Overnight Trip to Nubra Valley

There are various trips that can be organized from Leh including some interesting places near some (semi)restricted area. One of those places that caught my interest is Nubra Valley.

An Overnight Trip to Nubra Valley packages cost vary depending on the kind of vehicle that you will use and the number of people that you can share the cost with. When we availed of a transport package (June 2012), rental cost of a Toyota Innova or Mahindra Xylo cost 8400 Rupees and you could go to three villages (Hunder, Diskit and Summor).

Most agencies are following the same standard rates for all the tourist packages that they’re offering. Aside from the transport, we also asked the same agency to process the permit for the said area. It cost us 450 Rupees each (inc their service charge).

Our trip to Nubra though was postponed twice due to road blocks. If it rains in Leh, the roads near Khardung La experiences heavy snow fall and some parts of the road were said to have been blocked by snow. On our third day of waiting for the trip to materialize, we finally got the go signal to push thru with the trip.

View of Leh from above

I was just staring at the window the whole time of the ascent of our vehicles and spotted a few Himalayan partridges along the way. We stopped at one point where our driver presented our permits

Here are some pictures en route Khardung La (the highest motorable pass in the world):

Traffic Jam in the mountains

Khardung La at 5602M

A religious shrine wrapped in snow and ice

Icy Road

The whole trip from Leh to under took us around 4-5 hours including some stops for food and tooilet breaks and going through the traffic jam in Khardung La.

The weather in Hunder was sunny but a still bit cold. We looked for a cheap guesthouse where we could spend the night and found the Himalayan Guesthouse which cost 800 Rupee for a triple room with en suite bathroom.

We were a bit groggy and cranky when we arrived maybe because of the changing weather and the altitude as well. Despite of our mild “illness” we still proceeded to the sand dunes to see the Bactrian Camels (camels with two humps). Two of the locals that we’re travelling with opted to do a camel safari for an hour. I was initially thinking of doing the same but after realizing that it’s not really the “safari” that I have in mind but just a stroll along the sand dunes, I just opted out.

Here are some pictures of Hunder village and the sand dunes:

Gorgeous view, isn’t it!

Bactrian Camels

Camel “Safari”

This was the only activity we did on that day and we spent the night chatting about our views of India and the Philippines. It was interesting to realized that despite the many obvious differences that these two countries have, they also have a lot of similarities. It’s often nice to travel with locals as you get to know a lot about their home country. We spent almost four or five hours sharing a variety of stories and called it a night afterwards.

The following morning we visited the nearby monastery in Nubra Valley and headed back to Leh. Our road trip back to Leh was very interesting as we saw a lot of Himalayan Marmots along the way. Himalayan marmots looks like a large ground squirrel (are they squirrels?) about the size of a domestic cat often fond in the valleys of Ladakh, Bhutan and Pakistan.

Here are some pictures of our trip back to Leh:

Himalayan Marmots

Yak

Crystal clear river, I wish all our rivers are this clean

Clear blue sky near Khardung La on our way back to Leh

Don’t miss Nubra Valley when you visit Leh

I hate to be preachy but just a reminder, Nubra Valley has a fragile environment and I’d like to ask you to throw your trash in the trash bin. Sadly, I saw a lot of tourists throwing their garbage everywhere.

Safe Travels!