Day 12 – June 23 – The drive to Honupatta

The first day of the next part of our trek was devoted to getting to the trailhead at Honupatta. Although it was only a bit over a hundred kilometers, the roads were very bad and took almost six hours.

There was a lot of water. Recent warm days had caused the snow to melt, and every river was close to flood stage. The Indus, normally a large, sedate river became a muddy torrent when the Zanskar river joined it.



Along the way we stopped at a garden restaurant where a high lama was also eating. Seated under a yellow canopy, the lama had to interrupt his lunch repeatedly to bless a series of locals. He didn't seem to mind.

Because of the spectacular canyon scenery, many people start this trek in Lamayuru and walk two days up the road that was recently punched part of the way into the mountains. That would have been nice, but we were now on a tight schedule to get to our plane flights. By visiting both days of the Hemis festival, we limited the rest of our trip to 18 days, which was just enough if we cut off these days by driving as far up as we could. So we enjoyed the canyons from the windows of our taxi.



Even the small stream where we camped was a large flood rushing down the mountain. During the night, we could hear rocks rolling like bowling balls in the stream.

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