Route: Alchi—Saspotse—Ulle Togpo
Not certain whether to go to Alchi or Likir today but when I show up at the minibus stand the only minibus in evidence is the Alchi one, so the decision is made for me. The journey takes about two hours. Lots of army camps ('The Clue Finders') between Leh and Phyiang, also between Nimmu and Basgo.
At Lama Guru, supposedly blessed by Padmasambhava, or Rinchen Zangpo, or someone like that, there is now an army-built Sikh gurudwara, but we go by too fast for me to read the explanatory signage. The road then veers off the direct route to Nimmu (which is too steep) to curve round and down, passing the 'Magnetic Hill' where signs encourage drivers to park and experience a wonder of nature. (A short stretch of less steep downhill, which you would probably confuse for flat or even uphill considering the lay of the land). The bus driver is not interested in this experience, though he does have to avoid someone who is.
Before Nimmu is the Zanskar turn-off (Chilling 28 km). Nimmu is a nice little place with an Urgyen Gompa, signed in the opposite direction to where it is marked on the map. Then come the army camps again, and some large mani walls. The largest one, incorporating two giant chortens, is placed across the bottom of an alluvial fan coming from a ravine in the hills. I've heard some mani walls are actually flood protection measures, but this one doesn't seem to protect much, and being built right across the path of the potential flood water doesn't seem the best idea either. It's been here for 400 years without being washed away, but I'm not sure what that proves.
Another mani wall a little further on has 3 chortens rather than 2, using the set which you find in rigsum gonpo monuments: a blue octagonal one (i.e., reconciliation with dissenters / piety), a white square one (i.e. enlightenmnet), and a yellow round one (i.e. victory, long life), the white one being placed in the middle. The coloured ones especially stand out in the landscape. I wonder if this is a relatively new innovation. The coloured chortens I've seen tend to be newer, and many of the rigsum gonbo I've seen in Leh have just used white chortens. Another clue is that the colours match the colours of the deities painted behind the chortens when they're kept in a rigsum gonbo lhakhang, i.e. Manjushri (blue), Avalokitesvara (white) and Vajrapani (yellow) CHECK
Through Basgo, which has an impressive fortress I shall try and visit properly someday. A group of Western motorcyclists have stopped at a roadside cafe. Then up a set of hairpins to a smoothly-sloping barren field, just like the one between Phyiang and Nimmu, which the bus makes heavy weather of but eventually leads to the Likir turning. Thence the road turns down a gorge past a surprising grassy area with a few cows and their keepers (and their keepers' tents).
Before Saspol a turn-off announces the Alchi Hydroelectric Project. The dam is marked on my map but not the road to it. The sign says the project generates 15 MW of power, but this seems very low.
Through Saspol, which I'll return to later, and the bus negotiates a needlessly tight turn to bump down to the bridge across the Indus which leads to Alchi. A few hairpins, partly to get up the cliff on the other side, partly to avoid a couple of 108-chorten rows, ruined as always. This seems to be a monument type that nobody bothers with anymore.
At the end of a small plain (Zampa Thang, 'bridge plain') the road begins to coast down into Alchi village. At this point people start getting off, stopping the bus ever 50 yards or so until finally we reach the bus stand with (almost) only westerners left on board. There are several foreigners here already, most numerously a Dutch group of maybe two families bargaining for trinkets. I sit down for an apricot strudel, but pass on a hot drink as they are asking Rs80 for it. Have plenty of water in the pack effectively warming up in the sun.
The attraction here is the Alchi Choskor, which is a 900 year old 'monastery' with wall paintings that predate the Tibetan Buddhist influence, preserved mainly through neglect after Alchi's main monastery was built further up the village. The Choskor is really a collection of shrines and monuments, the only residential building being much newer. The whole lot is under the care of Likir monastery and a smiling monk has been deputed to take Rs50 from foreigners, or Rs20 from Indians, to view the paintings. I park my pack and poles with him for a moment while I go in.
I am by no means an expert on this sort of thing but the paintings in the main shrine room are very impressive, hundreds of buddhas and bodhisattvas arranged in regular rows, each wall focusing on two to five different images repeated endlessly. Then between these in alcoves on each of the three walls are two-storey-high statues, briefly labelled in Tibetan and English (though the descriptions have come in for some editing: 'God' scribbled out and replaced by 'Buddha', this in turn edited to 'Bodhisattva') The fourth, entrance wall has a protector deity painted above, as I am coming to expect, not that I can identify him.
