Leh and the Markha Valley Trek — The road liss traveled

It’s wayyyy to hot in Delhi! I gotta get out. So it’s certainly convenient that you can hop on a flight and be all the way up in the mountains of Ladakh in 1 hour and 15 minutes! Soon enough I was on a tuk tuk to the airport - of course when we get there the driver tells me he isn’t allowed to go any further and I have to walk with all my stuff to the terminal, which I can’t see, but I’m assured it’s just 300m down the road! I had a few choice words for this new development, but what can you do? Ahhh India. It really wasn’t hard to find and a few hours later I was stepping off the plane outside Leh, swapping the sweltering heat for beautiful 60 degree and sunny weather. Although I really should have paid a little more and booked a window seat though, oops

I shared a taxi into town with the only other foreigners on the plane, a German couple, got dropped off and headed up the hills a bit - really feeling every step in my lungs! I had gone straight from sea level to almost 12,000 feet, which is not ideal obviously, but I took some Diamox to help prevent altitude sickness beforehand, just in case. I’ve never really had many problems with high altitude, so I wasn’t too worried. But I would certainly need a few days to take it easy and acclimatize. First order of business upon clamoring to my guesthouse: a nice long nap!

The guesthouse was nice, especially the rooftop terrace with a view, although it appeared to all Indian couples or families. Later that afternoon I headed down to the main tourist strip to see what’s what. I was pretty surprised at how bustling it was! It looked like Covid had certainly dampened the international tourist crowd, as there were none that I could spot, but domestic tourism appeared to be alive and well! I guess I didn’t realize how popular Ladakh had become with Indian tourists, it seemed like the place to be. Everywhere you look there are new guesthouses being built wherever there’s any open space. It used to be that you had to take the brutal Manali-Leh Highway to get to Leh, but nowadays you can just hop on a flight, so I guess that helped it’s popularity considerably, along with being featured in a famous Bollywood movie. And while it’s nice that Indians are out exploring more of their country, mass tourism isn’t exactly my scene. So I was looking to get out of town and do some trekking in some more remote parts outside of Leh, preferably one you an do independently - the Markha Valley.

the main tourist street of Leh. Feels more like Nepal than India!

Well, it’s time to see if I can find any like-minded people who might also want to do this trek. I stopped into some hostels to see if they organized any treks or had a message board for travelers looking to recruit some other people for excursions (quite common in western hostels), but nope, nothing of that sort. Then I stopped in the travel agencies, and they all said they had received almost no interest in the Markha Valley trek, as I guess Indians don’t really do trekking, heh. Plan C was sit around the main strip and chat up the very few foreigners I saw walking around, seeing what their plans were for Ladakh, but alas, no trekkers. Welp, I guess I’m on my own.

After two days of rest and acclimatizing and visiting some monasteries, I took an expensive taxi up to the mountain village where the trail starts. The nice thing about the Markha Valley trek is that there’s a few tiny villages along way, which have some homestays where a family gives you a very basic bed (well, mattress pad), cooks you dinner and breakfast, and give you a few snacks for lunch, in exchange for about 1200 rupees – about $15. Although my taxi driver thought they might be shut down because it was so early in the season and there were so few tourists trekking. Uh oh. But why would a homestay shut down, it’s just a spare room in the house right? Well we’ll see.

I really do enjoy this type of trekking though, they call it teahouse trekking in Nepal, and it’s very convenient because you don’t have to carry a tent and all your camping gear. All that stuff is huge PITA to carry along on a longer term trip. Also it adds a nice cultural component to the hike, but you still get plenty of peace and solitude once you’re back on the trail itself. As for the start of my hike, once the taxi dropped me off it certainly seemed like I would get PLENTY of peace and solitude! There were two villages right at the beginning where I saw some people, but after that, it was just me and the trail. I had 15 miles total to Markha village. My taxi driver had made me a little nervous, these guesthouses better be open or it would be cold miserable night somewhere! And then I’d have to hike out the way I came and hitchhike back to town, ugh.

The scenery itself was very pretty, in a rough, raw type of way. Very few things seemed to be alive except for some patches of vegetation along the river bank. Apart from that it was all sand and rocks, flanked by dry brown mountains. After hiking a few hours I spotted what appeared to be someone with a big backpack ahead, another trekker perhaps? And it turned out it was! It was a German girl, about my age, also doing the trek solo, looking to get to Markha Village for the night. The Gods are good! She’s a doctor in between jobs, here in Lakakh for a high altitude medicine conference, well traveled, and very interested in Tibetan culture, and we got along well! She did have a boyfriend though, I’m not THAT lucky.

