Bro, Chadar is not forming properly these days due to drastic change of weather and there are rumors that Leh Administration is going to put a ban on the trek considering the safety aspects of the trekkers from next year. If we don't go this year, we may not be able to visit Chadar ever again.
I got this message from Srikant during an escalation meeting on a Monday morning and this was the time when I was trying to be a good boy who does all the work without any complain. After few sleepless nights, swinging between corporate cacophony and winter wanderlust, I decided to chose the right option. When you love something from the core of your heart, then your brain stops working and you can’t refuse the urge to run to the mountains. So I had to manage my leaves to meet the love of my life.
The winter in the Himalayas attracts the high adrenaline adventurers around the globe to the cold desert town of Leh for the Chadar Trek. The Zanskar valley in Ladakh turned into a glacial beauty on the onset of the hypothermic winter. As the winter casts its cold spell, the mercury rushes to the south and the ferocious Zanskar River flowing through remote and wild Zanskar valley turns to a frozen ice sheet (locally called as “Chadar”, hence the name Chadar Trek). Named as one of the most glamorous and adventurous trek, this unique trek tops the adventurer’s list of things to do in Ladakh in the winter. Remote to the core, wild to the wildest and extreme to the edge, the adventurous Chadar trek is every explorer’s dream of a lifetime.
This trip was also a reunion with my friends and trek mates, with whom, I had been in many weekend treks in Sahyadri, during my stay in Mumbai. I left Kolkata at 8:30 PM on 3rd February and reach Delhi at 11 PM. Our meeting point was Delhi airport and we boarded our flight to our dream destination from Delhi at 6:30 AM on 4th February. Our palpitation raised the highest peak as the flights were unable to land in Leh airport due to extreme weather condition since last few days and our flight waited half an hour in Delhi airport before it took off. Ultimately we reached Leh at 8 AM. In spite of the weather condition of your city, don’t forget to keep a fleece jacket, a sweater, a jacket, gloves and your balaclava in your hand baggage as you are entering into an extreme cold region of the country.
Day 1 – Leh (4th Feb, 2017) Juleh !!! We were mesmerized by the vast snowy range of mountains even before we landed in Leh airport. It is advisable to all the trekkers or travelers who comes Leh via air, to take full rest on the day they have landed, to acclimatize with the current weather and avoid AMS - acute mountain sickness, which is a pathological effect of high altitude on humans, caused by acute exposure to low partial pressure of oxygen at high altitude. We had a sound sleep of 4-5 hours after breakfast which is very much required for acclimatization.
We adapted the weather quite well and went outside for a stroll in chilly afternoon. Though it was a bone-chilling weather, I was already in love with Leh. Walking on snowy path and exploring Leh city was a spellbound experience and while having interaction with the friendly Ladakhi people, it felt like we are already one of them. It filled our hearts with happiness when every people we met on the path greeted us with a smile and said “Juleh” – the magical word in Ladakh.
We figured it probably means hello. Curious, we asked one shopkeeper what it actually means, “Juleh is a magic word”, says the shopkeeper. “You can say ‘juleh’ when you want to say hello, goodbye, thank you, how are you, nice to meet you and you’re welcome”. It really was the ONLY word we learnt while in Leh and the only word we needed! People in Ladakh are incredibly friendly. A smile, a head nod and an exchange of “juleh” are always offered as you walk past anyone in the town.
In the evening, we were sitting tensed near the fireplace at our hotel and discussing the plan as the groups who planned to start this morning from Leh to Chilling are back to Leh, they couldn’t make it due to heavy snowfall and weather forecast was also not very promising for next few days.
Day 2 – Leh (5th Feb, 2017) Holding a cup of tea and witnessing snowfall was a heavenly feeling. We were too happy to play with snow and were a bit tensed too as we had to start our journey next day. We bought some essentials to sustain the freezing cold on the Zanskar. The best place to buy winter gears in Leh market is Army Shop which is located near police station. The stuffs you will get there is very efficient and reasonable, those are not fancy stuffs but definitely protect you from the freezing cold.
