Arriving in Tso Moriri (Ladakh Lakes #5)

Tso Moriri (as seen from the perspective of Arva, our Mavic 2 Pro)

My diary entry for the 27th of August 2019  begins with “Today was my favourite day in the field by far”. We had  arrived in the small village on the shores of Tso Moriri the previous evening and I took to the place immediately. Wherever I stood, I could see the deep blue of Tso Moriri stretching across for miles. We were lucky to have found a  sweet old couple’s home to stay in, and had already gulped down several cups of the butter tea they provided us with. 

The kitchen in our homestay in Korzok, with a thermos full of hot butter tea.

We began the day at 7.30 am with a drive around the north-western portion of the lake stopping at various points to conduct our surveys.  After a drone flight along the lake shore, we documented the garbage, and then used our Trident to conduct transects along the lake bed. Tso Moriri was the first lake at which we found clear water,  which allowed us to collect some breathtaking footage using the Trident. Since we didn’t have any other travel planned for the 27th, we were all able to take turns to operate the Trident and it was just fun to be able to use it in such a special place. Besides, who can get over this view?

Varaha, our Trident, returning to shore after an excursion in the clear waters of Tso Moriri

We called  a halt to field work by lunch, which was wheat momos and fried rice at a little restaurant in the village. After the ‘mandatory’ afternoon nap, I went out for a cup of tea at a shop near our homestay. The women running the shop lived in Leh, but were working in this village for the summer. They were very warm and welcoming, and we had a nice chat until I asked them what was done with the plastic waste in the area. The conversation stopped abruptly and when I asked again, they pointedly engaged themselves in other activities. A gentleman sitting nearby  answered for them; he organised treks in the area and said they always disposed off the waste responsibly. When I asked how,the conversation ended again. I’m not sure why there was so much hostility around the subject of waste, but I didn’t push anymore.

After tea-time, I joined Gabriella and Shashank for a little excursion. Topden, our driver/guide in Ladakh, knew both the area and some people in a nearby nomadic settlement well, and took us to their campsite for a visit. When we got there, Topden spoke with them and a short while later, we were invited into their tent for tea. Some butter tea, yak cheese, broken conversation and compensating smiles later, we headed back outside. Shashank was carrying the aerial drone with him and Topden asked the crowd whether we met with them whether they would be interested in seeing it in action. Suddenly, the number of people tripled around us, and  after we communicated what was going to happen next, we launched the drone. As the drone flew overhead, a crowd gathered around us. We asked them what they would like to see and they pointed to their grazing sheep. We started to fly the drone in that direction but the sheep began running away from the direction of noise. We switched directions of the flight immediately and showed them images of the pasture, the surrounding mountains, and of themselves, on the drone controller. It was interesting to see even the smallest child was looking at both the flying drone and stream on our phone, seemingly able to make the connection between the two. It was a really fun and fulfilling evening with new firsts for us all. A drone flight for them and yak cheese for me :)

The author flying Arva and showing mmembers of the community an aerial view of their campsite.

Once we returned to the homestay, we sat on the carpet in the dining room and ate dinner while making silly jokes. Before bed, we all watched a few episodes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, and when I finally went to bed, my last thought was that this wasn’t too shabby a workday!

A day in the field: Chilling Tso and Ryul Tso (Ladakh Lakes #4)

On the morning of August 28, we left beautiful Korzok (by the banks of Tso Moriri) to survey Ryul Tso and Chilling Tso, the two most remote - and highest of the high-altitude lakes - that we had chosen to map using our underwater and aerial robots. These lakes are located to the east of Karzok and Tso Moriri and are separated from the lake only by a massif adorned by the peaks of Chamser Kangri, Lungser Kangri and Mentok Kangri. The weather over the last couple of days in Karzok had been largely kind, with bouts of light rainfall and gentle winds. Across the lake, however, angry-looking rainclouds had hung heavy over the Chamser, Lungser and Mentok peaks. Our (second) excellent driver and guide, Thopten, was constantly looking across at the clouds with not quite his usual smile, telling us that the bad weather was where we were headed, and expressing his doubts about the likelihood of us reaching the lakes without any trouble.

Dark clouds across Tso Moriri on the evening of 27th August.

Our plan for August 28 was to head north from Karzok and drop off our bags at the monastery at Mahe, where Thopten had kindly asked his friends (the monks) to allow us to stay for a couple of nights, and who had, even more kindly, agreed. From Mahe, we would then head south-east, towards the high-altitude rangelands of the Changthang plateau, where our twin lakes lay. We freshened up at the toilet complex outside the monastery at Mahe, had some tea offered by the monks, and decided to push to the lakes and prayed fervently to the powers that be, for good weather.

