Travellers’ health is the topic of an annual report prepared by the World Health Organisation (WHO), available at www.who.int/ith. Information for travellers to India can also be found at www.cdc.gov (go to Travellers’ Health, Destinations and then choose India). Read up on the subject before the trip, consult your doctor, discuss the medicines you need to take with you, and receive proper vaccinations. You should also visit your dentist, to make sure your teeth are in good condition.
A useful book to take with you is Pocket First Aid and Wilderness Medicine by Drs Jim Duff and Peter Gormly (Cicerone 2012).
Visas and permits
Unless you are a citizen of Nepal or Bhutan, you will probably need a visa to go to India. If you can, you should apply for it in your home country. You can find contact information for Indian embassies at The National Portal of India website at www.india.gov.in. Usually the tourist visa is valid for six months (90 days in some countries) from the date of issue and it cannot usually be extended. Recently a rather strange rule has been introduced, insisting that visitors who leave India, despite having a six-month visa, cannot re-enter the country for at least two months.
No extra permits are necessary to enter Ladakh, but access to some parts of the region is limited or restricted. The latter refers to areas near the disputed borders with China and Pakistan. For some areas (Nubra Valley, Tso-Moriri Lake), permits are needed, and are easy to obtain in most of the tourist agencies in Leh. No permits are needed for any of the trekking routes described in this guidebook.
Money, insurance and dealing with emergencies
Pounds sterling, euros and US dollars are easily exchanged for Indian currency in official places like banks as well as in private exchange offices. Changing other major currencies is usually possible too. The rates vary, so check in a few places first. Changing in small offices is usually easier, much less bureaucratic and faster than in banks. Exchange offices may be closed on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.
EXCHANGE RATES
As exchange rates are subject to change, and have been particularly variable in recent years, it is strongly recommended that you keep an eye on them before your journey. The following list gives an indication of current rates but see the Reserve Bank of India website at www.rbi.org.in for the most up-to-date details.
£1 Rs99
€1 Rs70
$1 Rs64
Visa and Mastercard debit and credit cards are accepted by most ATMs, operated by local banks such as the State Bank of India, or the Punjab National Bank. Other international banks like Citibank, Deutsche Bank and ABN Amro are found in the bigger cities. There are at least two ATMs in Leh, but none in Padum or Kargil.
Card payments are not popular. International money transfer service via agencies like Western Union is available both in Delhi and in Leh. Travellers’ cheques, mainly American Express/Thomas Cook, are accepted in the cities. It is wise to have at least two different ways of accessing money during the trip.
If you stay in budget guesthouses, eat in simple restaurants and bars, and travel overland by public transport, an allowance of £12.50 per day should be sufficient. If your budget is very tight, you might get away with around £8 per day. Hiring a horseman with animals to carry your equipment on the trek, or an agent to arrange the trek for you, will increase the cost (see below).
The kitchen of a typical Ladakhi house
The amount of money you will need depends on the mode of trek chosen. If you sleep in your own tent and carry your own equipment, you will only need money for campsite fees in some places (around Rs150–200 per tent), for transport to and from the starting and finishing point, and for snacks in teashops and restaurants on the way. Home accommodation (homestay) costs range between Rs250 and Rs500 per person per night. Food is included (dinner and breakfast; sometimes a take-away lunch too). It is always wise to have some extra money in cash, just in case. Credit and debit cards are useless anywhere outside Leh, and foreign exchange is hard to arrange outside the Ladakhi capital too. Try to have small change, because Rs1000 notes will not be accepted in many places and even Rs500 notes may sometimes cause a problem.
Note that in the last two years inflation (6–10 per cent annually) has had a notable impact on prices in India, so you should consider this when planning your budget.
The cost of getting to India, and travel insurance, also need to be considered. Your insurance should cover not only hospital treatment but also emergency evacuation costs. There is no mountain rescue service organisation in Ladakh. A seriously injured person would need to be transported to the hospital in Leh by Indian Army helicopter, but it will not take off unless your insurance has been confirmed. If trekking independently you will depend on yourself, villagers and their animals, and other trekkers, in case of emergency. If going on an organised trek leave your insurance details at your agent’s office and discuss emergency scenarios there.
Mountain emergency operation is not usually covered by travel insurance, but most agents offer an extension of the standard package for an additional fee. Good insurance covering the costs of a rescue operation in the mountains is often combined with membership of a mountain club, such as the British Mountaineering Council (www.thebmc.co.uk) or the Oesterreichischer Alpenverein (Austrian Alpine Association). The latter has a few branches in other European countries: see www.alpenverein.at, www.aacuk.org.uk, www.alpenverein.com.pl and www.alpenverein.cz. For other countries, please check with your local mountaineering organisation; and make sure that the necessary insurance cover is in place before leaving home.
Communication
In most of India, the Internet is widely accessible. There are hundreds of Internet cafés in Delhi and dozens in Leh. However, there is no Internet access along the trekking routes and you can’t even rely on connecting to the net in Padum. Fees are generally low (Rs15–90 per hour), but in Leh they are much higher than elsewhere. Downloading photos from a camera or a memory card, and burning DVDs, is possible in almost every café, but watch out for computer viruses – it is quite common to lose the data from a card! Choose computers with anti-virus software installed. If you lose important data, stop using the card and try to restore the data using disk-recovery software when you get home. Skype is available in most cafés, but some of them charge extra for voice conversations.
A young monk at Thikse Gompa, near Leh
Foreign SIM cards generally work in Delhi, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh but some do not enable you to make calls (you can receive calls and send/receive SMS messages). In the State of Jammu and Kashmir not only are foreign cards not accepted by the system, but neither do prepaid cards from all other Indian states work. To use your mobile phone in Ladakh you either need a contract phone from another Indian state (certainly not all of them will work) or a SIM card from one of the J&K state networks. The latter is not easy to arrange, even for a prepaid card.
There are two networks operating in Ladakh: BSNL (www.bsnl.in) and Airtel (www.airtel.in). The latter is said