We bought our stuffs from the shop, then tasted ladakhi bread and chhupri (cheese made from yak’s milk) which made our taste buds happy. If you are a foodie, then you will be pleased to have so many options near Leh market to fill your stomach. I was roaming around in the market, feeling the snowflakes on my face and suddenly encountered with some snowballs and heard the sweet sound of giggles. The local children with their colourful jackets fighting with snowball on the white carpet made the sight vibrant, and I was their target. Then I quickly joined a team, took the position and fought the opponent team like a Spartan and the friendly local kids made me their “brother in arms”. Since it was a lazy Sunday afternoon, the market was a bit crowded with nice ‘pahari’ people and the trekkers from all over the world. I had a great time with the kids, fighting the ‘snowball war’. When you are in mountain with the local people, you learn to understand that happiness lies in little things.
I came back to my hotel around 8 PM, had delicious dinner and then we had a briefing session by our coordinator Salamat, the little happy man, ‘what to do’ and ‘what not to do’ during the trek. He conveyed that the weather condition is going to be good and our chance to begin the journey next day was positive. We had a good sleep as we were ensured that we are going to start our trek next day.
Day 3 – Leh to Shingra via Chilling (6th Feb, 2017) It’s a sunny day and we were happy to know that we are going to start our journey today. After breakfast, we got ready to left for Chilling. We boarded a tempo traveller, hired by Salamat. The 2 hours drive to Chilling started. We were passing through the picturesque landscape. After crossing Pathar Sahib, we halted at the place of union of two rivers: Zanskar and Indus. I felt a thrill inside. In front of me was the great river which bred one of the best known civilization of the world – Indus Valley Civilization. We reached Chilling soon. Another mini bus were yet to come and our trek lead, Sandy, was with them. We decided to proceed towards our campsite, Shingra.
The 3 hour walk was quite good. We walked comfortably enjoying and observing the landscape. As they say – “Don’t be a gama at the land of lama”, we became the gama but were lucky enough that we didn’t have to pay the price. We didn’t wait for the rest of the group and decided to proceed without our trek lead as we thought that it’s only a straight walk. After walking for 2 hours, we were utterly confused that we need to proceed further or go back as we didn’t come across any campsite during our walk and one porter had said that the campsite is just 1.5 hours walk from the place where we got down from the bus. After a brain storming discussion, we finally decided to go back to the place where we started and then we met Sandy on the track, who was coming towards us.
We realized that we were on the right track but miscalculated the distance what the porter said. When a pahari guy said “it’s only 1.5 hours”, then it’s definitely 3 hours for you to reach. Ultimately we reached our campsite and waited for others in the chilly winter, the porters of our group were also with the other part of the group. It is a nightmare when you have to wait on a plane land, standing on the field of ice, experiencing chilly wind on your face and waiting for your tents for straight one hour in the wintry evening. We were relieved when we saw them coming and the way we welcomed them is like we saw God, we were very happy that they reached the campsite, but we were happier for us that we got the tents and we helped the porters proactively to pitch the tents. Since it’s our first day, we couldn’t acclimatize fully with the weather and we jumped into our sleeping bags just after we finished dinner.
Day 4 (7th Feb, 2017) – Shingra to Tilad Sumdo Wake up early and start your journey is the main mantra of any trek, but things has to be different when you are on the most charming journey of your lifetime. We woke up at 8 AM and Lopzang (our head cook) gifted us a cup of refreshing Kahwa (Kashmiri tea). The mighty nature greeted us with a mild snowfall mixed with sunshine. We started our journey to our second campsite, Tilad Sumdo around 10 AM, after having delicious bread and egg bhurji. It was a long day. We were mesmerized by the natural beauty of the trek, it is indeed a heavenly experience.
Unlike the previous day, the Chadar started showing its wilder face; that too pretty early. Chadar was broken at a point and we had to climb up about 15 meter. The sight of the hurdle made me a bit anxious as we were wearing gumboots. I had never climbed rock in my life with gumboots, that too on the slippery patches. First Sandy pulled few of us up by holding our hand from above and then we helped others. The rock was almost plain except for this small extension at one place. I’m incapable to explain the whole thing, but the climb made us more confident.
After about three hours of walk we stopped for lunch and had maggi and tea. Tilad Sumdo was another three hours of walk. The path was pretty straight. We had seen few cracks on the Chadar, we were discussing about the after effect if the Chadar breaks and suddenly we heard a cracking sound and a junk of ice were just split apart from the Chadar in front of us. We were perplexed by the situation and somehow crossed that risky area. Gawa, one of our porters was a great help for us to overcome that situation. We reached our campsite around 4 PM.
