Wed, May 24: Leh – Tso Moriri, Ladakh, India

Today is a long drive through the mountains to Tso Moriri, one of Ladakh’s mountain lakes.  Much of the drive was at the bottom of a valley following a small river.  

At lunch time we stopped at a small roadside eatery. 

After lunch Tara and Mary walked over to see the Hot Springs.  We were able to see some of the hot water bubbling out of the ground and there were concrete channels for diverting the water into a small building.  The itinerary provided by the tour company to Tara indicated that one could take a soak in the Hot Springs.  However, the spa building consisted of only a couple of small rooms with medium size square holes in the concrete into which the water could be retained.  It didn’t look sanitary and was definitely not something the typical westerner would be interested in trying.

We arrived at Lake Tso Moriri mid-afternoon.  The lake was a beautiful as we had seen in pictures.  However, our hotel was a distance from the hotel, requiring quite a hike through cow pastures to get to.

Our hotel, the Lakeview Hotel, was represented to Tara as the best available in the area.  They had also told her that the rooms were heated.  It was very cold today, much of the hotel was under construction/renovation and the rooms did not have heat.  In fact, it was so cold that the water pipes had frozen and there was no running water in the hotel.  They indicated that they would provide us with buckets of water to use for flushing the toilets.  And hot water bottles to keep from freezing.

After discussions with the driver Tara offered us the opportunity to go back the Leh that day instead of overnighting in the hotel.  We jumped on it as both of us were freezing with little hope of thawing out while at the lake.  It was a long drive back but we were glad we to go back because by the time we had arrived in Leh Paul was quite ill.  That night Paul was up a lot in the bathroom on the toilet.  Glad we had running water!