Route: Apitse—Lamayuru—Hinju—Manechan—Sumda Chungun—Nimmu
The Chigtan bus leaves early on Tuesday morning, at the same time as the Alchi minibus, which we end up following the whole way, but once past the turnoff to Alchi it's new territory at least for this year. The road follows the river downstream until after Khalatse, where it turns off into an improbably narrow ravine. In '95 the road soon left this gorge and climbed a series of switchbacks up to Lamayuru, but since then a route has been blasted straight up the stream, with the advantage that now a connection can be made to Wanla and Lingshed. At the confluence a couple of road workers get off the bus and start their walk up towards Wanla. I'm taking a slightly more roundabout route to the same place.
The road wiggles through Lamayuru but I stay on until Apitse, which everyone calls Atitse. Not sure why Editions Olizane differs, but I've taken them as authoritative, possibly unwisely. Fortunately another passenger is getting off too, as the village isn't visible from the main road: the bus stops at a bridge over a dry stream bed with only a flagpole to denote the presence of (Buddhist) society.
A jeepable track wiggles up the valley, but there are short cuts avoiding the extra distance, and I make my way up past one or two farmsteads until the gonpa comes into view. In fact these, plus a couple of houses immediately beneath the gonpa, comprise the entirety of Apitse village. A steep climb up the stream bed brings me to the front of the gonpa, which turns out to be the side, as the main door faces east in keeping with tradition.
Also in keeping with tradition I walk round to the door in clockwise direction, which involves going round the back. Two villagers are harvesting grain in a field below. There is a large prayer wheel, but it's not very well oiled and it only manages two or three turns after I let go.
The gonpa is all locked up, but beside the main entrance, instead of the normal wall paintings of the four directional deities, there are large photographs of the same deities rendered in torma form, rather well done. I sit by the door for a rest, while two white cars come up the track towards the village.
Rather than Indian tourists, the cars turn out to contain a party of Ladakhi women on some kind of gonpa tour. Their arrival coincides with the appearance of a woman in marron clothing with a key, who proceeds to let us all into the gonpa. There is an upper entrance, which leads to a tiny courtyard with shrine rooms around. We have to form an orderly procession to allow everyone to fit in the necessary devotions. From the courtyard a few steps provide access to a kind of basement, where a series of increasingly tiny doorways lead to a dark cave containing a statue of a bearded fellow. He doesn't look at all like your regular Buddhist sculpture, much more like a medieval European king. This room can only accommodate two people at once, and there isn't space for a prostration, but we manage to file past. He turns out to be Naropa, who is said to have spent time meditating in this cave---the reason for the gonpa's presence on this rock.
Back outside, the maroon lady opens up the lower, main entrance, which is in a clearly newer part of the building. Inside, the walls are covered with floor-to-ceiling fitted glass-fronted cupboards containing hundreds of bronze bodhisattva figures, all the same but for variations in colour and clothing. In one section, comprising about eighty figures, each one has a small plaque with the name of a donor, all Italian.
Having completed their tour of the gonpa, the Ladakhi party return to their cars and play loud music while having lunch. The maroon lady invites me down to her house immediately below for tea. She turns out not to be a monk, but a nursing student who has had to come back home owing to flooding in Srinagar. Apparently the whole place is inundated. This puts the week of light rain at Leh into perspective. I end up being fed rice and vegetables, in addition to the tea, as an incentive to stay and chat. There is a book of pictures of New Zealand in the room, left by the woman who has been staying in the room next to mine back in Leh---a Slovenian-New-Zealander who came up here for a period of meditation and recommended it. Maroon lady is clearly very bored up here, but conversation dries up before very long and I make my excuses about needing to get to Lamayuru before dark, and leave with some measure of guilt at not being able to get her to accept payment for the food. My donation to the gonpa will have to suffice.
I return down the valley to the main road, but then carry on down the dry stream bed to where it joins the main stream of the valley, also dry here. Monsieur Errances En Sacados had recommended a visit to Apitse from Lamayuru and I'm following his route, though there doesn't seem to be a path. I find a way down the low cliffs bordering the main stream and walk down the stream bed for a few hundred yards: eventually a path of sorts appears on the right side, becoming more distinct as I follow it down past increasingly tall fairy towers. The path negotiates a side stream, then follows a terrace. High above the fairy towers the perimeter wall of the army camp can just be seen.
