One of the days while I was at Tso Moriri, it snowed on the peaks surrounding the lake. After the storm subsided and the clouds kissing the peaks disappeared, sun rays penetrated through the still cloudy evening sky and lighted up parts of the landscape. Here are some images of the hour after the storm.
Powder snow on a peak near Tso Moriri
Tso Moriri Lake and snow-capped peaks.
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Tso Moriri Lake
Tso Moriri gave me a feeling of being in an enormously beautiful, secret location. Enormously beautiful doesn’t need much explanation. If you have seen pictures of the bright blue lake held captive by mountains around it, challenging the sky in a who-is-more-blue contest, you already know what I am talking about. The sky was hardly blue while I was there, but it did not matter. And it feels secretive, not because no one knows about it, but at any given point of time there are so few people in your vicinity and the place is so far away from anywhere else, it almost gives a feeling of being in your own private heaven specifically built to please you. It is an almost flawless place. The surrounding mountains have just a little bit of snow lurking on their peak, adding a nice bright contrast to blue and brown landscape. On the bank of the lake is a wide stretch of lush green grass like you would see nowhere else in the desiccated Ladakh. Horses graze unattended along the greens, creating an impression that a small group of nomadic trotters must have sought a temporary shelter somewhere nearby.
Tso Moriri Lake and the snow capped mountains
Ladakh is a place that has etched many memories in me, but no other place has made a deeper mark than Tso Moriri. The reasons are many. The tiny bits of snow on the peaks had always remained a great attraction for me. It snowed on the peaks on the days I was there, depositing beautiful buttery white powder all along the slopes. The dark gloomy clouds that gathered before the snowfall enriched and darkened the blueness of the lake.
The lake and the mountains beyond at the hour of sunset, with a stupa in the foreground.
Horses graze on the bank of Tso Moriri
But there was more to Tso Moriri than the lake itself. The ebullient people of Korzok (the village on the bank of Tso Moriri) added to the charm. There was an inexpressible grace in everything they did, be it milking the goats, working in the fields or herding the sheep back into the village in the evenings. The monastic festival at Korzok Gompa added to the chirpy atmosphere. If I had an option of staying forever in Tso Moriri, I think I would have taken it.
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It has been more than a year since I started writing a travelogue series on my travels and experiences in Ladakh. When I began writing these stories, I was determined not to make it a quick travelogue about where I went, what I did or what I saw. I wanted it to be a comprehensive compilation of my experiences of this remote region, my understanding of its culture and observation about its people. Of course, this would go hand in hand with description of all places that I visited—pretty much all the well-known locations—in Ladakh. With a lot of things to tell, the story did not end quickly and went on for a long time. Now the series is more than a year old and has seen more than 40 posts in the last twelve months. Yet, I am only half way with my travelogues. I thought it would be a good time to look back into posts written so far and make a compilation of them in one place. Also, if you like to read the entire story in one go, it begins from here, with each post having navigation links to next and previous posts.
Go to list of posts of travel to ladakh and a get a glimpse of what more to come. I would also look forward to knowing your comments and feedback on the stories so far, and how you would like to see the series go forward.
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