Journey to Shangri-La

In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

I used this exhortation to begin my email that rallied potential fellow adventurers to join me on a trip which had always been on my personal “bucket list.” While the movie of that name with Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman was hardly an Oscar winner, the concept that we have to take advantage of the time we have left on this world has been dominating my thoughts as of late, and I suspected others were in the same predicament.

Ladakh and Zanskar, two small Buddhist kingdoms which are now part of northwestern India, were the goal of the adventure. My friends and I had all just turned or would shortly turn sixty, so the time to do a rigorous trek was now, not ten years from now. Additionally, with each passing day, traditional Ladakh gives ground to the inexorable advance and cacophony of modernity. To see it as the remote untouched Shangri-la of my dreams meant going soon.

Here is a small gallery of my images from our incredible journey. Click on a shot to see the caption.

–Bill Abbott, WT Founder and President, Journey to Ladakh