The path comes to a large flat area with a walled enclosure of unknown significance, beneath a fortress-like cliff, but instead of crossing it, drops down to the stream, now with some water in it, beside a short mani wall. The stream bed is wide and the path across it indistinct, but a large brown chorten some way down on the opposite bank shows the way. This proves to be attached to a much longer mani wall, with occasional breaches in it which don't look deliberate: past flooding perhaps. Soon there are signs of greenery, an irrigation channel hives off from the stream, and the path begins to climb steeply up towards a collection of chortens and lhathos; but only at the crest of the shoulder does Lamayuru village come into view, with its fields, surprisingly close by. Mani walls and chortens accompany the path all the way into the village: clearly there have been a number of monks at work here. I am unable to patronize the Moonland Hotel as it is on the right hand side of the mani wall and I am obliged to pass by on the left.
Finally the path reaches the main road and I descend, looking for a place to stay and avoiding children asking for pens. I find the place recommended by the trekking guide, which is unlocked but deserted. Giving up on them, I end up further down the valley at the Lion's Den guest house which offers a simple but clean room for Rs250, plus Rs100 in-house veg momos, not bad at all.
After dumping my pack in the room I visit the monastery, but the clouds have come in and the light is failing. There is another Naropa cave attached to the main prayer hall, visible through a glass door, but it's too dark to make out the figures within: there seem to be two, adorned with white scarves. Further up the hill is a large prayer wheel attached to a windmill, which turns without any human intervention. I try to find the place the festival was held in '95 but none of the buildings are familiar. My best guess is that one range of buildings has since been demolished and replaced with the monastery's newish-looking guest house.
Get up early to have breakfast in the room: a slightly weird combination of saffron-and-almond-flavour Horlicks powder and crunchy wheat 'porridge' which I'd concocted from the foodstuffs offered by Chospa in Leh. The powder, mixed with cold water, bubbles like some vile potion, but it's edible, if rather sweet.
As a result of my quick breakfast, and the household being mostly awake already, I'm out of the door soon after half past seven. I walk down the road to see a place to traverse the fields: the path to the Prinkti La goes up a side valley not far from the guest house. I find a dry stream bed with access from the road and some sign of usage as a path. A woman driving her two cows up the road loses one into the fields down this path and some kerfuffle ensues trying to get them back together again.
The path/side stream does indeed lead to the main stream, and a swift hop over brings me to the true path on the other side. A small group of chortens marks the way, which follows the left bank of the side valley above the intakes. One man is already working in the fields and jullays me as I pass.
Above the last field the path continues, steadily climbing up the left side of the valley. The ground here is a firm mud, or clay, similar to the stuff that makes the 'moonland' on the opposite side of the valley. The path has moulded itself onto the landscape, denting it where it crosses side stream beds. Next it contours across a 45 degree slope but there's no feeling of exposure as there is no danger of slipping.
Eventually the path reaches the top of the clay and soon the stream has come up to the same height. The path crosses the stream and runs alongside it for a while, among pleasant greenery. I stop to take some water from the tiny stream, which involves building a small waterfall in order to get the bottle to fill up.
The path crosses the stream a couple more times before deciding to stick to the right bank. Here an obvious track can be seen climbing the hillside ahead, but fortuitously I notice a couple of cairns and tell-tale footprints leading into a narrow dry gorge to the left. This proves to be the way to the pass, the wide track being used by shepherds and animals on their way to the pastures above. The gorge twists about between tall cliffs before the path eventually decides to mount up the right side where the gradient is shallower, zigzagging up onto a small plateau opposite the main pastures, which occupy a wide bowl ringed by mountains: in front low hills separating this place from Lamayuru, behind the jagged ridge which descends to the Fotu La. The Prinkti La is clear from here, a distinct narrow notch between two steep peaks, and the path tacks directly up the hillside to reach it.
From the top, whilst organizing a selfie, I see a group of trekkers who have stopped at the plateau for a break. They don't catch up with me however, and I don't see them again.
The pass leads into a valley no more than 50 metres wide, down which the path zigzags in a regular rhythm some dozen times before flattening out and reaching the dry bed of a stream. From here it's some three or four km of enjoyable yomping down the stream bed, or occasionally on a terrace, through moonlandish clay landscapes, until it debouches into the valley of the Shillakong Togpo. Because it's downhill all the way it's impossible to get lost although it is nevertheless somewhat disorienting following the valley as it twists about.
