Trekking in style in India's Himalayas

LADAKH, India — Five friends started an 18-day trek across 12 mountains in the Himalayas in northern India.

One was forced to quit because of altitude sickness in the first week. Another gave up days later and left without telling anyone, sparking a 24-hour search. The three of us who made it got lost and were tracked by our footprints.

"This has to have been the hardest physical day of my life. I was near to tears with exhaustion, fear and stress," I scribbled in my diary after a 13-hour hike, much of it in the grip of altitude sickness, which upended my sense of balance, sapped my energy and confidence, and left me stumbling with a pounding headache and tingling hands along cliff-face paths that seemed to sway underfoot.

But it wasn't all pain. My altitude woes quickly disappeared as I acclimatized, and we dragged so many luxuries into the Himalayan mountains that we were usually too busy being pampered to worry about discomforts.

Ladakh treks

Getting around

Traveling with 10 mules and a staff of eight is a wonderful way to explore Ladakh, but some people do it with less. A few do it unaided, carrying their equipment and navigating themselves (though it is difficult to get accurate, detailed maps). The area can also be explored on horseback or on mountain bikes.

Costs

Our 18-day hike from Henasku in northern Ladakh to Serchu cost $1,500 per person, which included all food and equipment, as well as an additional five nights in top hotels in Leh and New Delhi. A New Delhi-Leh return air ticket costs an additional $250. Various companies, including U.S., British and Indian ones, offer Ladakh treks. We went with New Delhi-based Snow Leopard Trails, www.indiamart.com/snowleopard U.S. adventure-travel companies also offer Ladakh treks, including Journeys International.)

When to go

Ladakh's hiking season is July through September.

More information

Government of India Tourism Office (in Los Angeles), 213-380-8855 or www.incredibleindia.org

Ten mules carried our mountains of gear: tents for sleeping, dining, cooking and even washing; tables and chairs; bottles of whiskey; trunks of tinned and fresh food — even a silver tray to serve it on.

A staff of eight waited on us round the clock. "More tea, please" ... "May I get some hot water for washing?," we'd call out, and within minutes our fancy would be fulfilled.

Our hiking party with its long caravan of mules and staff looked more like a major expedition to discover new lands than a boys' adventure. In India, traveling in style is relatively affordable, and, of course, fun.

The five of us — in our late 20s and 30s — were all friends, living in Bangkok: a Sri Lankan, two Britons, an Indian and myself, a New Zealander.

We wanted the hike to challenge us physically, but also hoped the silence and grandeur of the mountains would knead our frazzled and cluttered minds into a more meditative state.

We chose to hike in Ladakh, part of India's Himalayan region. It's part of Kashmir, which has been wracked by rebellion for 16 years, but it's far from the fighting and has become increasingly popular with foreign tourists, attracted by the multihued, moonscape-like mountains.

A typical day on the hike would start with the cook's assistant, 35-year-old Sonam Norgies, who trekked in canvas sneakers with holes in the toes, gently slapping our tents to wake us and give us warm water for washing and tea. Bleary-eyed, we'd stumble down to the dining tent, the table laden with porridge, muesli, eggs, baked beans, freshly baked bread and coffee.

Then, while the staff cleaned, packed up and loaded the mules, our 25-year-old guide, Stanzin Mutup, who was always on the lookout for wandering female yak shepherds to chat up, would point us in the right direction and we'd start walking, a small pack on each of our backs with water, a lunch box, camera and jacket.

The paths were usually easy to follow, though on occasion we did find ourselves scrambling along animal trails on mountainsides or crisscrossing rivers as we sought to descend a valley. The mountaintop passes were well-marked with Buddhist shrines and strings of flags, which according to local beliefs release prayers for whoever placed them there each time they flutter in the wind.

Normally, we'd stop walking by about 4 p.m., the camp usually already set up, tea brewing and Indian pakoras or some other snack splattering away in an oil-filled pan. As the sun set, we'd move into the dining tent to play cards and sip whiskey until dinner was served.

Despite all the luxuries and our battalion of aides, the trek still felt like an edgy adventure — though this may have been partly due to all our mishaps.

One morning, we walked ahead of our guide and mistakenly hiked up the wrong valley. We realized we were lost when the track petered out, but we figured we were still heading toward our planned campsite.

By late afternoon, just as we started wondering how cold the Himalayan night would be without sleeping bags and tents, we noticed our camp helper standing by our side, a smile on his face.

"I tracked you by following your footprints," Namgail Dorjay said. "I saw where you'd had lunch by the dropped eggshells."

An earlier effort, though, to track one of my fellow hikers ended differently. Tony, a British management consultant, disappeared the day we crossed the only road in the area. He'd started the morning walking alone while the rest of us went on ahead. By nightfall, he hadn't arrived at camp. Four of the staff went out looking for him. By dawn, they'd found no sign except for a white scarf of his stuffed under a rock.

Eventually the searchers descended to a tiny village at the base of a mountain we'd climbed and learned that Tony had returned the previous afternoon and hopped on a bus to Leh, the main town in Ladakh. He'd left a note with a villager, telling us he'd decided to leave.

Tony's departure dropped the number in our party down to three. First to quit had been Mafaz, the Sri Lankan, who was unable to acclimatize to the high altitude, which peaked at 19,000 feet. His heart would race at 140 beats per minute even while walking on a flat track. He hired a horse to ride, but on day three, he started a slow two-day ride to the nearest road and then made his way home.

Local life

While resting outside one village, a dozen children, their cheeks rosy from the cold, sang us songs and danced before raiding nearby fields to pick us handfuls of peas. We returned the gesture, singing songs from "The Sound of Music," and gave them toffees.

Another friendly face on the trek was a burgundy-robed, black-booted monk, Sonim Stensing, who had a perennial grin even though he was carrying a 10-foot-long log to a monastery to build a house. We shared our lunch, introducing him to little triangles of processed cheese and M&M chocolates. He showed us shortcuts through the mountains. We were lucky, though, not to follow him on one of his routes, which required rock-climbing and had the religious devotee clinging to a cliff with his fingertips while his log slipped from his grasp and fell to the valley floor far below.

By the end of the hike, we were glad to return to civilization. Eighteen days is a long time to spend "roughing it" in mountains, in the constant company of the same people. I'd begun to crave fast food and hot showers. I returned to Bangkok, if not rested at least much calmer.