Around Leh

From Leh to Diskit (Nubra Valley)

There are several options to visit Nubra Valley from Leh, you can either take public buses, or take a guided tour or do it by yourself. As I had and I am still having a motorbike I did it with it. You should be very careful with the petrol cause you couldn't get any beside Leh, so rather take a canister with you ;-)

Going to Diskit you have to pass the 5600m high Khardung La pass, where most motorbikes are really suffering... Somehow mine did it, which was great ;-)

 

The first km's after Khardung La, the scenery was not so different to the valley of Leh, except there are hardly any villages.

After a while it was getting greener and I was able to discover really nice scenery's. => From my point of view it would be really great to stay in the Nubra Valley a bit longer for hiking and discovering it by your own. Especially the huge canyons were amazing and I am pretty sure you could get somehow at the bottom of them.

As it was really cold and I didn't have proper clothes nor a rope with me I decided to stay one night in Diskit before returning to Leh.

My new favorite animals the donkeys are almost everywhere present on Ladakhs roads.

Shey Climbing Area

One km before Shey on the left side when coming from Leh you will find around 15 granite pitches. Some of them are multi pitches. I went to this plae with Gabor from Budapest, whom I met at the Bouldering Cafe called "Gravit" in Leh. In this cafe you could hang around, speak to local climbers, get the latest news about pitches and rent equipment. Topos are not available, but who doesn't love on sight climbing?

As mentioned before the rocks are granite and therefore you can hardly find good cracks or holes, if you find something than it is super crimpy, but most of the time you have really nothing so it is pure fraction climbing... what I really hate ;-)

Anyhow it was great, to stay at least one day with a nice person on the rocks and doing some exercises.

 

Here you can see at least one Video while riding the bike. Garbor was riding it and I was sitting behind him, therefore I had the possibility to take this clip.

Monasteries around Leh

Eastern of Leh there are some monasteries, like the one in Thikse...

and the other one is Shey Monastery close to the climbing spot.

Pangong Lake

Pangong Lake is Asia's biggest salt water lake located between India and China. The trip to Pangong Lake let me pass a nice monastery located in Chemre and really amazing scenery as you can see in the following...

The pass I had to climb called Chang La was on an altitude of 5300m. It was there much colder than on the 300m higher pass Khardung La...

Just when I climbed Chang La problems with my bike aroused... I could not start the engine anymore - after trying to clean the spark plug it did still not start, I decided to let the bike roll downhills, which worked fine ;-)

Arrived at a military checkpoint at the very bottom of the street the soldiers tried their best to help me, but unfortunately without success, that's why they stopped a military truck, which took me to Tangtse, where a mechanic solved my problem on a Sunday for just 200 Rupies.

Some statistics in Ladakh region there are living around 300.000 people, but there are more than 600.000 military persons. My friend Khan told me, that India increased the forces, cause China occupied Ladakh region within this year for 5 times.

Tangtse itself is a wonderful place, very quiet with many friendly people living there. I especially liked the small river running to the village.

And of course Tangtse also has a monastery...

The next day I headed towards the Pangong Lake, where I passed nice Karl May scenery's,

I mentioned already before, that I am no motor biker, but I really enjoyed it to be on such roads alone with the bike, even I would have preferred it to take a bicycle, cause sitting for hours on a motorbike without any movement is fu.. cold when the temperatures are just below 0°C.

Some Yaks...

The Pangong Lake... It was obvious, that there must have happened another issue with my bike just when I reached the lake ;-) So the clutch wire broke, that's why I decided not to go further east, and returned immediately towards Leh.

Best Restaurant at the lake ;-)

Even there was now an issue with the bike that made it interesting to switch into 1st gear, I took some pictures, which should express the beauty of Ladakhs nature.

Some friendly marmots, very close to the road. This one bite me in the finger, when I was giving it my hand (I didn't feed it, which is by the way not allowed) - but nothing serious happened to my finger.

View from Chang La towards Sakti...