Our Trip To India: Days 22-23 Tso Moriri and the Tibetan Himalayas

"Fresh" from our 7 hour trek from Spituk to Stok we got in our jeep headed for Tso Moriri, a mountain lake in Southeastern Jammu and Kashmir. Of course, our guide told us that the trek was only going to be 2-3 hours so by this point we had no water, no food, nothing. Exhausted and starving - we made the long ride to Tso Moriri near the border of Tibet/China.

Tso Moriri is described by the Lonely Planet as a place so remote - the marmots outnumber the people 50:1. The lake is one of the highest lakes in the world, in the middle of the mountains and Tibetan desert - about 15,000 feet above sea level. The nomadic Khampa peoples live here, as do wild ass and black necked cranes, and is considered a wildlife treasure.

A funny message from the Tso Moriri "Tourist Welcome Association". These road-side messages were funny and everywhere. Terrible translations probably, and almost all designed to encourage people to slow down. My favorite was "Better to be Mr. Late than Late Mr."

We arrived at about midnight and Lauren and I were already regretting that we hadn't brought our camp cooking gear (we only had our tents). We had no idea what we'd eat or where we'd eat it. We had bought three large packs of cashew nuts and several ramen noodle bowls, thinking that if worse came to worse, we'd snack on these, beg/borrow for boiled water, and then return to Leh early. Fortunately we found this "general store" in a hut next to the lake - perhaps half for foreign tourists and half for locals. It was like a dream come true. We enjoyed lots of time here with the locals and drinking tea and eating the hearty Tibetan cuisine.

Unsure of where to actually put up our tents - especially at Midnight - we found some locals who were willing to let us stay in their homestay, who turned out to be young Tibetan Monks. The accommodations, while spare, were fantastic and turned out to have unbelievable lake views.

We don't have any good close lake pictures because when we walked up to the lake and were taking pictures we were almost immediately covered (literally covered) in flies. Over 200 flies on each of us. Fortunately they didn't sting, but I think we were there right at breeding season and the moment we were about 100 feet from the lakeshore, we all of a sudden had flies all over us. No matter - the views were great anyway and the mountain settlement where we stayed was fabulous.

Our homestay...