The sun rises at  4 am here and the white tent is alight as I sit snug on the bed typing this. We drove from Leh to Hunder in Nubra Valley yesterday. The climb to Khardung La, the top of the world is over narrow roads twisting and turning over the mountains and we sat with our hearts in our mouths as the Tempo traveller [TT] slowly made its way up. We were actually climbing the snow covered peaks we had seen from far. What had looked like Choco chips with snow scattered here and there were near at hand literally. People were stopping to feel the ice/snow and some where climbing the glaciers that were sitting on the ground.  They gave a different take to the adage "sitting ducks". The ice when picked up congealed into a balls that reminded me of the "ice krot", the sweetened ice balls that were  sold in front of our schools.  Never having seen these kind of views I was taking pictures a dime a dozen, afraid I would lose that memory and would need to look them up to relive them. Icicles had formed on some rocks, some ice scattered on the ground looked like fungus while a bucket like formation stood leaking. Today we imagined forms in ice.

At one point the range of snow topped peaks were below us. We were on top of the world literally and figuratively.

The cafe on the top was crammed with visitors and we joined them for our doze of Khewa that is my current favourite. The tour operator walked around like a worried mother hen and drove us back to the TT quickly. He was worried we would all catch a severe headache at that altitude. The climb down was peppered with the same scenes but the roads seemed wider and we flopped on our seats and enjoyed them more freely. Another "sitting duck" glacier was crawling with tourists. Suddenly someone caught sight of a Yak and now 12 pairs of eyes scanned the mountains for them and we were rewarded by groups of them here and there.

Slowly the mountains drew away from us and we descended into a valley and were amazed to see white sand dunes ruffled  by the winds. The mountains have been slowly ground to sand by water and wind over millions of years. The dunes were almost white.  Then the hunt for our camp began with Google and guided by GPS we drove around the small place admiring the pink and yellow flowered trees. The pink flowers had taken over, colonized the Tree completely and natives, the leafs had fled. There was not a single leaf standing. The yellow colour on another tree was striking, we had never seen it before.  And we saw our first Apricot tree. As we stood there debating if it was a Badam tree the locals smilingly corrected us. We met a  group of youngsters a little later and a girl smiled a Namaste at us and when I replied Hi, she was so delighted. What a welcoming local.

                                                   Mornings are for prayers

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