Day 4: Nubra Valley to Leh via Khardungla Pass

I got up early in the morning hoping to checkout the camp and the sunrise. The camp itself is situated on the banks of river Nubra and situated amidst the orchard farm. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the season for orchards and so no apples for us :(! The sunrise wasn’t something to write home about as the sun was hiding behind the mountains. We had an early breakfast and left at 8.30 am.

The day’s journey promised to be a shorter one as we didn’t have to take deviations to visit any monasteries. On our way to Khardungla top, it started snowing lightly. It made for a very good experience and we spent some time playing with the snow on route to Khardungla. The road from Nubra to Khardungla is 80 km long with bad roads starting from North Pullu. We reached the top at around 11.30 am, spent around 20 mins drinking tea and left to Leh. The top seemed to be a lot less crowded compared to the previous day and there wasn’t any traffic jam as well. We reached Leh on time for lunch where we were dropped at a restaurant close to Leh palace. After lunch, we visited the Leh palace, which turned out to be a bit of a dud, considering how majestic it looked from outside. The inside, on the contrary, looked very shady, very badly lit and seemed under construction. We didn’t explore it beyond a couple of steps.

We were back at the hotel by early evening with nothing much planned for the rest of the day. We spent the remaining part of the day relaxing.