White Winter Wonderland

A winter vacation in Ladakh is not for the faint-hearted, but the rewards for answering the siren call of the extreme landscape are many.

- GUSTASP and JEROO IRANI

There was a time when winter in Ladakh meant that the snow-bound, northern-most Union Territory of India would be virtually cut off from the rest of the country, from October to April. In that hushed high-altitude desert, seemingly plucked out of the Ice Age, the land would then breathe a sigh of relief. Ladakhis would reclaim their own starkly beautiful world from zooming bikers and throngs of wayfarers who descended in summer, in search of the country’s once-hidden Shangri-La.

No longer! Ladakh in winter is the new entry on the bucket list of fit and feisty travellers, and thrill junkies looking for adventures of the gutsy kind. Winter tourism has come of age in Ladakh, with the young and the restless heading there to track the elusive snow leopard, watch ice hockey tournaments, study calligraphy at a monastery, visit serene gompas, trek on frozen rivers, or just kick back at a centrally-heated hotel in Leh while gazing at the snow-caked Himalayas. If you can handle temperatures as low as -30°C and heights of over 3,000 metres, Ladakh in winter could be a revelation.

TRACK THE GREY GHOST

Our SUV bumped across spaghetti-thin, ravine-hugging roads, above which the craggy peaks of the Trans Himalayas reared like the jagged teeth of a dragon. Whitewashed monasteries teetered on mountain ledges, secret and shuttered against the harsh winds of winter. We had left behind the centrally-heated, luxurious confines of our hotel, The Grand Dragon Ladakh, located in the main town of Leh, and were now driving on ice-slicked roads to the Ulley Chhu valley, west of Leh. This valley is one of the top spots for tracking the snow leopard, or the ‘grey ghost’ as it is dubbed in these parts.