The main valley is a distinct change of scenery. Ahead and to the right are high and sheer cliffs of hard rock, in contrast to the rounded smoothness of the clay lands I've been going through. The river flows down a wide braided channel of rounded white stones, flanked with occasional trees. It has just exited an impressively deep gorge, but I'm not going in that direction today. Instead I turn left along a jeepable road towards Wanla, whose distinctive red-and-white striped gonpa is soon visible on a crag in the distance. Here I meet with the first traffic of the day, but it's hardly heavy, just two or three vehicles in the hour or so it takes me to reach Wanla.
The only sign of life at Wanla is a road building crew accompanied by a couple of children demanding chocolate. I shake them off by climbing up to the gonpa, which is also locked and deserted. An unusually professional information panel explains the conservation work done up here, partially funded by the German government. It's a Sumtsek like the one at Alchi, with three alcoves to hold massive statues, plus the entranceway, making the building appear almost circular.
There's a jeepable way down to the Phanjila road from the gonpa, so I avoid meeting the children again. According to the guidebook there may be a trekking path on the other side of the valley, but it doesn't look that way from here; there is some sign of a built way, but it's been covered by landslides in places, and I'm not sure it isn't an old irrigation channel. I take the asphalt road, which runs steadily up the valley as it slowly tightens. The river here is milky white.
After seven km the sign for Phanjila (or 'Fangila') appears, followed after a bend by the village itself. Which is disappointing to be honest: instead of the promised shops, guest houses and restaurants, there is a single lock-up shop whose keeper is sitting outside reading scripture, and does not sell food of any sort. I ask if he has sattu (ngamphe), which he finds very amusing, and climbs up to his room above the shop to get me a few handfuls in a small plastic bag. It's clearly from his own supply, and he doesn't want any payment for it. I buy some pan flavour Center Fresh to save face, which prove to be pretty disgusting, and probably not even biodegradable.
Refill my water bottle from a handily placed tap. The house opposite seems to be offering home stay, at least the word is painted in tiny letters on a nearby rock, but I decide I can go further today as it's not yet two p.m. Here I leave the 'main road' and enter a V-shaped side valley, following a track high up on the right hand side. An enormously long line of prayer flags spans the entire valley high above me, longer even than the one at Korzok. Below me is a continuous narrow strip of cultivation: the slope opposite is a smooth, shiny surface of scree. In the sunlight I can see the foot tracks of animals linking every tiny bush to its neighbour.
The valley narrows to a gorge with poplar trees at the bottom, then opens out slightly. Somewhere below me the stream meets another coming from Ursi: the road climbs up one side to meet this stream at a bridge. There are flattish terraces above , where trees can grow; this part of the valley is suddenly much greener. High above, up the side valley, I think I can see a couple of chortens which probably mark Ursi village. Just beyond the bridge, the fields of Ursi come down to the road: a man working there greets me and assures me that Hinju is only three km away.
The road forks here: I am not going up to Ursi, so I round a shoulder and find myself back following the barren right side of the V-shaped valley, willow trees hiding the Ripchar Togpo below me. The valley runs straight all the way to Hinju, impressive cliffs towering over on both sides. Finally, just after a steep ascent to a group of chortens, the village of Hinju appears ahead, houses clustered beneath the obligatory gonpa. A sign describes a system of rotation for homestays, naming each house with a column for the date. Unfortunately the date column is empty, and anyway the house names are not really very useful to me. A lot of the villagers are down in the fields harvesting, but the place is not entirely deserted, and I end up in the new-looking guest room built on top of one of the houses in the lower part of the village. It's not long before the sun has dropped below the high ridge to the south. Just time for some thick thukpa and reading practice for studious Angmo, the daughter of the household.
Breakfast on omelette and chapatis provided by the homestay family. Though they ask for 800 they don't have change for 1000, luckily they have 500 and I have 300. Angmo ends up explaining to her mother why this works. Mother still looks slightly dubious.
Today's walk is very easy on the map: a near-straight line up the valley, over the Konzke La and down the other side to however far I can manage. The only difficulty is that the Konzke La is over 1000 m above me.
The main track runs below the gonpa and a couple of hundred yards further on into some fields, where it is partially blocked by a large log, which I don't realize is supposed to mean that it's not the path further up the valley; luckily, there is a local guy going up the valley too and he shows me the real path which runs along an irrigation channel. We have to duck under a barbed wire fence, but soon we are beyond the village and heading up the valley. The sun briefly illuminates the village and I lose my new companion while taking a photo.