The drive to Mahe, on a road lying alongside the Indus, was beautiful, flanked as we were by purple-hued peaks that seemed to made of little more than dirt at times, with patterns that reminded us that this barren land of high passes was once seabed. Marmots ran across the landscape, lugging their bottoms that were weighed down by the fat they were accumulating for the looming winter. Herds of kiang grazed, occasionally regarding us with a glance but not really fazed by the presence of humans at a safe distance. The cherry on the cake, however, were the pair of black-necked cranes we saw on the Indus floodplain, wading for food in the marshy grasses, mere feet beyond the road shoulder!

A pair of black-necked cranes on the highway

Passing through hamlets with golden-hued barley fields, the road eventually turned into a dirt track and then just flattened gravel. We paused briefly while a truck, carrying rations to the army camps up ahead, was repaired and then we went up into seemingly pristine hills without any permanent human habitation; and only the occasional military green tent to remind us that we were not the first to venture here. Up, up and into the widest expanse of land I have ever seen. At an an altitude of about 5000 m, we were flanked by towering peaks that appeared flattened by the distance they were at. Ryul Tso spread out before us, its expanse not visible at first because of the complete lack of any gradient in the land. White tents of the pastoral nomads dotted the landscape, mostly Changpas who had been camping at these lands for about three weeks now - pasturing their herds of prized pashmina goat and sheep.

Herds of pashmina goat and sheep on the shores of Ryul Tso

We stopped a while from Ryul Tso. It was afternoon by now and the weather at  these altitudes is extremely unpredictable - we had to work fast. We surveyed the lake rapidly - the drone held up well under the able remote-piloting of Shashank, in spite of the high winds and the rarefied air. Tired, we trudged back to the car to carry on to Chilling Tso, which was still a half hour's ride away. Thopten surprised us all when we got to the car - he had arranged for refreshments. Tashi, a Changpa lady, invited us into her tent - where she served us Maggi, tea, fresh Pashmina butter and curd.

The view from Tashi’s tent

I am not a foodie, and I seldom relish a meal - but this assortment of fresh and fragrant rarities, and the kindness of our hosts who laboured in the harshest of worlds for their food, yet were willing to share it at the slightest sign of need - this will stay with me. Reinvigorated, we headed back into the car and south across the rangelands towards Chilling Tso for another set of rapid surveys.

Chilling Tso

The weather was becoming increasingly chilly, so we wrapped up work quickly and left for base. We made it back to the monastery in time for a hot meal at the gompa kitchen, and a hastily put-together serradura in a condensed milk tin with a matchstick as a candle to mark the end of our expedition and incidentally, the birthday of our expedition leader and my companion on many a mountain now, our beloved Shanks!

The author holding The World's Best Puppy in Mahe Gompa.

Perceptions of Ladakh (Ladakh Lakes #3)

Ladakh. For someone as besotted with the mountains as I am, the name has always stirred something in my soul. Images and sounds of extraterrestrial landscapes, extremophilic biodiversity and a culture shrouded in yak-skin mystique have gnawed at my imagination for years, urging me to venture forth. Something kept holding me back. Thanks to Technology for Wildlife and Shashank, my long spell of indolence paid off and I was able to experience the trans-Himalaya in a special way – not only for the relatively remoter regions we were able to access (owing to some expedition-level planning and permission-seeking by TfW), but also for the work we ultimately set out to do. You have (or will) read enough about the work conducted during the expedition from the keyboards of more qualified persons here on this blog. This post is about the mountains, and time in the mountains is valuable – so let’s get right to it.

The author exploring another part of the Himalayas in October 2017. Photo: Shashank Srinivasan | 2017

I have been exploring the Himalaya (mostly on foot, and in limited pockets) for the last four to five years now. I recently obtained my Basic Mountaineering certification from the National Institute for Mountaineering and Allied Sports, at Dirang (in West Kameng, Arunachal Pradesh). Being as it is under the Ministry of Defence, the Institute also caters to defence personnel who are required, or are looking, to gain competence in mountaineering (whether for warfare, or for participation in armed forces peak-climbing expeditions). Only a fraction of the month-long course is conducted at the Institute itself, and the rest in various stations in Tawang district, right up till the final station at the base of the Meerathang glacier (at about 4600 metres ASL). Most of these areas are not accessible to civilians, and I – along with the rest of my course mates - was fortunate enough to see some truly pristine parts of the Eastern Himalaya, with appropriately breathtaking biodiversity to match the stage.  This region of India is culturally contiguous with southern Tibet, of which Ladakh forms the western frontier. I was almost trembling with anticipation at this - to be travelling to the other end of the Himalayas, mere months after my 28-day boot camp in its eastern reaches.

