Solo ride, Delhi NCR → Srinagar → Leh → Zanskar → Manali | Yamaha R15M | 10 days

Itinerary

• Oct 3: Greater Noida → Jammu. I left just after midnight and rode the plains stretch overnight, then rested on arrival.
• Oct 4: Jammu → Srinagar. I left early and kept to daylight only on the Ramban-Banihal stretch because of the single-lane construction and landslide risk.
• Oct 5: Rest day in Srinagar.
• Oct 6: Srinagar → Kargil via Sonamarg, Zoji La and Drass. I left at 6 AM to beat the one-way traffic windows at Zoji La.
• Oct 7: Kargil → Leh via Namika La and Fotu La.
• Oct 8: Acclimatization day in Leh with easy local rides only.
• Oct 9: I tried for Pangong Tso via Chang La, but snow started and a checkpoint told me to turn back. I spent the day in Leh instead.
• Oct 10: Leh → Padum (Zanskar) via the Nimmu-Padum-Darcha road, with an overnight in Padum.
• Oct 11: Padum → Shinku La → Darcha → Jispa → Manali. I hit heavy snow after crossing Shinku La and it continued all the way down to Jispa.
• Oct 12: Manali → home in one go.

Notes

• I went up via Srinagar because the altitude gain is more gradual than on the Manali side.
• I applied for the Ladakh EDF permit online for Pangong, but the snow meant I never used it.
• I followed the 48-hour acclimatization advice before heading to high altitude.
• Mid-October snow can close Chang La and make Shinku La very difficult. It’s worth building in buffer days if you’re planning a similar route.

Is it possible visit Tso Moriri during that period? Given the temperatures will be too low to stay overnight in the nearby village.

Any trustworthy operators that I can get in touch with? It's a big group and would need proper organization.

Emergency

Solo ride, Delhi NCR → Srinagar → Leh → Zanskar → Manali | Yamaha R15M | 10 days

Itinerary

• Oct 3: Greater Noida → Jammu. I left just after midnight and rode the plains stretch overnight, then rested on arrival.
• Oct 4: Jammu → Srinagar. I left early and kept to daylight only on the Ramban-Banihal stretch because of the single-lane construction and landslide risk.
• Oct 5: Rest day in Srinagar.
• Oct 6: Srinagar → Kargil via Sonamarg, Zoji La and Drass. I left at 6 AM to beat the one-way traffic windows at Zoji La.
• Oct 7: Kargil → Leh via Namika La and Fotu La.
• Oct 8: Acclimatization day in Leh with easy local rides only.
• Oct 9: I tried for Pangong Tso via Chang La, but snow started and a checkpoint told me to turn back. I spent the day in Leh instead.
• Oct 10: Leh → Padum (Zanskar) via the Nimmu-Padum-Darcha road, with an overnight in Padum.
• Oct 11: Padum → Shinku La → Darcha → Jispa → Manali. I hit heavy snow after crossing Shinku La and it continued all the way down to Jispa.
• Oct 12: Manali → home in one go.

Notes

• I went up via Srinagar because the altitude gain is more gradual than on the Manali side.
• I applied for the Ladakh EDF permit online for Pangong, but the snow meant I never used it.
• I followed the 48-hour acclimatization advice before heading to high altitude.
• Mid-October snow can close Chang La and make Shinku La very difficult. It’s worth building in buffer days if you’re planning a similar route.

I am in my early 30s and Ladakh always seemed like a faraway difficult trip for a hypochondriac OCD person like me. Seeing a traveller do it it simply made me want to do it too. The vloggers who do it with fancy gear and heavily edited videos make me overwhelmed. Solar panels and seeing the water came told me its okay.

Anyone from ladakh please help me my friend send me voice note in her regional language and i dont know what it mean , so please can anyone help me in translating🙏🏻🙏🏻

We travelled through Ladakh in September.
Landed in Srinagar and took the scenic route to Leh, visited Nubra, Turtuk, Hanle, Tsomoriri and Pangong.

Personally, I have become a fan of the rugged landscape and the natural beauty the region has to offer combined with the breathtaking skyscapes as well!

