Our Markha Valley Trek, 7 days.

Our guide, Jigmet, met us at the hotel, and we drove some 30 min. to the outskirts of Leh, where we met the rest of our crew.
Tewang, was in charge of his 4 mules and 1 horse, which carried all the camping gear, a gas bottle for cooking, our 2 duffels, food staples for us and the animals etc. He always hums, and at times sings for the animals. A mule can carry 45kg, and the horse 65kg.
Gyalpo, a young father, was our cook - a phenomenal such, and we had the best camp food we have ever had. Despite what clearly were difficult conditions, he kept us healthy, full, and impressed with his variety of dishes. He also cooks at home.
Andu, the youngest, assisted all the others, and is a super hard worker, and a very cute 20-year-old, who is finishing some exam, and then hopes to get into college in Leh.

Link to the pictures from our trek

Craig added a link to his photo spheres after the text

The first day, mostly along a road to Jingchen, was a short one, 4.5 hrs including lunch. We have no idea how far we walked each day, and it doesn’t seem the guides do either. Jigmet did know, though, almost to the minute, how long it would take to our next destination. The distances covered are much shorter than we usually would manage in the same time. We did not gain much altitude yet, but entered the Hemis High Altitude National Park. People live here, but the wildlife is protected, and there are various government projects, e.g. planting trees (willows and poplars), in places. I believe the entire trek stays in this park.
The difference is temperature between sunny areas, and shade, was great. I kept adding & removing layers as we walked. We had a few snowflakes, but the trail was bare. Mostly brown desert, in the the Indus River valley. The wind was definitely cool and the campsite was very cold when the sun set. 20s F over night = a few degrees below freezing Celsius.

Jigmet‘s biography is interesting. Now age 29; was chosen by a monk visiting his village outside Leh, to be sent to Bangalore in southern India at age 6-7, to attend school. Jigmet now sees this as an advantage, and had other kids from Ladakh at the same school, so maintained his own language. Only returned home 7 years later, and barely recognized his father. Now he speaks English and Hindi as well. He clearly would have done well had he continued his education after high school, but due to the poor job prospects for college grads in India, he chose to work for Namgial, the owner of our trekking company.
He is a great manager of the team, an open and honest guy, and I fully trusted him early on.
Now he has pressure from his Mom to get married ‘so she can die happy’, but he hopes to travel some before this.

The 2nd day we climbed to 4100m, and on the 3rd day we made it over the Kanda La pass at 4900m (7+ hrs). The going was definitely slow, but we had no problems. After this, most of the nights were around 3500m, about the same as in Leh. We had gorgeous sunshine daily, and worked hard to avoid sunburn.

In the evening of day 4 we finally had our first real bath, and even flossed our teeth. Every morning we were given a big bucket of warm water, with a spigot, but it was always too cold to wash more than our hands and faces. Returning to Leh on day 7, it was pretty sad to see ourselves in a mirror again.

We saw very few other trekkers, and understand the busiest season is in July and August. We were
not the only ones who had to modify the route due to not acclimatizing well. Saw a few people turning around early. There are only 2-3 points I believe where you can start/finish the trek, as there are no roads, and also the villagers have to walk distances to get to one.
I was impressed by one solo German young woman (max mid 20s), who was accompanied by her female guide, and a female porter. They stayed in home stays rather than camp. She did not at all look like she had done much athletically (a PT notices the absence of defined leg muscles..), but when we met her, she had already gone over the same pass we had crossed. She was doing well, and on her way towards an even higher pass, whereas we had had to turn around to make it back to Leh in time for our flight.
All the trekkers we saw were European, except for one older gentleman, who was riding a horse, lead by the horseman - we never chatted with him.

We saw blue sheep in many places, a total of 43 the first time Jigmet spotted, and counted them. Their population has slightly increased, potentially due to a slight decrease in the number of snow leopards. But I believe Jigmet told us they can’t catch them, so am not sure now. We saw marmots, and many Tibetan Snowcocks - birds that apparently are related to partridges.

At the lower altitudes we saw leaves on a few trees, and I was amazed to see grass, and tiny yellow flowers sprouting in an area with lots of dry sulphur mixed with the soil. It is very impressive that the villagers can grow grain, veggies etc. in what looks like a desert of sand and rocks. They use very old fashioned techniques still, and life is definitely not easy. It is still early spring, so most of the scenery was a desert brown. But the mountains had so many different shades of color, that they themselves were beautiful to look at.

In Markha Village we visited an old temple, which is part of the Hemis Monastery in Leh. A monk from there comes to Markha as a caretaker for approx. a year at a time. The young monk said it gets a bit lonely at times. He is chosen for the duty by a lottery system, so we presume coming here is not a desirable task.This is where we had to turn around and head back towards Leh.

We came across a few villagers, and everyone was friendly. Homestays seem to be a popular way to generate some revenue for the family - but we are happy we chose to camp, as the food was much better than the basic local food served by the villagers. The camp site fee seems to be shared by all the villagers.
Each village has just a few homes; I believe Jigmet said one larger one has 21 families. Once I know he said there only was a single family in one village. The homes are very primitive by our standards, made of rocks, or mud bricks mostly. I believe all the tiny villages we walked through, had electricity in the evening - solar generated, and turned on only after the sun sets, for a few hours. Wood is too valuable to burn, so mostly they collect, and dry dung.
The toilets were definitely the most primitive we have ever seen - a hole in the floor of some stone structure. But we used them when available, and had a toilet tent when not. Went through quite a bit of hand sanitizer.

A few unrelated facts:
- a small, basic Suzuki car costs approx. $3700. They were probably the most common car we saw. Happily, we were picked up in a nice Toyota van after successfully crossing the Zanskar River in a cable car - the picture shows what this manually operated wooden box looks like! Craig might write about the road out, under construction, and definitely scary also to him.
- The oldest trekker Jigmet has led on this trek (all the way), was a 77-year-old American woman, out with her sister. The youngest is 7. We are impressed!
- A Dzo is a cross between a yak and a cow, and they are used as draft animals. We saw them wander around along the path, and presume they were let out for the day to eat - whatever little there was this time of year.
- We saw snow in a few gullies, and stream beds, but understand it should melt in 2 more weeks.
- There are initiatives for the women in the villages to generate some income. Came across what later in the season will  be tea stalls along the path. We could also have taken advantage of someone’s solar shower (a basic thing with gravity assisted warmish water), but we did not. Craig thought they should charge much more than 75cents for what seemed like close to a liter of Coke - but this was not available for him yet unfortunately.
- I am happy with the  initiative of a Lama, in charge of one big Buddhist sect, the Red Hats, across the entire Himalayan region. He has led a group of nuns, cycling from Nepal to India, several times now. 3000 km. They have raised awareness of environmental concerns, and empowerment for women. When this Lama was a young man, he named Jigmet. Parents take a 2 to 3-month-old child to a Lama, or similar higher monk, to be named. We saw a picture of one of these bicycling expeditions also in Bhutan.
- In monastic schools here they get a more general education along with Buddhist studies. This is what Tsewang in Bhutan hopes will happen also there. - cell phones don’t work along the trekking route, and villagers need to walk to the center of certain villages, where they have satellite phones for emergencies mostly. There are no helicopters should someone be injured, and one has to make it out to a road for help. We had signed up for evacuation insurance as recommended. The stern lingo added by the Indian military sounded like American legalese in every respect (they presumably get calls to rescue stranded foreigners).


Now Craig also has experienced a trek, after hearing, ad nauseum, about mine in Nepal in 1995. We are glad all went well, and are very happy with our experience in a desolate, far away, but beautiful and interesting place!

Ladahk photospheres