Not far above the village a large side stream comes in from my left. There is a small house above, and after filling my water bottle and performing certain ablutions I discover that this is Angshang. There is even a sign pointing out the designated camping ground. Unfortunately there are more fences blocking the way up the valley so I improvise a detour which involves walking through a field, though either a fallow one or an already-harvested one so I feel slightly justified.
Another ten minutes up the valley and I come to the final fence, this one spanning the whole valley to keep animals from wandering too far up. There is a gate tied shut with scraps of cord. I pass through and re-tie it in a completely different manner, as while untying the cord quite a bit of it perished. Soon after the fence I pass a chorten on a hummock, the last sign of the village.
The valley floor continues to rise steadily, with the path following the stream's right bank up where the slope becomes manageable. I round a shoulder and see the path up to the pass, improbably high up, zigzagging up a steep slope. The high mountains on the left side of the valley are shrouded in cloud, I hope there won't be too much snow up there.
The stream here runs along a bed made out of alternate stones of white-speckled and black granite; occasionally there is a bush, now turning from green to fiery orange-red. It's a colourful composition, to make up for the sky, which is unremittingly grey today.
I come to a small campground by a lhatho with skulls of two different types of sheep. Beyond here the path no longer follows the valley side but picks its way directly up the stream bed. Going is slow, particularly as the stream bed is getting incrementally steeper. There is a fork in the valley with a herdsmen's shelter and some mani stones: the path takes the left side and continues for another few hundred yards to a prominent cairn placed in the middle of the valley, which points out the place where the path begins to climb.
Once out of the immediate vicinity of the stream the path strikes off upwards and back towards the village. This zig leads up to a shoulder with an excellent view of the village, the valley and the mountains behind. I can make out the jagged skyline beside the Fotu La where I started. From the shoulder, the path zags back up the valley towards the pass. A large contingent of unladen pack horses passes by, in the charge of two horsemen. I help to point the horses down the zig towards the stream, though I'm sure they would have figured it out by themselves.
The climb up to the pass is steady and tiring, cutting across massive slopes of friable shale with the occasional peculiar red-leaved plant growing; but at long last the slope slackens and the path gives up zigzagging to head directly up to the pass. The Sumda valley comes into view, as straight as the Hinju valley: from here I can see beyond the village of Sumda Chenmo to the Dungdungchen La, and beyond the snow-capped Stok Kangri group. I can't see the village itself, tucked in a side valley. There are only a couple of patches of snow, but it's rather windy so I carry on around a short traverse to a point with a lhatho to take my lunch and the traditional selfie.
There are breaks in the clouds over the Sumda valley, the ground mottled with patches of sunlight which slowly move across the landscape. The south side of the valley rises sheer to an impressive (and impassable) frost-shattered ridge covered with snow; on the north side, broken up by side valleys, a more gentle series of slopes leads up to the peaks around the Stakspi and Sminopi Las. On this side the rock colouring is very prominent, wine-maroon scree slopes giving way to crags of steel blue and valleys of ochre.
After spending the best part of half an hour waiting for the sun to strike the slopes in just the right way for a photo, I head on down. The path heads directly down a shoulder before tacking and dropping down into a V-shaped valley with a dry stream bed at the bottom. Following this, the valley soon joins a larger valley, and a yet larger, where there are dzos grazing on the slopes. There is water in this stream so I make my first proper crossing of the trek, just past a confluence with a goat pen and some semi-ruined herdsmen's shelters.
I carry on down the valley, switching sides a couple more times, until a solitary house on the left bank. Here the path climbs over a shoulder and drops into a side valley where horses are grazing. Crossing this valley at a high level, the path then contours round back into the main valley to reach a wide terrace, the stream flowing through a narrow section away to my right. None of this had been in the trekking guide (which I am following in reverse), which said to follow the stream up all the way from the campground.
The path I'm on crosses a side valley and mounts up to a similar terrace, though this one has been improved with walls, a rudimentary dry toilet and a lonely sign saying 'Gogma Campground'. Nobody is in evidence. I consider stopping here for the night, but it's only 3 pm and the guide says Manechan is the warmest part of the valley.
The path descends from the terrace and cross the stream once more, then rises up the other side, contouring round until eventually it reaches a similar terrace on the right side of the stream. To my surprise, a sign here announces that this is the Manechan campground: I had expected a good hour's walk before I got here. This campground has water from a spring running through carefully laid channels; on the negative side, there is a lot more litter here than the other campground. There is nobody about. A family of blue sheep watch me carefully from a few hundred yards below me.
