Khaltse-Padum

215.5 km, 4386 vertical metres, 6 days

The area of Ladakh we wanted to explore is three sided, with the major towns of Leh, Padum and Kargil forming a corner. Our plan (helpfully near-identical to bike trips my parents and Oak did in 2024 and 2025 respectively) was to go about halfway along the Leh-Kargil highway in a bus, then cut through the middle. 

We swooped through the Leh bazaar at 7 am to have time to strap the four bikes on the bus before the other saman (luggage) was piled on top. The bus was suspiciously empty, and after the bikes were all lifted onto the roof we realised the bus was not leaving for another two hours. Shar and Oak went for a walk up a gravelly hill and I discovered that paying 10 rupees for the toilet does not guarantee cleanliness. 

Once we were on the highway, we started seeing BRO signs. BRO is essentially what made this Ladakh cycling possible. Standing for “Border Road Organisation” and funded by the department of defence, they are responsible for building roads in areas close to India’s borders – like Ladakh, close to Tibet and Pakistan. The Leh to Kargil highway is constructed and maintained by BRO, and is called National Highway 1, a sign of its importance – kind of like if State Highway 1 in Aotearoa was between Hanmer Springs and Castle Hill, and went directly through the Southern Alps. Because the purpose of these roads are to allow army vehicles fast routes to the border, standard considerations of efficiency and population centres don’t really apply. Photoksar, a village of about 50 houses, is about to have two big roads to it, one over Sirsir La (the route we took) and one up a gorge, requiring lots of blasting. 

While military uses are the main reason these roads are being constructed, BRO is most visible in two ways. First, the signs. About once a kilometre there is a sign, usually in English, in BRO speak. There is a very specific style and syntax. Some are blatantly sexist (‘Don’t watch her behind/Keep safety in mind’), others gnostic (‘Time is money/life is precious’), and many are simply aphoristic doggerel (‘Take heed/don’t speed’). And it’s all set off by the patriotic slogan ‘BRO in service of nation’.

The other way that BRO is visible is in road worker camps. The organization employs around 200,000 temporary workers in the summer months (according to its somewhat sycophantic Wikipedia page), most of whom are from Bihar, India’s poorest state, and Nepal. Though at high altitudes, these workers live in non-waterproof corrugated iron and plastic shacks, most without toilets. Most are transported to their worksite for the day in the back of a truck, standing shoulder to shoulder , and bundled up with scarfs against the weather. It’s all terrifically expensive, even if the labour is cheap – some sections of road have signs about their cost, with a single bridge costing 4,000 lakh (40 million rupees/800k NZD). Multiply that by dozens of bridges, hundreds of kilometres and a scant few thousand people in small villages. 

OK, thats the context. Time to ride!! Shortly after the town of Khaltse, we turned off the main Indus river valley and up a tributary. The hills were bare and brown, with luminous green patches at the base of the valley where the village irrigates their barley fields. At Wanla, we stopped at the monastery. 700 years old, it had a large golden horse statue of a previous Ladakhi prince and an interior covered in tiny paintings of saints and gods, all smeared and darkened by the smoke from many yak-butter lamps. I especially liked the dragon carvings on the rafters supporting the mudbricks, although photos weren’t allowed.

After a brief swim in the bouncy blue river (Shar and Oak immersed themselves 100%, I did my lower 50% and Shreyas about 5%), we found some flat land for tents, which was unfortunately mostly filled with thorn bushes. All of us got extremely scratched legs from moving around the campsite, but as the sun set, the pink smudges of wild roses glowed on the hills and when I poked my head out of the tent around 2 am, the Milky Way was a bright stripe of white through the endless firmament. 

The next morning we wove through the Spangtang Topko river gorge, blasted out of the rock by BRO. The stripes of sedimentary rock were narrow and warped. This area is right on the plate boundary between the Asian and Indian tectonic plates and the splinters and twirly stripes still speak of the geological violence which formed the tallest mountains. The sun was warm, the climb unrelenting: we stopped for a swim in a bubbly river pool and ate snacks on the rocks. Just in time, because it started clouding over and drizzling. By about three pm, we all looked so frigid, even though we were biking uphill, that the boss at the road worker camp asked if we wanted chai. 

