than our tour leader Manish Lakhani who was a veteran of Zanskar, none of us had an exposure to cold and arid winters in Ladakh. But warned well in advance and armed with sufficient information, we had boarded the flight with down jackets, multiple layers of clothing and thick boots that could help us land in -20C weather.
As I looked out from my plane’s window nearly half-an-hour a later, first rays of sun were striking the mountain peaks while the valleys and glaciers were still in shade. Flying at a height of 10,000 meters over the mountains that stood higher than 6,000 meters, it appeared as if we were flying dangerously close to ground level. It almost felt as if we could open the windows, let a hand down and touch some of the snowy peaks right below.
It was a quick and sharp landing in Leh with a jolt of breaking in the runway that is tucked away between the mountains. Indus River, seen from the top, was all frozen but for a few cracks where its deep blue colours disturbed a white blanket. It was -13C in Leh, but with our layers of clothes and insulation, it did not seem harsh.
The first day’s camp after descending into the river and walking the first mile.
Two days later, we were struggling down a scree-slope nearly 60km from Leh as we descended into the Valley of Zanskar River. The river surface was frozen, but a strong current flowed underneath and kept us weary of encountering thin ice that could break and take us down. In places where the ice-shelf was broken, the deep-blue waters of Zanskar flowed invitingly, looking so beautiful that I would jump into it without much thinking, but for its forbiddingly frigid temperatures. The waters were so clear that every pebble was clearly visible even at a depth of ten feet.
The first ten minutes on the ice-shelf, it was as much falling on ice as it was walking. But in some time, we were getting used to our brittle chilkat shoes, got better at gauging the ice surface and managed to stay on two feet for longer periods. I myself prided in remaining literally infallible for a larger part of the trip until I came crashing in a relatively dangerous terrain on a steep slope.
Walking on the tiny strip of frozen Zanskar River, next to the blue flow.
For the next five days, we treaded over the frozen waters everyday, waking up to a miserably cold morning everyday and packing all our stuff with great pain using our numbing hands. Our spirits would lift the moment we were on the ice-shelf, or Chadar, as it is popularly called. Our bodies would warm up as we walked and our spirits dulled by the night’s dipping temperature would get uplifted by the brilliant mountainous landscapes and the gurgle of Zanskar’s flow.
All along the way, our tour leader Manish would chant one mantra that the ‘chadar is unpredictable and changes every hour’. We would see powdery snow along the path one moment which would morph into rock solid slippery ice a little later. Sometimes we would be walking on perfectly good ice covering the river, only to encounter after some time just a thin patch of good ice on which we had to tread dangerously. The hardest hour of the trek was when we were trapped for a day at the bottom of a gorge with a completely broken Chadar, leaving no choice but to spend the night close to the river and hope for things to get better next morning.
Where the ice was thin, we had to go over the slopes. It was more difficult at some places, and at one point in time we had to spend a night wherever we were, hoping for the ice to form next morning.
Just like the condition of ice varied, the scenery kept changing by the hour and by the day. Sometimes we would walk along a narrow valley that would suddenly open up widely at the confluence of streams. Waterfalls would appear occasionally along the way, which dumped their waters straight into the river in summer months but were completely frozen and stuck to the wall in these cold winters.
The bright sheet of snow and the blue waters were the only things that stayed constant with us all along. Sometimes emerging from a thick blanket of snow, the current carried tiny crystals of ice that floated on the river. My ‘aha’ moment of the trek came when I saw these crystal forming a bunch of crystal-lilies at a place where the water swirled at a corner, forming a small gathering of gently rotating discs of ice-crystals.
We encountered difficult times along the way when there was no ice in stretches and we had to find way through the slopes. These were the times when our infinitely agile and unbelievably strong Zanskari Porters came to our help. They would simply lift us on the shoulders and take us across shallow waters, so that we escaped the cold bite of the river. On precipitous slopes, they would climb up first, setup ropes and then belay us up carefully.
It is not just on the ice that our porters worked hard. They would march ahead and set our tents ready at the campsite before we arrived. On reaching a camp, we could always look forward to settling down in our comfortable tents with a hot cup of tea. Everything worked like a clock and we had things ready in our hands even before we needed it – be it something as important as a delicious dinner or a mug of hot water for freshening up in the morning. The porters and kitchen staff would pack the equipment and leave a campsite much after us in the morning, but would march ahead in no time to set things up for us at the next camp. Chadar Expedition would be much difficult without their heroics.
As we got closer to Padum, the valley widened and allowed us to walk over the slopes, leaving the river bed.
After six days of walking on the river, we reached the wide open valleys where civilization flourished once again and small villages dotted the mountain landscape. In here, for the first time during the trek, we left the river and walked along the slopes; we kept the tents folded and enjoyed the warm rooms in Zanskari Houses; we spread out from being huddled at the edge of the river and played soccer with the children in the villages. In two days that we spent in the open terrains of Padum, we forgot the ruggedness of the terrain and mingled with the smiling faces around us. But soon, it was time to go back. It was time to retrace the tough path on the ice within the confines of Zanskar’s steep mountains on either side of us.
Just like it used to be during the trek from Leh to the depths of Zanskar, Chadar kept changing and continued to throw challenges at us everyday on the way back. But time and again, our porters were there to lead from the front in the hour of difficulty. Weather gods too did their best and ensured that we had a smooth journey for a large part of our way back. It is thanks to the porters and good weather that we made it to Leh safely and in time to catch our flights home. As we took another quick flight over the mountain peaks enjoying the views below, we carried many fond memories – of smiling faces, enduring porters and breathtaking views that kept our company all through the expedition.
Below is a slideshow of images, presented at the Open Show, Bangalore on Chadar Trek.
Chadar Trek is an unusual expedition of walking on a frozen river. The Zanskar River in Ladakh freezes in winter, enabling walking on the ice sheet in a narrow gorge that is inaccessible in summer.