The second shrine room is even more impressive, though severely darkened with age, each wall entirely covered with one or two giant mandalas of intricate form. Rows of squid-shaped chortens (not always 108) depicted within the outer crossed vajras. Inside grids of deities or scenes encapsulated in circles. Very tantric.
Discover within a crumbling arch stupa a second, painted stupa, and further Buddhas and friends lining the inner walls. Photography is strickly prohibited in the temples, but this isn't a temple, so I snap away, hah.
The remaining two or three shrines are atmospheric enough but the paintings are newer and generally not well done. Some are downright embarrassing, enough to justify the strick prohibition against photography; not just slapdash detail but whole walls where the mesmerizing regular grid of Buddhas has been redone at a slightly different scale, or worse just painted wherever they would fit like a pile of marbles. Another concern is that many of the walls of the various rooms are cracked or bowed alarmingly.
Discover here that one half of the detachable waist strap on my bag has detached itself and is now lost. Remove the other half and store in a pocket (to be lost later.) Make a forlorn trip back to the bus, but as I expected it's not to be found there.
May as well start moving. Behind the Choskor on the other side they are building a visitor centre and car park, which are accessed by road from the other side, bypassing the village. Probably a sensible decision, though I don't imagine it went down well with the sellers of trinkets lining the route down from the bus stand. The new facilities aren't finished and the car park and road are deserted. Set off along this to the bridge across the Indus. The map suggests a trail on the other side leading to Saspol, but first there is the small matter of about 12 hairpins to get out of the valley on to the crag.
Hairpins are particularly annoying to the walker, as there is rarely official provision for them, meaning we have to walk far further than necessary; conversely, the unofficial short cuts are extremely steep and run for the most part over dodgy loose shale. I manage one short cut, though even then nearly come a cropper when the route suddenly steepens and I have to improvise a way of zigzagging across, not pleasant with a pack on.
These hairpins are also unusual in being supplied with street lighting, basically unheard of in Ladakh, even in large parts of Leh. The lamps are clearly here only because the electricity is generated at the dam just up the way. Though I'm not sure they work: each one's junction box is swinging open, bare wires poking out.
Finally reach the top. There is a slight glimpse to be had of the lake formed by the dam, but no viewpoint as such, and functional compounds have been built on either side. Up here there is a lonely substation, complete with obligatory sign declaring the project cost to whoever might wander up here.
A few more wiggles and a path becomes clear to the left, leaving the road, which presumably carries on to where I'd noted the turn off to the dam earlier. I want to go direct to Saspol, so make the assumption that this is the old trail marked on the map and head on.
The path runs along a shelf of land beneath the peaks and above the river cliffs. The views of Saspol, Alchi and downstream are fantastic throughout. There is no shade, however, and I have forgotten my hat. The only plant life round here is a sort of creeping shrub with strange red-and-white spotted, curled 'flowers'. One gets a nitrogen boost from me as I pass.
Eventually the path meets a dirt road, and the dirt road ends at a ravine, and a path descends the ravine to a bridge. There is plant life here: seabuckthorn bushes, willow trees. Then an irrigated field and a line of apricot trees. Scrump a few apricots. Not quite ripe yet, they are tartish and lovely. This is the beginning of Saspol.
Soon meet the main road and walk down it in search of the turn up the Saspol Togpo. A few women and children sit by the road selling apricots. One, in conversation with a male friend, wears a traditional perak studded with turquoises. By the village prayer wheel I rest and succumb to the apricot hard sell. 5 for Rs5. Try to explain by gestures that I don't have pocket space for more than that. These are undeniably ripe and juicy, but this has given them the sweeter, apricotty taste that I'm still not a fan of.
Opposite the prayer wheel is a likely-looking track which I follow up to the local school (kids are half singing something with occasional shouts from the teacher) and gompa, which is built of packed mud against the rock, but is in fact only from 1993. Nobody is about, so I descend and carry on up the track which bends up the valley.
Saspol has paintings too, in a series of caves, but they are not here: I think they are on the other side of the valley, where there is another gompa-like building. But I can't get there from here, though some workmen with a JCB seem to be remedying that situation if only I had the time to wait. The track on ths side is a firm, graded dirt road, and after a km or so I meet a group of German motorcyclists and support vehicle coming the other way, all labelled 'Bhutan - Tibet - India', whether a specific expedition or just the name of the organizing firm I can't be sure.