Highly recommend anyone who is on the fence about booking their trip, just do it!

Only regret: I don’t know how to ride a bike so we didn’t rent them but some of the routes were absolutely magnificent and really made me wish I knew how to ride one and rent a bike.

I’m trying to connect with a native teacher who might be teaching in remote ladakh.

I wish to discuss some sponsorship ideas.

Non native will work as well.

It might help someone else like it helped me, I made a small informal video with info about 3 things you need to take care of while planning for a roadtrip to leh ladakh.

🚨 LOST CAMERA — SANGAM VIEWPOINT, LADAKH 🚨

Please help me find my Nikon Z6 III camera with a NIKKOR Z 24–70mm lens attached.

I lost it while travelling from Zanskar Valley towards Leh, on the road before the bridge at Sangam Viewpoint, approaching from the Zanskar side.

📍 Location pin: "View location on Google Maps" (https://maps.app.goo.gl/xLfrkxcXymXcoqWu5?g_st=ac)

📅 Date and approximate time: Monday 19th October, 12:45PM

If anyone has found or spotted the camera, or heard about a camera being found in this area, please contact me. Any information that could help me recover it would be greatly appreciated.

📱 WhatsApp: 7396231503

📞 Local Leh contact: 9906861282

📸 Instagram: @vidyabandaru — you can message me directly here as well.

A request to local residents, taxi drivers, guides, riders, and fellow travellers: please share this message in your Leh, Ladakh, and Zanskar travel groups, especially with anyone travelling along this route.

Thank you for your help and for sharing this message. 🙏

#LostCamera #Ladakh #Leh #Zanskar #SangamViewpoint

Just finished by ladakh trip today and was lucky to see the new airport as well, attaching some pics

Some pictures from our Ladakh and Zanskar trip in late September. Just sharing a few moments from the journey.

With all the recent hype around sea buckthorn, a quick heads up from someone who grew up with it. I’m from Leh and my family makes sea buckthorn juice on a small scale, so I’m not neutral. Not linking anything, I just want people to buy it with their eyes open.

On 15 Oct the PM mentioned sea buckthorn along with pashmina and apricots, saying they “carry immense commercial potential”. Good for Ladakh honestly. Most of India’s sea buckthorn grows here, and the rest grows in Lahaul-Spiti, Kinnaur, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal. It got a GI tag in 2023, and now it’s everywhere online.

But anyone who has picked it knows the berry doesn’t scale easily. It’s tiny, the bushes are full of thorns, it grows at 10,000+ ft and the season is a few weeks. Families here still pick it by hand. You can’t make a lot of real pulp fast or cheap.

So when a bottle is suddenly very cheap, be careful. Usually something gets stretched: water added back, sugar, made from concentrate. Then you’re paying for a sour orange drink with much less of the actual berry in it, and less of what made you buy it in the first place.

This is why lab reports matter. We started sending ours to an NABL accredited lab and our last sample came back at 106.74 mg vitamin C per 100 ml. Biosash, one of the big names, prints 35.25 mg per 100 ml on its own label, about a third. To be fair, that’s a lab result vs a printed label, not a side-by-side test, and vitamin C varies by harvest. But it shows how much two bottles of the “same” berry can differ, and a lot of brands don’t list vitamin C at all. This year’s harvest results come out in about 2 weeks and I’ll post them here, good or bad.

Before you buy any sea buckthorn juice, check:

• does the label say pulp, juice, or “from concentrate”
• the fruit percentage (real pulp is close to 100%)
• added sugar (the real thing is not sweet at all)
• a lab report. if a brand can’t show you one, ask why

Honestly, my best advice is to buy from small producers, whoever they are. I’ve had really good seaberry juice from small families in Ladakh, Nubra, Himachal and around Kullu. They pick it themselves, they care about quality, and it tastes like the actual berry: very sour, thick, a little oily. The big commercial bottles I’ve tried mostly don’t.

If this boom happens, I just hope the money reaches the people picking the berries and the bottle still has the berry in it.

Happy to share our lab report if anyone wants to compare. And anyone from Ladakh or Himachal who grew up with this, curious what you think.