Tsemo Gompa and Leh Palace

We could see the Tsemo Gompa from our guesthouse so feeling ready for a challenge after 4 days in Ladakh we decided to hike up to it.  It was about 40 minutes uphill and it was pretty exhausting.  Right at the top of the mountain there were some stupas and prayer flags.  Our guesthouse is somewhere below in the valley (I tried to identify it but couldn't).

The view from the Tsemo Gompa was amazing - there was a little platform that you could walk on all around the outside of it.  In both photos you can see the Shanti Stupa over on the far hill.

From the Tsemo Gompa it was a downhill (but not easy!) walk to Leh Palace.  This is a nine-storey building dating from the 1550s.  It was built by the Buddhist kings of Ladakh and was once the world's highest building.  The palace's inward leaning walls are in the same architectural tradition as the otala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet.

We once again walked down into Leh, did some shopping and had lunch.

Monasteries and Palaces on the Roof of the World

On our third day in Ladakh we felt ready to take a taxi out to some of the more remote regions in order to visit monasteries.  Our trip took us to Hemis and Thiksey Monasteries and Shey Palace.

Stakna Gompa

Hemis Monastery is the largest monastic institution in Ladakh and dates from 1630. This monastery has more than 200 branches throughout the Himalayas and more than 1,000 monks.

Hemis is situated in a craggy, red-rock canyon and is home to Ladakh's Drukpa Buddhists.  It has a superb central courtyard full of colourful timbers and tall masts with prayer flags.

After Hemis we drove to Thiksey Monastery.  Thiksey is on top of a large rocky outcrop and is comprised of layered, whitewashed Tibetan-style buildings.  It's one of Ladakh's biggest monasteries and includes a restaurant where we ate our lunch.  

The main gompa contains a prayer chamber with a 14 metre high Buddha in an ornately detailed headdress.  This temple was consecrated by the Dalai Lama.

Our final stop of the day was at Shey Palace.  This was once Ladakh's summer capital, though it is now abandoned.

Walking to the Shanti Stupa

On our second day in Ladakh we decided we'd do a longer, but still local, walk as we were still getting used to the altitude.  We decided to walk first to the Donkey Sanctuary behind the Silver Cloud, and then walk on to the Shanti Stupa.

The Donkey Sanctuary is for donkeys that have been rescued from mistreatment or end-of-career abandonment.  I'm guessing many of these donkeys have been used for trekking (carrying all the luggage) but there were also some baby donkeys there.

The walk from the Donkey Sanctuary to the Shanti Stupa started off lush and green, but very soon the road became quite barren.  I found it quite a tough walk up to the Stupa.

The Shanti Stupa was built by Japanese monks to promote world peace.  We could see this stupa from our room in the Silver Cloud and also from our balcony.  It was lit up quite beautifully at night.

We walked down into Leh from the Shanti Stupa.  It was 500 steep steps down!

First Day in Ladakh: Walking from Sankar to Leh

Because Leh is at altitude, we knew we had to take it easy for the first 2 days in order to acclimatize.  We therefore spent the first day simply walking down the hill from Sankar (where we were staying at the Silver Cloud guesthouse) to Leh.  On the way we passed many religious sites, for example stupas and prayer wheels.

In Leh we wandered around the town (which was being dug up in a beautification project) and walked down to a cafe called Bon Appetit for lunch.  We grabbed a taxi back up the hill to the guest house.

Leh was once the hub of a bustling caravan trade between the Punjab and Central Asia and between Kashmir and Tibet.

Autumn in Ladakh

For our Autumn break we went to Ladakh.  Ladakh is a Buddhist ex-kingdom set among spectacularly jagged, arid mountains - it is a high altitude desert that has sunshine for 300 days per year.  It's full of colourful, fluttering prayer flags and prayer wheels. Traditional homes are large and mostly self-sufficient in food and fuel.  This is an amazing achievement when you consider the limited amount of land, the short growing season and the fact that water has to be channelled from glacier-melt mountain streams.

We stayed in a guest house just outside of Leh in a small village called Sankar (it was about a 15 - 20 minute walk down the hill into Leh).  The guest house was really lovely - as were the people running it (Padma and Sonam) who made us feel like part of the family.  We had a lovely "sunset" Ladakhi room with a balcony that looked out over the Shanti Stupa and towards the Tsemo Gompa.

We arrived in Ladakh at a very beautiful time of the year.  The mornings were crisp but the day soon warmed up as the skies were clear and blue.  During the week we noticed the trees changing from green to yellow and the leaves just starting to fall.  It was also right at the end of the season - many places were closing at the end of September - so everywhere we went was very quiet and not filled with hundreds of tourists.

The garden of the Silver Cloud was lovely - filled with flowers and with organic vegetables - which formed the basis of our meals most evenings.

Here is one of the views from our balcony looking towards the Shanti Stupa.

It was time to collect in the harvest - everywhere we saw stacks of barley and fields of vegetables being dug up to prepare for the winter.

This photo, taken on our last day in Ladakh, shows just how the trees have changed in one short week.  Now the leaves are yellow and starting to fall.  The mountains in the distance are covered in snow at their peaks.