I don't think there is another campground until the village, and I don't feel like a homestay tonight, so despite the early hour I unpack all my stuff and try to find a comfortable spot somewhat out of the wind. I make a fireplace beneath a large rock and collect dry dung to burn experimentally. Together with some discarded cardboard cartons and the like, the fire takes fairly easily, but it's pretty smoky to start with (I guess until the dung dries out properly) and the flame is small and doesn't last very long. I crouch beside the fire to try and take in some heat, but the wind carries most of it away. Still, I can say I have tended a proper nomad style fire; and gathering the dry dung for each new batch passes the time agreeably.
Once the light starts to fail I give up on the fire and set out my sleeping stuff. The clouds have mostly gone and I sleep intermittently by the light of a bright three quarter moon.
Wake up at five to six as the light begins to return. The clouds have returned so i can't tell when the sun officially rises. Make breakfast of weird saffron flavour horlicks (now tempered with ngamphe) and set off down the valley. The path continues along the terrace for a while longer before descending to the stream and crossing again. The stream is noticeably larger and I can only cross where it's split into several channels. The continuous rock wall on the right side briefly parts to spit out a side stream from a vertiginous gorge.
The valley beginds to widen and an irrigation channel appears to my left. The path appears to climb up to follow it, but the channel proves to be damaged and there's no way along it, so I have to pick my way back down to the stream level and follow it downstream toward the village. Later a more promising path mounts up the left slope, and at the top of the shoulder the fields and houses of Sumda Chenmo come into view. The path skirts the village, beneath the gonpa, which is shut---but then it's not yet eight o' clock. There is a large prayer wheel which I give a spin. A plaque behind the wheel commemorates Maria de Lourdes Morro Mas, a Catalan of my own age, who died here in the flooding of 2010. I didn't realize the floods had had effect this far from Leh.
According to the map there is a pass you can take from here direct to Sumda Chungun, but there is litle sign of a path, so I decide to take the valley route as recommended by the book. The path is by now very clear---it's the only way to get to Sumda Chenmo, so it's well used by both people and animals. Yellow numbers appear on rocks beside the path from time to time, reporting the distance (as it turns out) from the Sumda Chungun/Chenmo junction. Clearly there is a plan to build a proper road up here.
The path contours round the left side of the valley, well above the fields where villagers are already working on the harvest. Slowly it descends, until the valley is too narrow for fields: willow trees and rosehip-like bushes in autumnal green and yellow fill the stream bed. I see a path rising up the bare mountainside: this is the way to the Dungdungchen La and Chilling, but I have decided not to take that option, instead following the valley down to Sumda Chungun.
I cross the stream on a newish-looking bridge whose supports have already been partially destroyed by the stream, presumably in winter: today it looks pretty placid. The path then rises high above a gorge of purple rocks interspersed with orange veins of harder quartzite: one of these rises a hundred metres or so above the stream, a huge vertical quartz slab. There is a small terrace here and another way up to the Dungdungchen La: unusually, there are broadleaf trees on the terrace, and for half a minute there is a feeling of an English woodland walk, before suddenly returning to the sun and the rocks.
Another bridge, and the path continues on the left bank. The valley gets narrower and narrower, until eventually the path is forced down to stream level: here the gorge is no more than 10 m wide, and I have to cross and recross the stream several times to make progress. According to the trekking guide, there are bridges here, but there is no longer any sign of them, or any real suggestion of where they might be usefully put. This path clearly needs very regular maintenance. I assume it's the villagers of Sumda Chenmo who have to do it---although they do have the alternative way to Chilling. The yellow numbers still occasionally appear, even within the gorge: I have no idea how they are going to fit a jeepable road through here.
After the gorge section the path climbs up the left side of the valley once more. I fail to notice this at first and wade down the stream a few hundred yards, until I notice the path above me made up with willow poles and stones. There's a wide V-shaped stretch before another gorge section with more river crossings, followed by another section on a built-up path 40 m above the stream. Here previous incarnations of the path can be clearly seen, each one in turn partially washed away and rebuilt higher up.
At last the gorge turns a sharp corner and I pass beneath a rudimentary arch of prayer flags to find the yellow number '0' and an asphalt turning circle. But I'm not going down the road today: instead I turn up the side valley, for this is the way to Sumda Chungun. This valley has a different character from the Chenmo gorge: it's a regular V shape all the way up to where the fields begin, but its bed is significantly steeper. Yellow numbers accompany me up this valley too: again, but for different reasons, I'm not sure how the road will manage to get up.
