Zangskar Valley

Zangskar Valley is - or was, then - one of the last parts of the Himalayas yet to be developed. (For 'developed' read 'flattened by bulldozers and sprinkled with shopping malls'.) There is no road for ten days' worth of trekking, eight hours a day, but the slopes of the valley are cross-crossed with yak trails. We walked along one of the lower trails which had been widened by centuries of horses and donkey caravans, with our backpacks strapped to about twelve horses which also carried our tents and the kitchen equipment. (We were travelling deluxe.)

There were a few other trekking parties starting out at the same time, mostly Frenchmen in Neoprene leotards and flourescent ski sunblock, brandishing the next generation of walking sticks and guided by GPR systems. How we laughed! Then again, we were being cooked for by Ladakhi guides who also set up our tents and made us packed lunches, so we weren't quite so self-reliant ourselves. Our parties crossed paths a number of times but there's not much to talk about in places like these - 'Lovely day for it!' - 'Have you seen that rock over there?' - 'Looks a lot like that one, or was it that one?' It's not that the trek was boring, rather it was too much to express adequately using universal platitudes.

Things we passed: Stupas, which are whitewashed stacks of stones said to hold relics of the Buddha; Mani piles, smaller piles of stones stacked up by passing travellers as a kind of reminder or prayer, particularly in dangerous places - some are carved with prayers like 'Om Mani Padme Hum' cut by Buddhist monks in Tibetan script; er, rocks; mountains; icy glacial streams thirty feet wide which we waded through with trousers rolled up; holes dug by marmots (something like ferrets) and a few clusters of houses. Ladakhi houses are low and flat-roofed, almost like old Spanish farmhouses. Piled up on the roofs are bales of reddish hay, stored for the long freeze (winter keeps Ladakhis in their houses for about eight months of the year). Toilets, naturally, are pit latrines dug at the edge of the compound - although when you're trekking you basically have to find a quiet rock to do your business behind and take a bottle of water with you to wash yourself. There's enough space for everyone, at least.

In the evening, after the guides pitched camp, we ate their surprisingly varied dinners with great relish and sang old jazz standards and French rounds - 'Vent frais...vent du matin...'. Those of us with rusty French had to oil it sharpish, but a few of our group spoke Hindi to varying levels so we got by with each other and our guides on a strange mash of languages and lots of goodwill.

The highest point we passed was 5,100 metres in height (I forget the name of the pass). Rising towards the pass, we were plunged again into winter; glaciers cracked the earth apart on one side; patchy snow fell on us and hands went numb. The air gets very thin this high and the night before I had gone to bed with a cloth tight around my head and a paracetamol to deal with a killer headache - the first intimation of altitude sickness.

The pass itself was incredibly difficult for me as a bona fide lazy cow. I don't want to think what it would've been like if I'd been carrying my tent. Nevertheless, the moment we reached the pass an exquisite altitude lake appeared below us - bright blue like a gigantic eye in the ground - and more stacks of prayer stones and srings of colourful flags. There was a small Buddhist shrine here where travellers light incense in gratitude for the safe passing. We stopped here a while but I was eager to start the descent, where it was warm and sunny because the clouds couldn't pass this high spot.

Once or twice we were invited by our porters to visit their families in the tiny villages we passed through. Ladakhi fare is extremely simple; the average (i.e. ubiquitous) meal consists of ground barley mixed with yak milk and tea and rolled into lumps with the fingers, which are then popped into the mouth like gulabjamun. The yak butter is added to the tea in a highly decorated contraption with a sort of pump handle on one end. The buttery tea is something of a Ladakhi tradition and takes a strong stomach and complete lack of taste to be able to drink it; yak's milk is a bit like goat's milk but stronger. Soaked into the barley flour, though, it tastes quite comforting, although I don't know how people have survived like this for so long on something so relatively nutritionless.

The people themselves are remarkably placid, which probably has something to do with the Buddhism they practice. Elderly men in peaked felt hats with ear flaps pointing upwards are a common sight; older people are often seen pulling on prayer beads or twirling a prayer wheel, reciting Om Mani Padme Hum, Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus. One young mother who hostessed us saw her child knock a cup off the dresser and swept up the pieces without batting an eyelid or the child. However I couldn't always differentiate between Buddhist and pre-Buddhist practices, such as a dried, inflated animal bladder attached to the ceiling. Unfortunately I didn't have enough Hindi or guts to inquire about it.

The night before my birthday (the 12th) we camped at the base of a sacred mountain, which came out of the ground as a huge, cream-black striped triangle among lush green mountains. A small stream trickled past the site, which for once was ours alone, so we could strip off and bathe properly for the first time since starting the trek. In the morning, I went into into the dining tent (told you it was deluxe) and found my companions had managed to construct a pyramid of chocolate wafer biscuits (our packed lunch treats which they'd stashed for the occasion) with a candle in the middle. As if my birthday could have been any more unique, they then produced a card made from the front cover of a paperback one of my friends was systematically destroying as she read (Salman Rushdie) decorated with pressed flowers they'd been picking along the way and sparkling sand from one of the rivers we'd passed. The ingenuity of woman when denied modern conveniences!

It is a credit to the good natures of everyone on this trek that nobody got involved in a fistfight, threw another down a gully or even pinched someone else's soap. I didn't know any of them well at the time and some I haven't seen since, but ten days felt like a year of companionship, the best moments condensed into nectar and the weakness drained off like some distilled juice. I wonder if any of them will end up reading this.