Where Winter Footsteps Leave No Trace

By Sidonie Morel

Arriving in Leh when the air feels newly sharpened

The first breath at altitude

The airport doors open onto a cold that does not rush you, but it does set terms. In the first minutes, you notice how quickly moisture leaves the mouth. A sentence feels longer. The inside of your nose stings. In Leh in January, even the simplest actions—hoisting a bag, crossing a small patch of ice near the taxi stand—ask for a fraction more attention than they would elsewhere.

On the drive into town, the usual distractions are subdued: fewer honking spirals, fewer clusters of motorcycles, fewer quick detours. The road surface changes from bare tarmac to sections dusted with grit and snow, then back again where sunlight holds. The driver keeps his eyes on the shaded bends, where thin ice can persist long after the day has warmed. There is no drama in how he does it. It looks like routine, which is the first practical lesson of Walking Ladakh in Winter: skill is often quiet.

In the guesthouse room, heat arrives as a small, managed thing. A bukhari warms the nearest air first, leaving the corners cooler. You learn where to place your hands. You learn what dries overnight and what does not. A woollen cap becomes an indoor item, not an outdoor accessory. A bottle left near a window turns sluggish, the water thickening into something that pours slowly. None of this feels like hardship in itself; it feels like a set of adjustments that locals have already made, and that a visitor must make without complaint.

Streets half-asleep, mountains fully awake

In the morning, Leh moves at a different tempo. Metal shutters lift later. The first footsteps are not many, and each one sounds distinct on compacted snow. You can hear a broom scraping outside a shop, the rhythm steady, clearing a narrow path that will not stay clear for long. The sun hits a wall and warms it, and a few minutes later the warmth has travelled into the air just above the stones. People stand briefly in those warm patches, not lingering, simply taking what is offered.

Winter makes the town’s surfaces legible: the grain of old brick, the worn edges of steps, the tiny channels where meltwater ran and froze again. A stray dog lies in a strip of sunlight that is almost too precise to be accidental. A woman carries a small bundle of firewood on her back, her boots finding grip without any visible hurry. A boy kicks at a lump of ice until it breaks into cleaner pieces. In a season where everything is counted—water, fuel, daylight—wastefulness looks out of place.

A room warmed by a bukhari, a world narrowed to essentials

At the end of a walking day, the smallest domestic objects start to matter. A thermos with a reliable lid. A pair of socks that dry to the last seam. A scarf that does not hold too much damp. The cold reveals which things are well made and which are merely decorative. It also reveals your own habits: how often you reach for a phone, how quickly you decide you are tired, how easily you forget to drink when water is not instantly available.

In the evenings, you begin to notice the sound of heat: wood shifting, a faint hiss when a kettle begins to work, the soft click of a stove door closing. The air smells of smoke and tea. Outside, the temperature drops cleanly. Inside, the radius of comfort is small but sufficient. You can live within it. Many people do.

Snow as a language, not a postcard

The different whites: powder, crust, glare

Snow in Ladakh is not one thing. A fresh fall looks soft from a distance, but in town it becomes quickly mixed with dust, grit, and footsteps. On the outskirts, where the wind sweeps it, the surface can turn to a firm crust that cracks under weight. In sunny sections, it compacts and shines, a glare that makes you squint even under sunglasses. In shaded sections, it stays dull and hard, with a texture like old sugar. A route that looks simple from a rooftop becomes complex once you are on it.

It is here that the great winter narratives from elsewhere become useful—not as stories to imitate, but as a reminder of what matters. The polar travellers wrote about surface as information. On Ladakhi snow, you read the same way: where a boot sinks, where it holds, where yesterday’s melt has refrozen into a thin sheet. A short walk in the wrong shoes can become a lesson you feel for days.

Sound in winter: the loudest thing is often your own breathing

When the air is cold and dry, sound changes. The crunch of snow becomes sharper. A step on gravel carries farther. A jacket’s fabric makes a small rasp when you lift an arm. A prayer flag line snaps in the wind with a sound like cloth being shaken out. Often, the loudest regular sound is your own breath: inhalation, exhalation, and the slight pause you learn to allow at altitude so you do not turn each climb into a struggle.

In the quieter parts of Leh—near old walls, near poplar trees, near courtyards where footprints are few—you can hear household work: water being poured into a bucket, a ladle tapping the rim, a door closed carefully to keep heat in. Those sounds are not scenic details. They are evidence of the effort behind ordinary life in winter.

When visibility shrinks, time expands

There are days when a light snowfall blurs edges. The mountains retreat into a pale background. A familiar lane looks slightly unfamiliar when its landmarks—colourful signs, stacked stones, the exact shape of a puddle—are softened. You walk slower, not from romance, but from prudence. The world contracts. Small decisions take longer: which side of the street has better grip, whether that shaded patch is safe, whether you should turn back because the light is fading earlier than expected.