We arrived in Markha and stopped at the first place we saw that said homestay. The man, who spoke some English, welcomed us to our little room, which had a nice view of the mountains. His wife brought us some milk tea and cookies while we took some time to relax on our mattress pads. Very nice! We also had some time to walk into town and check out the small monastery up on the hill. The views of the valley were great, there wasn’t much in the way of civilization even though this was the largest town in the valley! Fifteen or so houses, a bit of farmland, a handful of people in the fields, some kids sliding down loose scree in the distance, plus some sheep, donkeys, and dogs roaming around. Extremely tranquil. We got back for a dinner of popcorn, curry vegetables, lentils, rice, and some dense Tibetan bread rolls. It was a nice way to start the trip!

The second day would be an easy day. We slept in and had chapati and tea for breakfast, with a few different types of jam to choose from, peanut butter AND nutella. We didn’t realize how good we had it so early on! That morning our hike to the village of Hankar was pretty flat, ever so slightly uphill, with the valley walls steepening and closing in on us a bit. At one point there was a homestay perched way up in the rocks, closed sadly, but it looked like one of those places in the movies where you go and train with the monks and start acquiring special mental abilities. Someone alert the instagrammers when it opens again!

If you squint you can see the little house up there

We arrived mid afternoon to Hankar, which was less than 10 homes, and didn’t see any homestay signs, but we did see a woman outside to who beckoned us to come in. We were shown our room and brought some tea, and then headed out to see what was around. Hankar had an old fort that was built way up on a steep rocky pinnacle, with a precarious trail to get up there. We made it to the main fort section, but the highest tower was via some very very exposed rock steps, the fall to your death kind, and we took a pass on that part. But it was quite the excitement for such a quiet sleepy place.

Back in the homestay was a little weird, the woman and husband were very solemn, and didn’t really acknowledge us and left us waiting well into the night for dinner. Finally they invited us to the common room, which was looked great, where we ate a dinner of some Tibetan flour dumplings and some potatoes, along with the parents (presumably) of the man or wife. They looked to be in their 90’s (they probably weren’t) but these old mountain people have such leathery weathered faces. Everyone sat and ate in silence, and we speculated this family may have fallen on hard times, but we couldn’t know for sure, the place felt a bit awkward. Some visible baby shoes with no baby around seemed like a bad sign.

the old man reading his prayer book at breakfast

Anyway, it was chapati and jam and honey for breakfast, and off for a tougher hiking day, almost all uphill to a camp called Nymaling. It’s a seasonal camp, so I was worried it might be closed, but Olga (odd name for a German) had the intel that is was indeed up and running. We had nice sunny weather at the start but eventually the clouds came and the wind picked up, and we were pretty chilly by the time we reached the camp. The hosts weren’t there, but we each grabbed a tent and were happy to throw on all the blankets and take a nice little nap until the two young Ladakhi hosts returned and made us some tea. And the sun did end up peaking its head out for a bit in the evening, making some nice light for photos. Although after about 15 minutes outside my fingers were about ready to fall off.

looking back down into the valley on the way up

The valley eventually flattened out and got greener: Nymaling Campsite

Later on we were invited by the two guys into the mess tent for our soup, rice and dhal meal. They were surprisingly chirpy in spite their living conditions in a high altitude, freezing valley. Olga said it was a place she could spend a few days because it was so peaceful. A big nope for me, I’ll find a peaceful place where I can feel my extremities, thank you very much. Once again it was an early night, although the quality of sleep was kind of lousy, presumably because we were at 16,000 feet.

The next day we tackled the high pass, which was steep, but only 1200 feet to climb. The cold wind really picked up near the top, making the last few hundred feet quite the slog. At the top (hooray!) we had some views of the mountain ranges in the distance, but that was quickly enveloped by clouds. Soon we were in a total whiteout and the wind was blowing the snow just about horizontally. We threw on every layer we had, and this was the time to bust out my sock gloves, and quickly scurried down the other side. These were not conditions to mess around with! Of course 30 minutes later it completely blew over and it was sunny again. The rest of the day would be all downhill, but much more challenging than I was anticipating. Loose rocks, an ice/snow covered riverbed, narrow and exposed sections of trail, and then a few hours of no real trail, but just walking and carefully placing footsteps in the rocky riverbed. It’s exhausting having to pay so much attention to where you’re walking! I was kinda hoping to get down to the highway that afternoon, but nahhh, we were both pretty tired, so one more homestay it is!

This homestay the woman came down the hill and grabbed Olga’s bag to carry up to our room. It was located beautifully at a fork in the river and you had views of the valley in three different directions. This woman was super friendly and quickly got us tea and cookies, then instant noodles for a snack, and pulled up plastic chairs so we could watch the sun go down behind the mountains. We were glad we made one more stop! Dinner was the usual, rice and dhal and some veggies. The next morning we just had to walk a few miles downhill to the highway, but we got lucky and flagged down an Indian Gov’t jeep and they took all the way down. Then we split a taxi back to Leh, and that was it. It was really a enjoyable hike, we had mostly all good experiences at the homestays, and we had the whole valley pretty much to ourselves. Quite the opposite of being in Leh. Totally worth it!