Trying to outrun the algorithm on the Roof of the World

I stand an hour away from the Siachen glacier, with China and Pakistan just around the corner. I’m looking up a looming cliff dripping in light that seems to have set off the ochre stones in a golden blaze. There are snowcapped peaks behind me and I’m toe-deep in a sand dune. The surreality only gets more bizarre as I stare at a petroglyph dating back centuries of a hunt so distinct I can hear hooves and shouts in the distance. I am in Ladakh. My short travel through its lands is taking me through the original Silk Route, and I see a Ladakh very few have access to. Until now.

Last autumn, in 2025, Lchang Nang - The House of Trees started curating a three-night journey that revives the rhythm of the Silk Route. The project is the vision of owner Rigzin Wangtak Kalon, brought to life with research and curation by Shaurya Shukla’s The HeartCraft Project, whose work in sustainable hospitality has shaped some of the region’s most thoughtful experiences. It is a route that avoids Ladakh’s tourist checklist. There’s no cafe-hopping. No monastery visits. No “top 10 viewpoints”. Instead, it moves through villages where caravans once paused, where the past is not performance but memory, some of it still alive and part of daily life.

At the heart of this journey is Acho Rigzin Wangdus, part guide, part historian, and complete storyteller. A lifelong resident of Nubra, he seems to know everyone along the trail: the monks who brew butter tea at dawn, the farmers beating back aggressively unruly seabuckthorn bushes from the roadside, the children who wave from rooftops. He is one of Ladakh’s foremost authorities on its terrain, culture and lore, and “guide” feels far too small a word. There’s a moment on the road from Sumur to Panamik when phone signals drop out completely. One minute WhatsApp loads. The next, it doesn’t. And it’s Wangdus’s voice that keeps going.

I can see the shutters of the region’s first ‘shop’. I can hear the rush of water in the river nearby as it freezes and melts. I’m seeing the exact horizon and scene that a Mongolian saw 500 years ago. I’m as hungry as him, and I’m about to consume the exact same bread, churned butter, and beer as him in 15 minutes. It feels unreal, except that’s very, very IRL. It’s not been recommended on an any reel I’ve saved, probably because it’s impossible to capture the stories that pour out prompted only by a change in the breeze or a placement of the stars: “Did you know this shift in breeze was a sign for the caravans to take a break? And that pattern of stars you’re seeing up there? That would be the map the caravans followed, knowing civilisation was now just a sunrise away.”

Long before modern borders carved these mountains into guarded corners, Nubra sat on one of the most vital arteries of the ancient Silk Route. From roughly the 2nd century BCE, traders from Yarkand and Kashgar crossed the Karakoram Pass into Ladakh, linking Central Asia to India, Tibet, and Persia. By the 7th to 14th centuries CE, the route was at its peak, carrying silk, spices, turquoise, manuscripts, and music across continents.

The people who live along this corridor today are descendants of those very caravans. Their homes carry modern touches now—smartphones charging beside clay stoves, solar panels tucked between walnut trees—but daily life remains rooted in tradition. The hearth is still the centre of the home. Food is still shaped by climate: barley, root vegetables, dried fruit, butter tea, and meat preserved to survive winters where temperatures can drop to minus 20 degrees. Roads vanish under snow, rivers freeze solid.

For a space that feels frozen in time, it feels incongruous how everyone here is online.

At Baltipa House in Panamik, camel caretakers Tashi Tundup and Stanzin Namgyail arrive by firelight. Both run YouTube channels. Tundup is a local celebrity, immediately recognised by the residents of the homes we are visiting on the route. In the middle of a hearth that’s 300 years old, a group of women are whispering among themselves. When I ask, they tell me they’re fans of Tundup’s channel, which features a mixed bag of videos; in one he’s reenacting Dhurandhar’s viral moments, in another he’s providing a guide on how to cut wood in winter.

Sitting beside them, roasting kebabs over an open flame, I ask whether they ever feel overwhelmed by the internet. Whether living within such surreal natural beauty makes scrolling feel absurd, or necessary, or both. They’re as noncommittal as any 20-something would be—a shrug to denote ‘what’s the big deal?’. They understand their camels’ grunts as much as they understand how to tap into the virality of a Bollywood track. But what struck me most was how little social media dictated their lives. Work still happens around seasons, not trends. Community still gathers around firepits, not comment sections.

Here, the most meaningful experiences aren’t searchable. They happen because you stayed longer. Because you were met with bad weather and followed a local’s suggestion for a detour. Because you were invited to lunch by a driver you struck a conversation with.

At Sasoma, the gateway to the old Tulumpati Pass, the horizon opens toward the Yarkhand plains. Lunch is served at a tiny farm in Taksha, Tsewang Spalbar’s Spangopa House, prepared by families of horpas, the traditional traders of the valley. We are welcomed into an ancient home with a lavish spread of a traditional lunch of robust stews made with barley flour dumplings, juicy vegetables, and tender meat. We tuck into a tangy and sweet sea buckthorn compote over cream, in a grove of trees with majestic peaks at our backs, fawned over by the descendants of traders from almost 10 centuries ago.

In another village, Chamshen, families keep relics—Mongolian swords with magical skin healing tips, turquoise jewellery, letters from merchants who never returned. Dinner is followed by mystique when Onpo Rigzin Dorjey reads the sky, explaining how astrologers once guided entire caravans through darkness. Today Onpo Rigzin is highly revered in the region as a shaman who is always consulted before one makes any personal or professional move. Sitting under a Milky Way easily visible to the naked eye, the hold of the planets over our fate doesn’t seem far-fetched at all.

We have a breakfast of traditional sourdough (khambir) and chang (think of it as Ladakhi kombucha, a fermented mildly alcoholic beer) accompanied by music by the region’s nightingale, Tsering Yangchen. Echoes of her high-pitched folk songs pierce through Tirisha’s forest, where we ride on double-humped Bactrian camels.

In Kyagar, a gourmet dinner by the fire on the final night caps our Silk Route adventure.

Today, Ladakh is at a turning point. Mass tourism has added visible pressure on the region; water scarcity, waste management, and over-construction are now central concerns. Cafes and traffic now crowd once-quiet valleys. Experiences like this push back, not by rejecting modernity but by refusing to let it dominate. The Silk Route cannot compete with the internet. It doesn’t need to. What it offers is something rarer. Time that isn’t compressed. Attention that isn’t fragmented. Community that doesn’t require an account. In 2026, that might be the most radical kind of luxury there is.