He ordered someone else to make it, and we got a bit more information about life in a BRO camp. The boss had got the job through his uncle, and said he keeps coming back because the money is good. “Yeah, good for you,” said the Assamese cook, a hint of some of the complex social dynamics in these places. Outside, someone was washing his acid dyed jeans in a barrel and hanging them up to dry, still dripping. After half an hour we felt a bit warmer and encouraged to keep going, and the sun came out again. The Wanla and Hannupatta villagers send their sheep up to graze, and some little baby goats were waiting for their mums to return from the days grazing in the high slopes. It was very cute to watch their reunion as the villagers on shepherd duty retuned and each mum went directly to their babies, who were vibrating with happiness and milk. Counterintuitively, the slopes are greener at higher altitudes, maybe because of recently melted snow? 

Now quite breathless, we camped at around 4300 metres next to the upper river, ate some pasta for dinner, and played cards in the tents until 9 pm. I have brought my cards from Aotearoa and didn’t use them once in Turkey so I was grateful we finally got a chance for the game of poker-handed scum (like normal scum but more entertaining). 

Oak’s enthusiasm and encouragement got us up a bit earlier to cross Sirsir La. Though relatively well acclimatized (I didn’t have a headache or anything), the lack of oxygen still makes you slower, and the 300 vertical metres to the top took much longer than it seemed they should. I distracted myself admiring rectangular black yaks grazing on the slopes, and fast marmots, seen in glimpses: here tusing with a friend, there galumphing over the road, there popping out of the hole with an alarm call directed at the four cyclists zigging and zagging in their territory. 

At the top, the light drizzle had become clumps of snow and water, and big gusts of wind meant no pausing, just raincoats zipped and down into the valley. The descent can’t have taken that long but it was frigid in the sleet. It was a strange juxtaposition of feeling so wild and icy, then having to edge around a big road roller flattening some new tarmac, acrid bitumen mixed with mountain rain. 

Shar and Oak’s mountain biking experience made them much faster than us at the swoopy corners, but then eventually pulled over to shelter in a dusty open hut above the green handful of Photoksar. It was definitely cold, and definitely raining, and the indecision and worry of the rain combined with the cold made me feel uneasy and panicked about the higher pass waiting for us. Was this all really dangerous? it’s hard to be sure when you’re shivering and balancing on your shoes to put extra layers on with unmelted compound chocolate in your mouth. 

We eventually convinced ourselves to leave the hut, because Photoksar had hope: Shar and Oak had lived here briefly last year doing a research project and stayed with Tashi, a preschool teacher. They popped into the school, Tashi handed her work over to some other teachers, and we walked over the bridge and pushed our bike to her house. For the next few hours, we had a place to shelter, drinking salty butter tea and some chang (homebrew barley beer), and entertained by Tashi’s mum, who had a goat skin cloak tied across her shoulders and a very jovial attitude, albeit somewhat perplexed we were so concerned about the range. Tashi introduced us to this summer’s batch of baby goats, marked with green to show whose family they belonged to, and Shar made Maggi. 

Then the hard decision: if we didn’t leave soon, despite the ongoing rain, it would be a much harder day over Singe La, with a greater likelihood of bad weather. I wanted to stay, still remembering how chilly it had been on Khardung La in Leh but I didn’t want my reluctance to ruin the trip. Shar and Oak are amazingly reassuring and confident it’ll all be OK, and while the rainy ride out of the valley was stressful, the drizzle did slowly ease off, and there were some patches of sunshine as we set up camp ten kilometres further on. The clouds shuffled and withdrew, revealing occasionally climpses of seriously spiky mountains, and the yaks on the slopes looked so serene. Shar and Oak lent us their puffer jackets as an extra layer for our not-so-warm sleeping bag, and all we could do was hope the hard lumps of yak cheese in dinner would fuel us over the pass. 

While the road was mostly gravel, the bonus of Singe La was that it was not actively under construction, and we saw only two vehicles in the three hours it took to ascend. Lots of stops to put sugary things in our mouths were needed, and I felt the lack of efficiency in my muscles from the oxygen. But despite moving at about 4 km an hour, essentially walking speed, there was lots to see. Despite some little scrapings of drizzle then snow, it was mostly clearer. A frozen waterfall! A promontory like a castle! Marmots! Snow! 