Bonfire on the icy river bed and light music played an important role to make the evening magical. We were having a never ending discussion concerning Fauji sahab’s trainigs, Dr. sahab’s hostel stories, Chill bro’s break up stories etc etc, and then Lobzang served the wonderful dinner. We had plans to chitchat more under the sky full of stars but nature had some other plans. Heavy snowfall was started and we had to park ourselves inside our tents.
Day 5 – Stay at Tilad Sumdo (8th Feb, 2017) It was not a good morning. We woke up around 8 AM and were waiting the snowfall to be marginalized. While we were just conversing our next set of plans, we saw few porters coming back who left early to reach Tibb. They said that Chadar was completely broken in a place few kilometers ahead of this campsite and there was no chance one can reach Tibb. We were very disappointed to hear that but we wanted to see that place, so we kept our backpacks in tent and went to see that place. We didn’t want to be convinced but we drop the plan to proceed further when we see the place and many porters were returning and advised us not to take any risk.
Chadar trek is called the wildest due to its uncertainty. After coming back to campsite, our group divided into two part, I belonged to the group who wanted to wait at Tilad Sumdo for another day and then proceed to Tibb day after tomorrow as the weather forecast was favorable, other part of the group wanted to go back next day. Since Sandy and Gawa said it will be difficult for them to divide the ration equally, we ultimately decided to go back to Shingra next day with our broken hearts.
We explored Tilad Sumdo a bit after lunch. There was an amazing part of mountain behind our campsite, we followed the narrow stream of water and climbed up to that place to see some mind-blowing caves and the extremely beautiful textures of the rocks. The snowfall didn’t stop, rather it amplified in the afternoon. This was the day when we fought blizzard. We had a great evening at the campsite and we retired for the day after having dinner.
Day 6 – Back to Shingra from Tilad Sumdo (9th Feb, 2017) It was a bright morning and we so wanted to proceed further, but we had to start our journey back to Shingra as official weather forecast was not at all in favor of us and weather is going to be worse in next few days. We started our journey back, consoling our trek mates not to regret, but we all were sad inside that we couldn’t make it to the frozen waterfall in Nerak, but the Mother Nature had a surprise for us which will be revealed later.
While coming back, we spent some time in a waterfall which is the only waterfall we had seen was not frozen and the shape of the waterfall was like human nose. There was a place which is the narrowest point on Chadar where most had to crawl through. We were lucky to walk on a wider patch, only to encounter knee deep freezing water later in the day. We reached Shingra around 3 PM.
We met few amazing people in this trek – our porters. They not only carry the luggage, but also collect firewood during camping. It is the fire that kept us warm in the evening and helps us dry the shoes and socks. Never did we find any of the porters ever annoyed when requested to do something. They execute their work very quickly and with a smile on their face. They are indeed the lifeline of Chadar.
We had a party in the kitchen tent after dinner, where we discovered our hidden talents, we sang pahari songs, and danced indefatigably. After that we tried some night photography though the sky was not so clear. We promised each other, to take a dip into chadar next morning and parked ourselves in our tents.
Day 7 – Back to Leh (10th Feb, 2017) We experienced the funniest part of our trek, we dipped into the frozen river. It was a bone chilling as well as mind blowing experience. Early morning temperature that day were around -18 degree C, we would have never taken the ice bucket challenge in a sunny day in the city, but we walked on the frozen river to take a dip into the water with snowflakes abound and some of us swam too. After having lunch, we climbed up to the motor-able road where the tempo travellers were waiting for us. We had our last photo session, then we drove back to Leh.
We started our journey from Shingra at 10 AM and we reached Leh around 5 PM on 10th February. We checked few hotels in the evening for next day but stayed at Bimla (where we stayed first two days) for that night.
Since we couldn’t reach Tibb and had to return from Tilad Sumdo, we got three days extra to plan something. Few of us rescheduled their flights and flew back to their cities but my incorrigible curiosity kept nagging me to explore this place some more.
The next part of the journey is here - https://www.vagabongjourney.com/post/leh-a-winter-utopia
What a beautiful journey! Loved the read ❤️
Really awesome brother!!! Next time I am in 😀