The road connecting Kinnaur to Spiti. Photograph: Shashank Srinivasan | 2019

We began our journey in Kalka, travelled through Narkanda (in Shimla district), Rampur Bushahr (the gateway to Kinnaur), stopping at Nako (Kinnaur), Dhankar, Kaza (in Spiti) and then via Keylong towards the settlement at Thukje (at Tso-Kar) before proceeding to the other sites on our itinerary. Over about 7 days, and thanks to our first terrific driver Lucky (from Kullu), we negotiated roads (of varying descriptions, but I’ll call them all roads for the sake of convenience) through the foothills, lesser Himalayas and Greater Himalayas before crossing over into the trans-Himalayan region - Kinnaur and Spiti (literally the ‘in-between land’) - and ultimately entering the dramatic cold desert region that is Ladakh.

The changing landscape was very different to the road trip from Gauhati to Dirang, which starts at the floodplains of the Brahmaputra, crosses the lush foothills of the Eastern Himalaya and takes one to the gateway of the higher reaches, towards the McMahon Line and the famous Bailey Trail along the Arunachal Pradesh-Tibet border. For one, the lush forests at the lower latitudes of the Arunachal Pradesh Himalaya are ubiquitous even as high as 3500 metres above sea level. As we move northwards and westwards, the tree line gets lower and lower and vegetation in Ladakh (which is at an average elevation of 3200-3700 metres ASL) is very different – there are poplars and willows but mostly plantations in irrigated areas, or in the lower reaches of the valleys. Other than that, there are bushes typical of desert areas, shrubs and grasses. The land itself is more undulating than mountainous, and the vistas sprawl wider than is possible to see in the Himalaya proper. The cultural contiguities with Arunachal were surprising, though – given the three thousand or so kilometres of mountains, plains and valleys that separate these two regions. The ethnic identities of their peoples as Tibetans is still preserved – in the common traditions of their robes (minor variations of the Tibetan Chuba), their lifestyles (both the Changpa of Ladakh and the Monpa of Tawang are pastoral tribes, chiefly herding goats and yaks), and their faith (Tibetan Buddhism is still the dominantly ‘visible’ religion in both places, and predates Islam and Christianity in Ladakh). Even their wildlife is shared - marmots chatter at the higher reaches of the Arunachal Himalaya, and can be found urgently waddling their way throughout most of Ladakh as well. The black-necked crane (thung thung to the locals of Ladakh) breeds in the wetlands of Ladakh and flies down to Bhutan and Tawang for the winter. It is revered as sacred by the Changpas and the Monpas alike.

The black-necked crane (Grus nigricollis), revered in both Arunachal Pradesh and Ladakh. Photo: Shashank Srinivasan | 2017

As the likenesses strike, so do the contrasts. The visual dominance of Tibetan Buddhism over the Ladakh landscape thinly veils the cultural eclecticism of a land that lay at the crossroads of important trade routes, from the Far East to Central and Western Asia. The influence of multiple ethnicities – Uighur, Balti, Kashmiri, Punjabi and Tibetan – is amply visible in Leh, especially in the establishments and homes near the Main Bazaar and old city.  The limited availability of wood in Ladakh is evinced in the mud houses that dominate the rural landscapes (Leh has become increasingly concretised), in contrast to the stone-and-wood houses of Arunachal (more common in the Himalaya and sub-Himalaya). Wood is used in Ladakh, though sparingly, and is more commonly seen in the houses of the affluent, in gömpas (religious buildings), choskhors (religious enclaves) and the palaces. The dominance of tourism as a sector of the economy in Ladakh also struck me; the careful curation of its cultural features for the foreign eye – opening up, so to speak, while trying simultaneously to hold on its identity. We were told by the founder of our travel agency, Jigmet, that local hospitality operators blacklist or even penalize anyone with a MakeMyTrip sticker – an old value of the Ladakhi people and a lesson that has been reinforced from other Indian towns that have become tourist spots at the cost of the local economy and culture, such as Manali. In contrast, the more difficult terrain and remoteness of Western Arunachal have engendered a more culturally homogenous population, as well as a much lower influx of tourists. Their problems are different – of infrastructure, of connectivity, of integration with the rest of the economy.  Their ecology and its associated services are threatened, just not as visibly as in the extremes of Ladakh where the lack of water and the changing precipitation patterns are far more perceptible as effects of anthropogenic climate change.  

Hopefully, the work our team has started will go some way in bolstering the conservation efforts already underway in Ladakh (and eventually, other high-altitude regions as well), and ensure these fascinating landscapes survive as more than just stories.

The author removing litter from a high-altitude lake in Ladakh. Photo: Shashank Srinivasan | 2019