Trekking vacations in Ladakh

There are several great peaks to conquer in the Ladakh area that are available to trekkers with no mountaineering experience, and all will have you reaching serious altitudes. Kang Yatse, at 6,250m, is over a kilometre higher than North Base Camp on Mount Everest. Stok Kangri stands at 6,153m, Dzo Jongo at 6,420m.

Reaching them requires acclimatisation – meaning plenty of downtime. “You get that beautiful, relaxed time at the start as you’re arriving at altitude,” says Joyce. This means time in Leh, the region’s capital. “It’s a trekker’s paradise,” says Joyce, “people come from all over to go up the valley. You have plenty of time to sit in the coffee shops, visit the equipment rental shops.”

Tibetan and Ladakhi culture extends far beyond the first tentative sip of yak butter tea (good for altitude sickness). In the valleys, you’ll pass stone-built farms where subsistence agriculture has endured for generations, and you can use your downtime to visit some of the area’s amazing monasteries.

Once you’re walking, you’ll spend the evenings at rest: at camp by rushing rivers, where your trekking ponies graze, the blue sheep wander down from the mountain, and everything is peaceful. You fall into the rhythm of the walk. As Joyce says, “You get up, eat, walk, rest, sleep. There are no phones pinging, no one demanding that you’re in this or that meeting. It is all the beauty and nothing else.”

Whilst you don’t need mountaineering skills, to reach these peaks involves multi day trekking and camping, and a few river crossings. There aren’t teahouses along the way, so expeditions need to carry everything they need in and out. You will need support from a guide team and porters.

As well as looking after your health and keeping you on track, your team will plan in the important acclimatisation walks and rest days throughout the trip. Porters, leading a team of ponies and mules, chat with you along the walk, but then go on ahead to set up camp.

Some of our partners provide further support. “Each and every one of the trips has an expedition doctor,” says Joyce. This can be reassuring for nervous trekkers, but it also opens up walking to a wider range of people. “We can often offer travel to those who have been turned down by other companies, who have chronic illnesses, and who haven’t previously been able to get sign off from their doctor to trek.”

Expert support on your walk is ever more essential as the weather becomes more unpredictable. Climate change means that the clear skies and light winds of summertime are no longer a surefire bet. Trekkers need to prepare for all weathers. “Normally it doesn’t shift like that until September – but we’ve had weird weather,” says Joyce. “This is much more significant out in the mountains. The weather patterns are shifting, and it’s not as cut and dried as it used to be.”

Most treks begin with a walk in through a valley, gradually reaching higher and higher elevations, until you reach a base camp and then an advanced base camp. Before you do a final push to the summit, you’ll acclimatise, rest, and practise walking in crampons and using ice axes whilst roped together up at the snowline. From up here, your little tents at the bottom of the valley, tiny as Lego pieces, provide useful scale to a landscape that is very vast.

‘Summit day’ starts at midnight with head torches, so that you can be at the top just after sunrise and have time for the long walk out back to a road and a waiting shuttle vehicle. The altitude is so high at the summits that the views can be literally breathtaking.

Trekking is strenuous because of the altitude. Fans of high-altitude trekking know that a trip starts well before you put on your day pack. The more prepared and physically fit you are the better, and so many people spend months before their big walk training on their local hillsides.

“I was training on the small Irish hills and thinking – how is this training me for something that big?” says Joyce. “On these trips, you’re pushing your body and trying to find its limits – and finding out that those limits were further than you thought. No wonder people keep coming back for more!”