30th July 2018
I ran back from Karsha to meet Peter and met him around 10 am as he got a hitchhike from Zangla to catch up with me. Its been two years since I met him after the Himalayan cycling in 2016. It took a while to get money from the atm to be self-sufficient for next 21 days of the journey and Padum was the only place with a functional ATM.
We walked 10km from Padum initially and decided to take a tractor ride as the road to Ichar was not interesting. The tractor guy had to take a detour so he dropped us few kilometers later. Then we kept on walking for a while until we got a ride to iChar.
We saw the majestic Bardon gompa and enjoyed the calmness of the place. It was a beautiful monastery, so calm and tranquil inside with old paintings that require restoration.
We saw a lot of monasteries on the way and finally were at iChar.
We had some aloo paratha that I packed and we ate under a tree next to a waterfall. We noticed the locals were renovating their houses with proper insulation.
From there we started walking towards phuktal, always walking on the left side of the valley. We crossed several villages before reaching Cha.
Just before Cha, we had tea and maggi, we climbed to cha and reached around 8.
Before Cha, we were thinking on how to go to the other side of the valley, just in case then we noticed a long rope bridge below.
We met a French couple from Toulouse who had planned their expedition style trekking in Zanskar. They said, they have been coming for the past 3 years to Zanskar exploring the regions. There was a wedding preparation for going to the village, so the whole village was a bit occupied by it.
We wanted to see if we were able to get some local food and there was this lovely lady who cooked us rice with different vegetables, and of course with a lot of tea. The house looked traditional and beautiful and the lady wanted me to eat more. The warmest hospitality can be found in the most remote corners of our planet. Later we went out to camp under the starlight sky.
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