Zanskar in a raft - Part 1
/Not sure when i got the bug to pursue white water rafting as a means of unwinding, but after doing a couple of runs of the Ganga and Later on Tons in Himachal Pradesh, i was itching to do a long expedition on one of the big rivers. The following series of posts chronicle my Zanskar white water rafting expedition in August 2010.
The entire trip is about 12 days i.e. from the time you fly from Delhi to Leh and back again. The map below shows the major places we visit to the source of the river and the line in blue shows the path we travel down the river.
Even before the trip commenced there was major drama. A week before the scheduled departure of our trip, Leh suffered from torrential rains which caused serious flooding and loss of life. Initially i was due to leave on the Aug 7th batch but due to floods this batch was cancelled and merged with the second batch which took place on Aug 22nd.
Day 1 - To Leh
The mountains from the plane were quite a sight to behold, somewhere tucked away behind those mountains lay the Zanskar
The Himalayan Mountain Range
Leh has a fairly small airport operated by the Army, with a limited set of flights into it. I believe the last flight leave Leh is at around 12:00 in the afternoon.
Leh Airport
A better part of the first day in Leh was spent drinking plenty of fluids and sleeping. This is primarily needed for your body to acclimatise to the altitude. Its fairly common to develop a slight headache towards the evening, but with sleep it fades away.
The first half of the day was fairly uneventful, mostly spent reading and getting to know your fellow expedition junkies. I had a great bunch of people who braved the possible flood warnings to make it for this trip.
Later in the evening we decided to venture out into Leh to get our tourist on. Along the way we saw the devastation caused by the floods the previous week
Houses damaged in the floods
More flood damage
Leh had a tonne of cool touristy places and all the info would need a separate blog post. For now i will keep this series of post specific to my expedition.
Cant remember the name