In these moments, the sense of time changes without requiring any explanation. It is simply how winter travel works. The hour stretches because every metre contains more information. You are not thinking about meaning; you are watching your feet and the line of the path ahead. The mood arrives on its own.

Walking days: small distances, full-bodied hours

The sun window

In summer, Ladakh invites long days. In winter, the day is still long enough to live well, but it is divided more strictly by light. The morning begins cold even in a warm room. Outside, shaded alleys hold last night’s freeze. You wait for the sun to reach the street you plan to take, and that waiting does not feel like laziness; it feels like local sense.

Walking Ladakh in Winter means building a day around the sun window: the hours when the surface is most reliable, when the air is warmed just enough to keep fingers functional, when the glare is still manageable. In Leh, you can move between neighbourhoods and know that the difference between sunlight and shade is not merely visual. It affects traction, temperature, and how quickly you tire. Shops understand this. So do drivers, schoolchildren, and the men who clear snow from steps with metal shovels.

Hands first, then feet

Cold teaches an order of priorities. Before you think about distance, you think about hands. Can you manage laces, buckles, zips, a bottle cap? Can you remove a glove for ten seconds without losing sensation? When you are outside all day, these are not trivial questions. The “practical” details are not separate from the day; they are the day’s structure.

At a small tea stall, the heat of a glass arrives first on the palms. The sweetness of tea—often with milk, sometimes with salt—lands on the tongue and makes the mouth feel less dry. A packet of biscuits crumbles in a predictable way. People stand close enough to the kettle to share heat without speaking. If you have walked in European winters, you recognise the same micro-routines, but the dryness here adds a different edge: lips crack faster, skin tightens, thirst hides behind cold.

The rhythm of stopping without calling it stopping

In winter, pauses are folded into movement. You stop to adjust a scarf before you feel uncomfortable. You stop because a narrow lane has a slick patch and you want to watch someone else cross it first. You stop because a dog is asleep in the only clear line of sunshine and you step around without waking it. These stops are small, but they keep the day intact.

There is also the stop that comes from caution: the moment you look at a shaded slope and decide it is not worth it today. The best winter travellers, in any landscape, do not treat turning back as failure. In Ladakh, you see this attitude everywhere, not in speeches but in behaviour. A shopkeeper will close early when the cold sharpens. A family will postpone a visit because a road is glazed. A guide will choose a safer line because the river ice has shifted overnight. The restraint is ordinary. That is what makes it convincing.

The river that becomes a road in Zanskar

Ice that sings and ice that warns

In Zanskar, the idea of a “road” becomes literal in winter when sections of river freeze into a passable surface. People speak of it without romance. It is a route, and like any route it depends on conditions. In some sections the ice is thick and opaque, with a matte surface that takes a boot well. In other sections it is thin, or layered, or newly formed after a cold night, and it answers weight with a sound that is not reassuring.

Those who know the river read it with the same seriousness that sailors read weather. They look at colour, at cracks, at the way the water moves under a transparent sheet. They listen. A crisp, high sound can mean one thing; a dull sound can mean another. Sometimes there is water on top, a shallow film that wetens the boot and then freezes at the edge of the sole. Sometimes there are loose stones and snow-covered ledges where the river is not safe to follow and you must climb briefly, then descend again.

If it doesn’t sound right, we step off. We don’t argue with ice.

Cliffs, shade, and the long blue hours

Walking beneath cliffs in winter shade, you feel how quickly warmth disappears. The sunlight can be visible on the far bank while you remain in cold shadow, the air noticeably heavier. In these sections, the pace changes. The body conserves heat. Conversation thins. The cold makes even a small snack feel significant because it gives you something to do with your hands.

It is easy, from photographs, to imagine this as a pure adventure. On the ground, it is closer to a workday. People carry loads. Packs are adjusted. A rope may be taken out and then put away. Someone tests a section ahead and returns with a simple shake of the head. You do not need large words to understand what that means. In the most respected polar accounts, there is a similar refusal of theatrics. What matters is the condition of the surface, the remaining daylight, and the state of the group.

Warmth borrowed from caves and kitchens

When you stop in a village, warmth arrives in layers. First, the absence of wind. Then, a room where people are already gathered. Then, tea, often offered with a straightforward generosity that does not require you to praise it. In winter, hospitality can feel less like a social performance and more like an accepted structure of survival.

