Asian Window

Stan Sesser from Rumbak, India, in the Wall Street Journal:

Perched at 13,300 feet and a two-hour hike from the nearest road, this tiny village in the Ladakh region of India’s Himalayas is a trekker’s dream. Mud-brick houses center around elaborately-decorated Tibetan-style kitchens, where the family eats, sleeps and serves butter tea to any passerby who happens to wave hello. Dzomos, a cross between a yak and a cow, graze in rock-walled enclosures. Steps leading to a 200-year-old Buddhist monastery offer views down a valley to towering snow-capped peaks.

Last month, I undertook a solo trek in Ladakh, hiking some 40 miles among the world’s tallest peaks, at elevations ranging from 10,000 to 16,000 feet. But I wasn’t exactly alone. To make life more comfortable, a Ladakhi tour agency sent a guide, a cook and a horseman. Five horses carried loads including tents, a 35-pound canister of cooking gas and even a table and chair. The cost totaled $688 for the five-day trek-less than a single night at one of the luxury Himalayan hotels sprouting up in nearby Bhutan. In most of the Himalayas, the prime trekking periods are March to April and October to November; summer is the rainy season. But in arid Ladakh, a mountain range cuts off India’s summer monsoons and the trekking season runs from June to October.

Here are dramatic canyons with multicolored walls and villages unchanged for centuries. Many of the mountain-savvy inhabitants are willing to guide visitors safely through difficult terrain and weather. To talk with people who spend half the year in isolation, when villages are cut off by snow, is to meet people from another world. More:

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