At one step as you cross the Zoji-la, you pass from the lushness of Kashmir
into the bare uncompromising contours of a trans-Himalayan landscape. Dras,
the first major village over the pass, inhabited by a population of mixed kashmiri
and Dard origins, has the local reputation of being the second coldest permanent
inhabited spot in the world. But in summer when the pass is open and the tourists
are going thourgh, the standing crops and clumps of willow give it a gently,
smiling look.
After Drass, the valley narrows, becoming almost a gorge. Yet even here it occasionally
allows space for small patches of terraced cultivation, where a tiny village
population ekes out a precarious existence. This is indeed a mountain desert,
greened only by such scattered oases.
On departure from Kargil, the road plunges into the ridges and valley of the
Zanskar range over a huge mound of alluvium, now made fertile by a huge irrigation
scheme. Mulbekh with its gigantic rock engraving of Maitreya (Buddha-tocome)
and its gompa perched high on crag above the village, is the transition from
Muslim to Buddhist Ladakh. It is followed by two more passes, Namika-la (12,200
feet/ 3,719m) and Fotu-la (13,432 feet / 4,094 m).
From Fotu-la, the road descends in sweeps and shirls, past the ancient and spectacularly
sited monastery of Lamayuru, past amazing wind-eroded towers and pinnacles of
lunar-landscape rock, down to the Indus at Khalatse- a descent of almost 4,000
feet/ 1,219 m in about 32 km. The Indus valley from Khalatse up to Upshi, where
the road from Manali comes in, is Ladakh's historical heartland.
