Hundar - Retracing the Silk Route

From Diskit is a sand dunes and boulder-strewn route that took me to Hunder. At one point in Hundar, there is a roadblock for tourists with a sign explicitly stating "No Visitors Permitted Beyond this Point." Only locals and military vehicles are allowed to pass beyond that which is the way to the Line of Control (the glacier that India and Pakistan have been sadly fighting over for several decades).

The main attraction here is the domesticated Bactrian camels found among the sand dunes of the Hundar Village. The Bactrian camel has two humps on its back, in contrast to the Dromedary which has one. The wild variety of Bactrian are apparently found only in Northwest China and Mongolia otherwise.

I went on a short camel safari for about 30 minutes - short, since a mild dust storm began and therefore, it was not very comfortable to continue. By the time I finished the safari and headed back to Diskit, the road looked like this:

The Hundar valley was originally part of the trading Silk Route and these camels were used in earlier days as means of transport on that Road. The villages in the Nubra Valley that I explored in the jeep safari are the ones that fall along on the ancient Silk Route to Central Asia with Panamik being the last halt for the caravans before they crossed the high Karakoram passes.

I found cattle grazing in the broad expanse of the valley. I stopped by to take a few shots of a herd of sheep and goats grazing happily in the sand dune valley against the brown mountain backdrop. It was an enchanting scene.

I came across more military personnel here. There was particulary one I chatted with who hailed from Kerala and his Bengali wife and two daughters travelled from West Bengal to visit him. It was a family reunion for them in the Hundar Village of the Nubra valley of the Himalayas!