The new Leh-Zanskar highway will open access to the Zanskar Valley in Ladakh in India.

The evening sun sets the fields of the village of Yugar on fire, and my husband and I wash the day’s dirt from our faces in a glacial stream. The journey to this remote corner of the Zanskar Valley in Ladakh, at an altitude of 3,900 meters on the Tibetan Plateau in northern India, was one of the most difficult of my life. But that moment, watching the sun disappear behind the 12th-century Phugtal Monastery clinging to the opposite cliff, was worth it.

The fact that Zanskar is one of the most inaccessible valleys on Earth is one of its main attractions. In its more remote corners, intrepid travelers can still witness life as it was a century ago. This afternoon we were transported back in time as we watched yak milked for tea, manure piled on mud brick houses to be burned in the winter when temperatures can drop to minus 40 degrees, and locals use scythes to harvest buckwheat and barley. and other crops that have been grown in this region for centuries.

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