Modern Routes
The
Route From Kashmir:
Today, travellers from Srinagar drive on this route in the relative comfort
of taxis, local buses or their own vehicles, taking two days and breaking
journey at Kargil. It provides the best possible introduction to the land
and its people. At one step as you cross the Zoji-la, you pass from the lushness
of Kashmir into the bare uncompromising contours of a trans-Himalayan landscape.
Dras, the first major village over the pass, inhabited by a population of
mixed kashmiri and Dard origins, has the local reputation of being the second
coldest permanent inhabited spot in the world. But in summer when the pass
is open and the tourists are going thourgh, the standing crops and clumps
of willow give it a gently, smiling look.
After Drass, the valley narrows, becoming almost a gorge. Yet even here
it occasionally allows space for small patches of terraced cultivation,
where a tiny village population ekes out a precarious existence. This is
indeed a mountain desert, greened only by such scattered oases.
On departure from Kargil, the road plunges into the ridges and valley of
the Zanskar range over a huge mound of alluvium, now made fertile by a huge
irrigation scheme. Mulbekh with its gigantic rock engraving of Maitreya
(Buddha-tocome) and its gompa perched high on crag above the village, is
the transition from Muslim to Buddhist Ladakh. It is followed by two more
passes, Namika-la (12,200 feet/ 3,719m) and Fotu-la (13,432 feet / 4,094
m). From Fotu-la, the road descends in sweeps and shirls, past the ancient
and spectacularly sited monastery of Lamayuru, past amazing wind-eroded
towers and pinnacles of lunar-landscape rock, down to the Indus at Khalatse-
a descent of almost 4,000 feet/ 1,219 m in about 32 km. The Indus valley
from Khalatse up to Upshi, where the road from Manali comes in, is Ladakh's
historical heartland. The road follows the river, passing villages with
their terraced fields and neat whitewashed houses, the roofs piled high
with fodder laid in against the coming winter. Here and there the observant
traveller notices the ruins of an ancient fort or palace or the distant
glimpse of a gompa on a hill a little way from the road. The last of these
is Spituk, only eight km. Out of Leh. And at last, Leh, the capital town
of the region is visible, dominated by the bulk of its imposing 17th century
palace.
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