Trek Day 1- Stok Village to Base Stok La

With a lot of enthusiasm, Somak ready to scale the heights..

We enter a little portion of the Hemis National Park, expecting to spot some of the rare species..

The initial gradual climb of day one, along the wide river valley..

sky's playing hide and seek with us, at times as blue as it could be

even along the gradual climb on day one, there are portions where the climb gets a bit scary and path gets really narrow. More than climbing up, getting down was a challenge..very steep and lot of debris, making it even more slippery.

Wondering why the unusual steep, narrow and challenging sections along a gradual climb. Remember the flash floods 2010? These floods had actually washed off the gradual path that use to take one along the river. Presume one more flash flood and these difficult sections would simply pile on..

check out the top of the hill, the relics of past. apparently a castle, which was turned into a temple and further down the ages then abandoned. Tenzing says one of the rulers of Leh use to stay up here, but soon he realized that during winters no one visited him and life became difficult. He finally had to give up and move down to the main town..

the ever changing scenario! every turn presents a new picture..

ahhaa.. yet another challenging section.. they were fun to cross to be honest..

Remember the wild chicken that I was talking about? and Tenzing running after it? Here's the baby chick he got hold off.. Damn cute isn't it! Its called the "Chukar"

Soon came the steeper half of the trek. Being the first day of trek, we really felt the altitude. Had little problem not much..

We got hold of a rhythm and never looked back.. slowly steadily kept walking the walk...

Watch up there Mr Tenzing waiting for us. Exactly at this point of the time, I asked him how far was the Camp. "2 hours more," back he answers..To get us frustrated.

and the camp was just over the next turn...

It rained for a while, after we reached camp. In the mean time, we changed to warmer clothes, had snacks and headed straight to the ridge above our camp to get the better view..

a herd of Ladakhi Goats heading back home in evening...

You see down there in Leh.. it was sunny...and heck it was cloudy, overcast and windy at our campsite.. Damn luck..

Thats the route we took to reach up to the camp site...

Campsite from up where we were..