Introduction
Chadar means blanket. This trek is done on frozen Zanskar river. So, it means blanket of solid ice/frozen river. This trek is organized in winter season near Leh from around Jan 2nd week to Feb starting. I booked with Trek the Himalayas group for this trek.
This year the trek is shortened because of ongoing road construction along trek path. This is the first time when I trekked with pole and gum boots.
9th Jan 2025
I took morning flight from Bengaluru via Chandigarh to reach Leh airport at around 1pm. I met Dr. Varadaraju, one of my team member for chadar trek at Chandigarh airport. Weather in leh was around – 8°C. We both went to our hotel “Palace view guest house” . I was able to see Leh palace from my room’s window. Our trek start day was 13th Jan . Till then we have to acclimatize in Leh.
10th Jan
More team members came today . Some of us decided to visit near by places like Museum, Magnetic hills, sangam, monastry.
11th Jan
Today, entire team went to see other places like Thiksey monastery, Shey palace, Rancho’s school. It was a fun trip with all members
12th Jan : Medical test
Today, we have to give medical test . We reached tourist information center for that. All team members passed the test.
13th Jan : Shingra Yokma
It was first day of our trek. We were first batch of Chadar trek 2025. We needed to reach “tourist information centre” for flag off event. We were given refreshment of tea/coffee, samosa, cake, etc at tourist information centre. Then, we started our journey of around 2 hours to reach the starting point of the trek. We were dropped on the road. From there, we had to come down to the chadar or frozen river. Chadar was not properly formed . So , we were also walking on river bank whenever possible. After 1.5 km, we found a blocking point where chadar was not formed and it was not possible to cross river from sideways. So, we moved back and decided to continue the trek on road instead of using chadar . We climbed up to the road. It was steep trek up to the road. One of our team member had panic attack out of fear. We all walked on road to reach our first camp site, Shingra Yokma. We had soup in evening. We were assigned one tent for two members and given two sleeping bags per person. It was a beautiful moon night. After dinner, we talked outside for some time and enjoyed moon night.
14th Jan: Shingra Goma
We woke up early . Had tea and then breakfast. After packing up, we started again on road for around 1 km. Then we saw fully frozen river and came down on the chadar. View was amazing here. We saw one fully frozen waterfall. After 3-4 hours , we reached our next camp site, Shingra Goma.
15th Jan : Narek waterfall
Today, we left around 5 am to see Narek waterfall by bus. We had around 45 mins time to see the frozen waterfall. It was very beautiful waterfall. We returned back to our new camp site, Tsomo Paldar. In the evening, team members went to see Tsomo waterfall. I decided to stay at camp site as we will be again seeing the waterfall while going back tomorrow. In night, we enjoyed bon fire for 3-4 hours . It was moon light night with sound of Zanskar river. We were singing and enjoying the warmth of fire.
16th Jan: return from Tsomo Paldar
Today, we had to return back to our first campsite from Tsomo Paldar. And we decided to leave for Leh from there instead of staying at that site for night. We saw amazing views on our return trek. And finally reached our Bus to return to Leh. We reached Leh in evening and checked in to hotel “the Leh”. We went out for dinner to a famous cafe, “gupp shupp”.
17th Jan
Certificates were distrubuted to all team members. Some went out to see other places. I decided to relax today and edit the vlog for the trek.
18th Jan
Today, I had flight back to Bengaluru. I left Leh with many memories still floating around in my mind
Youtube vlog link : https://youtu.be/EM1xzNjn7XQ?feature=shared
More pics from trip
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