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. Drass, 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 though, 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-to come) 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