This is, however, the only traffic I see as I make my way up the valley towards Sumdo. There are bushes and the occasional tree around the course of the river, which flows along merrily, but out of the immediate area the slopes are barren. I'm on the sunny side of the valley and it is very hot.
At one point the valley narrows and there is a way down to the riverside. Find a spot shaded by thorny bushes to take off my pack and have late lunch. The cumin cheese I bought has melted somewhat, disappointingly. It's a messy business but I manage to eat enough of it to squash the rest into the plastic leftovers box. I do have to ignore the warnings to 'remove coating before eating', whatever coating it was has disintegrated and isn't easily separated from the rind, which itself shades gradually into the cheese part. I just eat it all.
Fill up water bottles and discover another disappointing fact: the 'fits all' filter doesn't fit the water bottle as the opening is too small; worse, the water bottle crumples if you try to hold the filter to it. Guess I will have to buy a (pirated) Sigg bottle in Leh. The water at least is cold and refreshing and probably not soapy: only Sumdo and Saspotse are upstream.
Sumdo ('confluence') turns out to be a single house, which may be advertising camping, or may have thought better of it (some of the painted signs have 'camping' crossed out). There is a tattered old parachute with a similar painted sign to 'parachute restaurant, sign painted 2013', but no sign of life. Perhaps it only serviced treks for one season. Certainly it's not the classic get-away-from-it-all trekking route it may have once been: the road I'm on has been asphalted for the last km, and the map indicates blacktop all the way to Likir in one direction and Hemis shukpachan in the other.
Halfway up another switchback I spot a path that is likely the original route up the valley, though now it's just a shortcut, its gradual slope and compacted surface give it more presence than the opportunistic ones I saw earlier. It meets the road where the latter bends round the top of a crag: only one place for the route to go, so the road takes precedence.
It's another 5 km or so to Saspotse and I'm getting increasingly tired and hot, having to stop every few hundred metres. At long last I reach the upper bridge where the road gives out. According to the map a trail carries on from here up the valley all the way to the Lago La and thence Nubra. It's not obvious, though there are tracks leading up above the intakes and maybe along further that way. But the light is failing and Saspotse is as far as I meant to come. Find a spot to unroll bedding protected by a spiky wild rose bush. No roses are evident, unlike in Lahaul, but the spikes are diagnostic. A hundred m away is a large rock with carvings of ibex on two sides. I will completely forget to photograph it tomorrow morning. I bet it is super old.
Even though it's only eight p.m. I feel like sleeping straight away. The stars start to come out, but before long the full moon has risen; although I can't see it yet, it lights up the sky and the upper parts of the ridge opposite, the shape of the ridge on this side projected against it with sharp relief.
I sleep well, though in spurts: every two hours or so I wake up, note the new position of the moon in the sky, now lighting up the whole valley, the new stars fighting to be seen. Eventually a deeper brightness arrives, and before long the upper parts of the ridge opposite are shining in the dawn light.
It must be about 6am so I get up, refill water bottles, and have a stab at making breakfast. I will definitely be making some form of trail mix next time: although the cheese has mostly hardened overnight, it's still pretty gross. Next task is to get my sleeping bag stuffed into my pack like it was before. This is a tricky operation as the sleeping bag's compression sack is slightly wider than my rucksack when fully compressed.
Just before 7.30 a bus appears and trundles down the road before me. I hadn't noticed a bus from Leh to Saspotse, but there was one to Hemis Shukpachan every other day: perhaps this is its return journey?
Collect poles and walk back down to the road and across the bridge to meet the sun on the other side of the valley. The village is at the top, slightly set back from the fields. A small gompa or perhaps mud-fronted meditation cave overlooks the village from some way up a crag. It looks like a peaceful spot, though even here a new house is being constructed in the fields, concrete frame a infilled with mud bricks.
