Starting the trek

Stupa, Zangskar Valley
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Manali is famous for a number of things, all of which mean weed. Vast numbers of backpackers trudge here yearly; some are kidnapped and never reappear, although it's universally acknowledged to be because of drug deals gone bad (as if drug deals weren't bad enough as they are...). As it's nestled right in the foothils of the Himalayas a lot of trekkers start out here. It's muggy and warm and most of the travellers hang out in the German Bakeries - notorious for stodgy pastries and all-day teas - to chat about how authentic their experiences of India have been, how disorganised the locals are ('Shanti shanti', I heard one blonde woman remark snidely about the internet connections - meaning 'peaceful, peaceful') and get stoned.

Zangskar landscape
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Much as I savour the opportunity to hang out with people who find endless conversations about toadstools infitely interesting, I was happy to meet up with the other people I'd be trekking with. A few were French, one German/Mexican, one Dutch/Italian, but as all spoke French this became the general method of communicating throughout our journey.

The peaks were monochrome - black rocks, white glaciers - but below was spring and, over there, summer...

Zangskar landscape
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I won't bore you with details about what to do when you arrive in Manali; the best thing by far is to wander about and meet people - preferably as locals as you can manage - and explore the place by yourselves. but there is a sort of park (I forget it's name) where there is a small Hidu shrine built around a cave bearing some sacred footprints. It's worth a trip, not least for the people walking around bearing enormous lop-eared rabbits, plying travellers to take photos with them for a few rupees. As with most parts of the world, it's slightly surreal.

Mani stones, Zangskar
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Arranging transport is fairly easy - any hotel will arrange for a 4x4 car to take you to camps from which you can start your trek - but the road out to Padum, our first campsite, was blocked at first by a river which decided to block the road. But patience bore fruit and we were very shortly piling into an off-roader which took us up an impossibly steep slope. After a certain point we (thankfully) couldn't see what lay below as the clouds obscured it.

There was a problem, though: there were blasts taking place in the mountain as a new road was being built, and we had to get out where the road ran out and walk up and up and up, slipping around on the mud and losing one another, panicking about the explosions going on nearby which we couldn't see for the cloouds.

Himalayan roads - in India at least - are punctuated by these quaint, yellow-painted cement signs designed to remind drivers of why they need to stay awake. Some of my favourites were 'Go gently on my bend', 'Always Alert Avoid Accident' and 'Remember someone is waiting for you at home'.

At some point another truck appeared; this time we were cramped in the back of a van with our backpacks as couches, our filthy socks to the open air and the changing visions of mountains that unfurled as the truck drove through them.

It got colder and cloudier and wetter and muddier until at last we came out over the crest of a hill and below us lay spring. The clouds couldn't pass these mountains as they were too high, which meant that the valley that fell away in front of us was sandy yellow and green with scrubby vegetation. The peaks were monochrome - black rocks, white glaciers - but below was spring and, over there, summer. At the bottom of the valley was a village, which we stopped in to sign at the police checkpoint and get something to eat while our ferry nipped around a back route so as to avoid the police. Technically, we were illegal cargo.

This no longer looked like India; peoples' faces looked more Uzbeki or Mongolian and everything from their language (Ladakhi is similar to Tibetan) to their clothing to their religion (Buddhism) to their building style was already a world apart. However, people still spoke Hindi as a kind of lingua franca, and you can find a good number of Nepali and Kashmiri workers in Ladakh, lured there by the tourist ned for trek guides and cooks.

Night fell and we pulled into Padum, the tiny village whose campsite almost eclipses its permanent population. We met up with our crew of guides, Ladakhis who would be in charge of pitching our tents, packing up each morning, cooking our dinners and preparing our packed lunches (that's how spoilt we were!) and leading the horses. The horses were one of my favourite features of the trek; not only did they carry our stuff, saving a lot of unnecessary lumbago, but they wore the most amazing wooden saddles and embroidered collars carrying bells - a real taste of the culture of Ladakh, much of which has been dependent on horse and donkey traffic for contact with the outside world for centuries.

It is a very strange thing to sleep the night in mountains which you know to be growing. The Himalayas are not only the tallest mountains in the world but also the youngest, formed when the Indian Subcontinent crashed into the body of Asia millions of years ago. Some of the mountain slopes still look about to shed their rocks. Ladakh is often described as being like a 'moonscape'; so far it was green and gentle, but soon it would start to get serious.