About 5km south of Chilling is where Markha river meats the Zanskar, this is where the trek begins. Although there was an unpaved dirt-road lead you east of Zanskar till Skiu, the bridge to cross the mighty river was in a very bad shape. This was my first ever experience riding on a horse, but I felt safer than a 4×4 wheel drive tilting and trembling all the way from Nimmo to Chilling.
The construction of the entire road was going on in patches, the workers rely on their hands more than any other tool or there was a lack of it, I am not sure. Apart from scarce and rare patches of tiny human settlements and a few wheat and barley farms around, all you see is weird rock-scapes formed by wind and water erosion. During those five and a half hour of the trek, we spent most of the time tickling my imagination with those illusive shapes of mountains.
“Whoa! that’s a dinosaur!”
“And that notch looks like a doorway to a secret Gompa.”
My host in Zanskar The cats of Namgiyal Homestay The homestay Zanskar River Rafting On the way to Markha Valley Roads of Ladakh