The circular road descends to meet the main road, which had crossed the stream somewhat lower down to bypass the village, then begins the ascent to the pass over to the next side valley of the Indus, the Ulle Togpo. It's a gradual climb, asphalted all the way; a couple of Contract Carriers pass me on the way up. A mule path climbs directly up the valley from Sumdo; the road, having detoured via Saspotse, is now at a higher level and can traverse the landscape on a high shelf. Looking across the Saspol Togpo towards Likir, the shelf clearly continues, dividing the mountains to the north from a smaller range between here and the Indus. In fact this shelf, that between here and Likir, and the large sloping plain between Likir and Basgo seem to form parts of the same structure, a wide strath tilted by ten degrees and forsaken by the river, later cut through by swift side streams.
The rocks round here show contrasting colours. I am passing under maroon cliffs, but the valley down to Sumdo is golden, and whitish knolls appear by the yellow cliffs to the south, each one topped with a splash of red like a cherry Bakewell. Reaching the pass (Charatse La), the village of Yangthang appears in the distance on a great mound of grey shale; behind the fields, the slopes are orange, streaked with purple.
From here a path descends the valley. I am heading downstream so I take this, although it's not entirely clear from the map where it goes. At one point I make the summary decision not to ascend into the village, and as a result get a little bit lost in the marshy woods at the bottom of the valley, where the drained irrigation water collects. But at the bottom the various water courses funnel together and I find myself on a clear, well-maintained path down the side of the main stream.
The next 2 km or so are lovely: passing down a deep gorge, crossing the stream on sturdy little wooden bridges, ascending over bluffs, or descending beneath sheer cliffs as necessary. Then I reach a place with a small apricot grove, opposite a single old house with its lhatho and a string of new-looking prayer flags. Here the path drops to the riverbank and promptly runs out.
Downstream, but higher up the right side of the valley, a silent JCB digger marks the position of a track. However the track gets no further than a protruding rock spur; the path I am on, correspondingly, gets to the bottom of the same spur but provides no way to ascend to the level of the track. We are at an impasse. The work done to build the track has, I imagine, sent a deal of shale down the slope, obliterating the track.
Look around for a good while to see if there is any better way down. I did just pass a young man, the first pedestrian I'd seen all day, who was going up to Yungthang, so if he didn't start here he must have known a way through. It is a puzzle, and one to be honest not helped by my misplacing myself on the map.
The only option I can see is to cross the river with the help of a fallen branch, and follow a path on that side down for a few hundred yards. Though I had hoped this path would lead all the way to the next place, it peters out after a few hundred metres and leaves me needing to make another river crossing (a bit sketchy) and then traverse loose shale slopes up to meet the track having wiggled its way down closer to the river level. Still, after five minutes on this track it meets an asphalt road signed 'Ridzong' upwards and 'Yangthang' back the way I had come. This sets me straight in the matter of the map, and though I think of going up to Ridzong (a km or so away) I eventually decide to leave that for another trek.
The road soon enters a greener part of the valley, with trees of various kinds although few fields. Here is a nunnery related to Ridzong, with a standing prayer wheel. A nun hears the bell when I spin it, and peeks out from the compound, but I am soon on my way.
Soon enough the road has left the green space, and although there are still trees by the river, the gorge is generally bare, made of steep ribs of purple rock. Almost invisible on one of these ribs, way up in the air, an old chorten, some whitewash still clinging to it. I feel the day already becoming hotter.
An irrigation channel leaves the river and begins to run beside the road: the first sign that there are fields ahead, above the Indus. The gorge turns sharp left and suddenly the greenery is visible below; also, a steel bridge of military type which is causing some congestion ('1 VEH AT A TIME')
I round the last bluff and suddenly am in the Indus valley once more, opposite the terraces of Gera. Almost immediately on reaching the main road (12:30), a minibus appears. I don't even have time to reach the next shady spot to sit and wait. The bus is empty but for one Indian passenger. It transpires it's not a real bus at all, or rather, it's a normal minibus but on extra duty having ferried a group of trekkers to Lamayuru. Now it needs to be in Leh to form the 2:30 departure to Karu, and is running a little late, so it is with unusual speed that I make the distance back to the minibus stand in Leh. The driver seems happy with the Rs100 I give him (this had been the fare to Alchi, so it's not unreasonable), but I nearly end up in Karu anyway as a storm of people board the bus as soon as it arrives, not waiting for me to get off first.
I thought I felt okay on the trip back, but the climb back to the guest house is a struggle. Lots of BJP bunting and discarded party hats. PM Narendra Modi has been in town; he is officially opening the Alchi dam project today.
