Zishaan Hayath Ride: Zanskar

Route Map

Zanskar was the last big Himalayan valley to get a road out both ends. For decades Padum hung off one rough line over Pensi La. In winter the only way out was the Chadar — nine days walking down the frozen Zanskar river. There are two roads out now. The BRO finished the gorge highway in 2024. The older one is the trek line over Singge La, bulldozed into a road a few years before that. This trip goes in by the oldest road and comes out over the top. The gorge highway will still be there in ten years, tarred and busy. The Singge La road is at its best right now.

The way in may be worth the trip by itself. The Suru runs green under Nun and Kun, and the Parkachik glacier comes down almost to the road. Then the valley empties. Rangdum sits alone on its plain, a day from anywhere — a monastery, a few houses, nothing else in any direction. Over Pensi La the Drang-Drung bends away below the road like a question mark.

Padum gets three nights, and they are not rest days. The monasteries sit all around — Karsha stacked up its hillside, Stongdey above the valley, Zangla with its old palace, Sani on the flat, one of the oldest in Ladakh. A day on the bike covers them.

The second day is Phugtal, and Phugtal is the point of the whole ride. A twelfth-century monastery built out of a cave mouth in a cliff above the Tsarap, honeycombed down the rock face. The road ends near Anmo. The last stretch is a walk, two to three hours each way along the river. Nobody has found a way to see it from a saddle. Leave the bike and walk.

Then the exit, which is the riding the whole trip points at. From Zangla the road crosses the river and climbs past Nyerak to Lingshed. For centuries the village was a week's walk from anywhere. Now it is a night's halt at the roadhead. On the climb the road looks down into the canyon the Chadar walkers used — the nine days of ice go by below in a morning. Then over the top: Singge La, the Lion Pass, 5050 m. Down to Photoksar, hanging on its hillside. Everyone who has walked this trail calls it the prettiest village on it. Sirsir La next, and the long fall through the gorges to Wanla. Two hundred and ten kilometres from Padum to Lamayuru, perhaps fifty of them tarred. Will the water crossings allow it? The first one will answer. The ride ends in the moonland, at a monastery that was old when the Cholas were building. The last day home is plain highway.

Day	Route	Distance	Highlights	Night stay
01	Srinagar → Sonamarg → Zoji La → Drass → Kargil	205 km 6 h	Out of the valley over Zoji La, the lowest pass on the trip and the most dramatic — a mud shelf hung over the Sindh gorge. Drass war memorial under Tiger Hill, then down the Suru to Kargil	Kargil
02	Kargil → Sankoo → Panikhar → Parkachik → Rangdum	130 km 4.5 h	Up the Suru as it turns from orchards to ice — Nun and Kun rise ahead from Panikhar, and the Parkachik glacier comes down almost to the road. Rangdum by evening, alone on its plain	Rangdum
03	Rangdum → Pensi La → Drang-Drung glacier → Padum	110 km 4 h	Rangdum monastery at first light, then Pensi La at 4400 m, the twin lakes on the pass, and the long S-bend of the Drang-Drung below the road. Down the Stod valley into Padum, capital of Zanskar at a few thousand people	Padum
04	The Padum circuit — Sani, Karsha, Stongdey, Zangla	70 km local	The monasteries of the central valley: Sani's ancient chorten on the flat, Karsha climbing its hillside, Stongdey's views over the whole of Zanskar, and the old palace at Zangla — ending back under Karsha for the last light	Padum
05	Padum → Anmo, then Phugtal on foot	130 km + 5 h walk	Ride up the Tsarap past Bardan Gompa on its river crag to the roadhead past Anmo, then walk the river trail to Phugtal Gompa in its cave — two to three hours each way. Butter tea at the top if the monks are pouring	Padum
06	Padum → Zangla → Nyerak → Lingshed	100 km 6.5 h	Off the tarmac at Zangla and onto the trek line — across the Zanskar and up past Nyerak, with the Chadar gorge falling away below the road. Lingshed by late afternoon: a monastery, a scatter of houses, and a horizon that took a week to reach until the road came	Lingshed
07	Lingshed → Singge La → Photoksar → Sirsir La → Wanla → Lamayuru	110 km 6 h	The Lion Pass at 5050 m first thing, then Photoksar on its hillside for lunch, Sirsir La, and the long gorge run down to Wanla. Into the moonland at Lamayuru by evening light, which is when it does its trick	Lamayuru
08	Lamayuru → Fotu La → Mulbekh → Kargil → Zoji La → Srinagar	320 km 8 h	The long run home on the highway — Fotu La and Namika La, the eight-metre Maitreya cut into the rock at Mulbekh, Zoji La ridden the other way, and the green of Kashmir arriving all at once below Sonamarg. Wazwan in Srinagar as the last act	Srinagar

Notes

The rental is the open question, and it needs settling before anything is booked. Since the UT split, bikes rented in Srinagar are widely reported as restricted to the Kashmir division — and Kargil, the Suru and all of Zanskar are Ladakh. The failure mode is being turned back at the Drass checkpost on day one. Confirm in writing with the rental shop that the bike can enter Ladakh; if it cannot, the clean alternatives are riding one's own bike to Srinagar, or renting on LA plates in Leh and running the loop from the other end — the roads are the same, only the bookends move.

The Singge La leg is the crux, and it is honest work: 210 km from Padum to Lamayuru of which perhaps fifty are tarred, with water crossings, no fuel, no mechanic, and long stretches of no phone signal. The crossings swell with meltwater through the day, so both dirt days start at first light. This is not a road to ride in rain, and it is the first on the trip to close with snow — if the weather turns at Lingshed, waiting a day beats pushing over the top.

Zoji La runs to timings — the pass has one-way windows and cut-off hours that change with the season and the state of the road. Check them in Srinagar the evening before, both ways. The tunnel under it will make this paragraph obsolete, but not yet.

Fuel: pumps at Kargil and Padum, and nothing on the mountain in between — nothing at Rangdum, nothing between Padum and the highway. Fill to the brim at Padum on day 6 and carry five litres; the next certain pump is Kargil, 320 km and two passes later.

The Ladakh Environment and Development Fee applies here as everywhere in the UT — paid online at lahdclehpermit.in, about Rs 600 for the trip, receipt printed and carried. Indian citizens need nothing else; foreign nationals still need a Protected Area Permit through a Leh agent.

Lingshed and Photoksar sleep in homestays, and the beds are few — Lingshed has a handful and Photoksar fewer. Arrive by late afternoon, carry cash, and expect dal, rice and the best silence money can buy. Rangdum is the same arrangement. Phugtal itself has a monastery guesthouse below the cave, for anyone tempted to make day 5 an overnight — which is the version of this trip with the best story in it.

Two things worth a spare half-day. Dzongkhul, up the Ating side valley off the Pensi La road, is the other cave gompa — built around the caves where Naropa is said to have meditated, the same cliff-and-cave idea as Phugtal at a fraction of the fame. And if a ninth day ever finds its way into this trip, it belongs at Rangdum: golden hour on the Drang-Drung from Pensi La, Nun and Kun going pink over the plain, and the monastery with the day-trippers gone. Everyone sleeps at Rangdum; almost nobody stays.

August is the flash-flood month on this side — the Suru moves rock when it rains hard upstream, and the Singge La crossings run deepest. June-July and September are the steadier windows, and September adds the barley harvest turning the Padum plain gold.