You notice practical details: boots left near a wall but not too close to the stove, because direct heat can damage soles; a kettle kept moving; a small pile of firewood kept indoors so it stays dry. You notice how people sit: close enough to share warmth, far enough to work. In these rooms, the true subject of winter travel reveals itself. It is not the landscape alone. It is the human management of cold—quietly, repeatedly, without exaggeration.

Drass and the cold that has a reputation

Morning frost: eyelashes, scarf edges, the rim of a cup

In Drass, the cold is spoken of as if it were a known character. You feel it early, before the sun has had time to reach the valley floor. Frost forms on the edges of scarves. Breath leaves a faint dampness on fabric and then stiffens it. A metal spoon becomes quickly uncomfortable to hold. Even a cup of tea, held near the lips, sends a warm fog back onto your face and the moisture can freeze at the fringe of a moustache or along the edge of a woollen collar.

The day remains usable, though. People do what they always do: open shops, feed animals, send children to school. That ordinariness matters. It prevents the cold from turning into a myth. A man walking with a sack of flour does not look heroic. He looks busy. A woman sweeping snow away from a threshold looks annoyed at the inconvenience, not delighted by the scene. That is a better portrait of winter than any grand adjective.

Roads, soldiers, villages—different forms of endurance

Drass sits on a route that matters strategically, and you feel that in the presence of soldiers and the careful movement along roads. There are checkpoints, convoys, and the occasional interruption when traffic must yield. Yet the village life around it is not reduced to politics. It is made of fuel deliveries, of heating decisions, of careful walking on icy edges. A truck carrying supplies does not bring romantic adventure; it brings normality.

For a European reader, it can be tempting to frame this region only through geopolitics or extremes of temperature. The more honest story is narrower and more specific: how people keep routine in a place where routine is physically demanding for months. The endurance is not a singular act. It is repeated, daily, in small adjustments. That is the kind of endurance the great winter narratives capture best, whether in polar seas or mountain valleys.

What the body remembers after the day is done

At night, the body does not remember “views.” It remembers thawing. Toes that were numb in the afternoon begin to burn back into sensation. Cheeks sting near the stove. The skin on knuckles tightens and cracks. You wash quickly, because water is not casually abundant and because the room cools fast if you linger near a basin. You choose clothes for the next morning and place them where they will not become cold blocks. These are the details that stay, and they are the details that make Walking Ladakh in Winter legible as a lived experience rather than an idea.

Monasteries in winter: prayer as weather

Butter lamps and the smell of warmth

Inside a monastery in winter, the most immediate thing is often scent: butter lamps, incense, wool, and the faint smoke of a stove. Light is low and steady. Floors are cold, but rugs soften the contact. People move with a practiced economy, hands used to picking up objects without fumbling, because cold is a constant teacher of efficiency.

Visitors often expect spectacle. Winter offers something else: repetition. Lamps are trimmed. Cups are rinsed. A kettle is set on heat. A young monk adjusts a robe with a gesture that looks like any young person preparing for a day’s work. The ritual is not performed for an audience. It continues because it belongs to the season, like clearing snow or fetching water.

Chants that make time feel circular

The chant begins and does not insist on being interpreted. It fills the room like a stable background sound. Outside, winter time moves in straight lines—sunrise, the brief warm hours, the early fade. Inside, time folds back on itself through rhythm. The effect is observable: breathing slows, shoulders drop, hands stop fidgeting. Even if you do not share the faith, you can see what the practice does to bodies in a cold season.

In many of the finest mountain texts, there is a respect for this kind of rhythm: not the rhythm of conquering a summit, but the rhythm that allows people to continue. Here, the monastery does not “explain” winter. It offers a working response to it: warmth, order, and an interior schedule that remains steady when the outer world is harsh.

A quiet lesson in attention

It is difficult to pretend in winter. A person who is cold looks cold. A person who is tired moves differently. A person who is uncomfortable shifts. In the monastery, attention is directed not toward grand statements but toward small maintenance: keeping a flame alive, keeping a cup full, keeping a room orderly. The lesson, if it can be called that, is practical: the world becomes manageable when you care for small things consistently.

Kitchen truths: water, fuel, bread

Water as effort

In Ladakhi winter, water is never abstract. You see it carried in buckets, guarded in containers, thawed slowly, poured carefully. Pipes freeze. Taps go silent. A household’s day reorganises around fetching, melting, and storing. If you are staying in a home, you learn quickly not to ask for long hot showers. The request itself feels out of place, like asking for strawberries in snow.

There is an honesty in this. In many modern European homes, water and heat arrive invisibly, and our sense of their value becomes theoretical. Here, value is visible. A bucket of water is heavy. A jerrycan is awkward to grip with gloves. A kettle takes time. The pace is built into the infrastructure, or the lack of it. This is not a moral lesson; it is a fact of winter living in a cold desert.

