Dreaming of Ladakh

Ladakh is a place of distances. Not just because of the time it can take to get from one place to another, but also because it’s a place that can challenge you to expand your mind.

It’s a place of varied vistas — snow, rock, dust, greenery, sand, water. And everywhere, mountains. And the expansive sky.

Once you leave the main settlements — towns like Leh and Kargil or villages like Nimoo and Alchi — Ladakh often feels boundless, perhaps as vast as the universe. But it’s a companionable vastness; a bit like being in a pub full of friendly strangers.

On some journeys you’re sandwiched in a snaking convoy of olive green; army trucks carrying people and supplies across the region. On other roads you can go for an hour or more without encountering another human. Sometimes, it’s unclear where the road is and you decide it’s wherever your vehicle is!

Often, it all feels very profound. The immense never-ending sky, the chortens, the monasteries perched far up the side of a mountain, the ever-present five-coloured prayer flags snapping in the wind, lines of prayer wheels, the Indus or one of its tributaries meandering alongside the road. So much so that you begin to believe that in a moment or two the meaning of life will be revealed to you and that eternity is around the corner.

And then, around the corner, is an egg yolk-yellow road sign that declares ‘Be gentle on my curves’. 

But as Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in a 1878 essay titled El Dorado: “Little do ye know your own blessedness; for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”

So, it’s best to suspend all thought and luxuriate in Ladakh. In its people, food, history, culture and those vistas that bridge distances.