I felt so proud of myself when we reached the top, so grateful to be in an adventure with my sister and Oak, surrounded and cradled by the mountains. Even better: it was determinedly sunny on the other side, the descent was lovely, then we had a long traverse into Lingshed. 

Lingshed is lower than many nearby villages, making it something of a centre despite being rather poorly connected. As well as the gompa, there’s a huge golden Buddha overlooking the valley. We stopped to look at it, and thank goodness we did: it was buzzing with people, women in traditional dress circling the building, men making food, chatting and drinking salty chai. Oak recognised Dorje, who he had stayed with last year. Dorje explained that once a year the village changes out the water in the Buddhist shrine, and everyone comes to pray about it. The women were trying to add up to a thousand perambulations of the building. 

After crossing a big pass, recieving soupy tenthuk and chai is a lovely welcome to a village. Dorje gave us instructions for getting to his house and we biked further down. Seeing the ribbons of irrigation channels with their silky glacial silt reminded me intensely of where I lived aged nine and 10, and the number of hours spent entertaining myself and my siblings with boats and mud and ditch flowers and splashing. School was letting out and some kids scrambled over to our bikes and begged for a ride, climbing on confidently. Going downhill on a lumpy road with full paniers and a child clutching my waist is a new skill but no one got hurt, and then we were at Dorje’s house, with a composting toilet and smooth mud walls. Part of the deal of paying for a homestay is getting food, which made a nice change from cooking on the little camp stove. I read a few more chapters of my riveting fantasy novel (The Winter of the Witch), and fell asleep soon after dark. 

In the morning we had another build-the-road-while-riding-it moment. Workers at the top assured us we would be able to get through, but the path was blocked by an incredibly loud machine drilling into the rock. Eventually the worker beckoned us past, but the dust got so thick it was about ankle deep – OK for pushing bikes but thank goodness we didn’t have a car or motorbike! – and the shifty scree slope was rumbling as a digger hacked at it. 

 We left the bikes and walked up the valley to look for a snow tunnel Oak had seen there last year in a shady section. Because of smaller precipitation levels or the warming climate, it wasn’t there. But Oak pointed out how the stream path had changed with all the fallen rock from the new road. The routes we’d been enjoying had a natural cost. 

Another 20 minutes and we were at the brown sweep of the Zanskar Gorge, another ridiculous road carved out of the rock. Until few years ago it was only possible to cross when the river is frozen in winter. There were several road worker camps under the cliffs and disappointingly, a blue side stream which looked like a great lunch stop was being used as a latrine. 

We were slowly going uphill, but at a river-gradient not a pass-crossing-gradient. A man from a 4-house village made some chai at his roadside dhaba and told us how he spends the winter inside spinning wool, and then we spotted a perfect flat camping place on the terrace above the river. We lay on our mats outside as the stars came out, having one of those slow conversations stretching between everyone like dark sweet toffee. 

Like most monasteries and sacred places in the area, the Zhangla fort is perched on an unlikely looking rock above the widening valley. It made a worthy diversion as we headed to Padum. A brief sign at the bottom introduces the thousand-year old Kings who lived in Zhangla when it was the Zanskari capital, not (or not just) a small village in a remote valley. Shreyas and I scrambled in the open rooms, Shar and Oak scaled a pole to get into the closed rooms, and the black and yellow lizards basked in the sun beneath the row of stupas. Why had I been so worried, and so cold, when we were in the high above hills? in a dry sunny valley, many cares are far away. 

While we had been going faster on a relatively flat and fully paved road, a headwind made the last 40 km to Padum a total grind. Not helped by not having enough lunch, we scorned another monastery visit and kept shifting in our peloton formation. All I could think of was the wind, so invisible yet all consuming. 

Padum is located where the Stod and Lugnak rivers meet, grey-green and grey-brown swishing into one mighty line. One side of the river is a big army base, while the other is the town, a string of shops along a main road yielding immediately to fields. My mum describes it as feeling a bit like a wild west, and indeed all the buildings are under construction and feel a bit hasty. 

We finished with a dip in the Lugnak, which felt particularly friendly – even though Padum is a new place for me, I had been over the Shingo La pass at the head of the valley twice. Biking with Shar and Oak had been so fun, with so much hospitality from their friends and lots more possible conversation pairings. Even more fun (though Oak might deny this is possible) than dunking tired limbs in icy water and emerging as breathless as you get atop a 5000 metre pass.