The taste of heat: soup, tea, the first bite of something warm

Meals in winter do not arrive as performances. They arrive as repairs. Soup is served hot enough to fog glasses. Bread is warm or at least freshly heated, the crust firm, the interior soft. Butter tea appears repeatedly, not as a cultural “experience,” but because it does its job: calories, warmth, salt, steadiness. The spoon clinks against a bowl and the sound feels louder in a quiet room.

Fuel, too, is part of the taste. Wood smoke has a particular dryness. Kerosene has its own sharpness. Dung fuel carries an earthy note that a visitor notices immediately, and then stops noticing because it becomes part of the winter atmosphere, like wool or dust. In the best winter travel writing—whether in the Arctic or the Alps—the kitchen is never merely background. It is where cold becomes negotiable.

Evenings that gather people into one small radius

In the evening, rooms shrink. People sit closer, often on floor cushions or low seating, because heat collects lower and because social life becomes more practical when everyone shares warmth. A conversation begins, then pauses while someone feeds the stove. A child drifts toward the warmest spot and leans there without being told. A dog curls into a tighter circle. A visitor becomes aware of their own habits: how often they move, how much space they expect to occupy.

These are the moments that stay with you beyond any itinerary. They are also the moments that show why winter travel narratives endure. The cold is not only out on the trail. It is managed indoors, through routines that are both ordinary and impressive, and through a domestic knowledge that does not announce itself.

Companions on snow: guides, hosts, strangers

The ethics of walking together

In winter, the ethics of travel become visible quickly. Pace becomes kindness. A group that moves too fast in cold risks sweat, and sweat turns to chill. A group that pushes one member beyond comfort risks mistakes. The best guides in Ladakh do not frame this as philosophy. They frame it as safety. They ask simple questions: are your fingers working, is your water still liquid, do you need to adjust your layers now rather than later.

The same ethic appears among locals without ceremony. A man walking ahead slows without being asked because the shaded section is slick. A woman gestures briefly to a safer line across compacted snow. A shopkeeper offers a stool near the stove when they see you warming your hands too long at the door. None of these actions require a speech. They are the practical tenderness of winter.

Small exchanges that feel larger in cold air

In sub-zero air, small exchanges carry weight because they change your immediate condition. A spare glove is not a token; it is a way to keep fingers working. An extra cup of tea is not hospitality theatre; it is body heat. A brief warning—“ice here,” “shade there,” “wind later”—saves energy. The day stays smoother, and smoothness in winter is a form of success.

European readers often imagine winter travel as solitary and stoic. In Ladakh, winter travel is frequently communal, because conditions make cooperation sensible. Even when you walk alone, you do so within a web of knowledge: the guesthouse owner who tells you which lane is icy, the driver who advises against a certain road after snowfall, the neighbour who points toward sunlight. The journey is never entirely yours.

What is said without being said

There are also the things no one insists on. No one needs to tell you that winter is serious; the environment does that. No one needs to romanticise “hardship”; the routines are enough. No one needs to claim bravery; people simply do what they must. This restraint, seen across the world’s most respected winter accounts, is what gives their writing authority. In Ladakh, the same restraint is visible in daily life. You notice it and, if you are attentive, you adopt it.

Leaving: the white stays in the body

Back to noise, back to abundance

When you leave Ladakh after a winter stay, the first thing that feels unfamiliar is abundance: heated corridors, running water, shops overflowing with fruit out of season. The body has adapted to a narrower range of comforts. You have learned to accept a smaller circle of warmth, a shorter daylight plan, a slower pace of movement over uncertain surfaces. Returning to ease can feel less like relief than like an overload of options.

Yet the memory of Walking Ladakh in Winter is not held as a set of triumphs. It returns as small, durable facts: the feel of dry cold on skin; the sound of a shovel on stone; the careful placement of boots by a stove; the way sunlight behaves on a wall at 3,500 metres; the taste of tea that arrives when you are quiet enough to accept it without commentary.

What the season keeps teaching, quietly

Winter in Ladakh does not demand that you turn it into a story about yourself. It offers an older story instead: how people live in a high desert when water and heat must be worked for, when travel depends on ice and light, when the margin for error is thin. If you pay attention, you leave with an altered sense of what “practical” means. Practical is not a checklist; it is a way of moving and a way of caring for small things so that larger things remain possible.

The last image is not a panorama

Often, the last memory is not a wide view at all. It is a kettle beginning to sound in a quiet room. It is steam rising and vanishing quickly in cold air near a doorway. It is the grit of snow under a boot on an unremarkable lane. It is a hand on a stove door, closing it gently to keep warmth in. Then the door closes, the room holds its heat, and the day continues without needing to explain itself.