Ladakh

The world's highest mountains enclose a moonscape of desolate, barren lands with steely blue lakes making their appearances here and there. The winds rush along on their biggest playgrounds. Once past the Himalayas and into the desolate plains of Ladakh, they come into their own. The human being is truly at the mercy of Nature, an insignificant pebble at the mercy of the ocean. The summer months bring the rarest of mountain flowers into bloom and trails of humans who venture out from the comfy confines of the plains further south to get a taste of the wild side of life.

I haven't been there yet, but keep driving my Jeep through the vastness of the dry plains of Ladakh in my mind. The prayer flags flutter on the stone tombs that pepper the landscape of rocks, monasteries and mountains. Yet it's a place that defies my imagination because of its sheer scale and the rare pictures that I see of it don't seem to help my thoughts much. I need to be there in person to take in the entire magnitude of the place and it's cold, merciless beauty.