After lunch in a willow grove (punctuated by disconcerting falls of pebbles from above) I head on up towards the village. The path is sketchy in places but nowhere particularly exposed: the worst that would happen would be slipping five metres down a shale slope and landing in the stream. It's not long before a string of prayer flags marks the point where you can first see the village gonpa, and again not long before I find myself sitting by the gonpa itself looking back down the valley.
Soon a passing villager has located the man in charge of the gonpa, which he does by hollering repeatedly at the valley in general until somebody replies. The gonpa is well worth seeing, apparently it is a similar vintage to Alchi (and Wanla), but instead of a 'sumtsek' it has a standard prayer hall, the back wall of which is covered with relief carvings of deities. There's an old mandala on the left wall too, but it's too dark to see much of the detail.
Having seen the prayer room I assume this is all there is to see but the man directs me to keep my shoes off and shows me into one, then two side chapels containing two-storey high figures. One is white and two armed, one is yellow and four armed (one arm in a 'stop!' gesture). They tower above me as in each case there is barely a metre of space between each one and the back wall of the room they're installed in. In the white figure's room, a square of plaster has been carefully removed from the right wall to reveal old wall paintings of a regular array of Buddhas, similar to the ones at Alchi. There is clearly much more work to be done.
Leaving the gonpa, it turnds out that the custodian is also the homestay host for the village, at least for today, and I am soon installed in the guest room of the house beneath the gonpa. One night's camping out is enough for me, and it means I get a proper dinner: skyu, a Ladakhi form of gnocchi stew.
Wake up to another cloudy morning. In this weather I'm not convinced going over the Stakspi La would be safe without sturdier shoes. Also my homestay host says when she crossed the Stakspi La earlier this year, they'd started at 4 am and not got to Alchi until 3 pm. So this means I will almost certainly miss the bus if I go that way; I would have to spend the night somewhere halfway down. The alternative option, simply walking to Nimmu down the road, looks more inviting as it will get me to Leh this evening.
The decision made, and packed lunch delivered, I set off back down the valley the way I came, back to the asphalt turning circle. From here the paved road descends steadily to the Zangskar River, though it's not in a state for cars to use: although the paving looks rather new, huge boulders have already fallen onto the road from the crags above.
The road crosses to the right side of the valley over a simple concrete bridge. Soon after, trees appear in a side ravine to the left, followed by a single house. Its occupant is in the garden and yodels 'JULLAY' across the valley at me. I respond, but perhaps not at the required volume. A path climbs up the ravine from the house, until far above it tacks across to round a shoulder, where a lhatho or chorten is barely visible. This must be the way up to Achirik, another village marked on the map. I'd asked if there was a direct path from Sumda Chungun over the pastures, but my hosts didn't think so.
Beyond the house the valley is fairly barren up to the next curve. The original horse track can be seen running along the opposite side of the valley, but it's already suffered from landslides and in a couple of places is probably impassable. These paths require constant maintenance, the landscape is always changing, erasing human works. But there is no longer any incentive for the villagers of Sumda to maintain this path, now that there is a parallel road. Similarly, in Rupshu the paths are mainly used by tourists as the nomads have vehicles. So it would be logical for the tourist agencies to take on the maintenance of the paths. I don't know how likely that is, however.
At a bend in the valley there is a lovely terrace covered with tall poplars, shading a neat little house. Soon after, the irrigation channel begins, heralding the village of Sumda Do and the main Chadar road. I stop at a tea stall at the confluence of the Sumda Chu and the Zanskar.
For the rest of the day I walk along the main road down the Zanskar valley to Nimmu, a distance of 18 km which I cover rather faster on the paved surface than on the trekking paths. There is little traffic: three or four tourist vehicles, two with rafting dinghies strapped to the top; a couple of teams of road construction workers; a JCB operator hurling loads of gravel and boulders down the slope to splosh into the river. The weather has cleared up and it's sunny for most of the way. The valley is mostly barren rocks carved by the Zanskar, with occasional sandy beaches where the river turns a corner sufficiently slowly; after Sumda Do there is only one green island, at Choksti, where a side valley forms a terrace large enough for a single house worth of fields. It's possible to get into the Markha area up this valley, via the Skyangs La, but I don't know if I'll be able to do that on this trip.
I reach the mouth of the Zanskar at the same time as the rafters come by. It's a dull couple of km into Nimmu but I am soon on a bus back to town, where there is a mutton biryani with my name on it.
