Bactrian camels and sand dunes at 3,000m — the valley north of the Khardung La where the Shyok and Nubra rivers meet, Diskit monastery, and double-humped camels on the Himalayan silk route
Nubra Valley lies 150km north of Leh in Ladakh, accessible via the Khardung La pass (5,359m — one of the world's highest motorable roads, though actually the world's highest motorable road is a disputed claim shared by several Himalayan passes) on the North Pullu-Khardung La-South Pullu-Nubra road. The valley is the junction of the Shyok River (flowing west from the Karakoram Range) and the Nubra River (flowing south from the Siachen Glacier watershed), creating the widest and flattest valley floor in Ladakh — and therefore the most dramatic landscape contrast in the Indian Himalaya: the vall…
Nubra Valley was historically part of the Ladakh Kingdom (the Namgyal dynasty's domain from the 15th century) and served as the primary Ladakhi staging post for the Silk Road caravan trade between Leh and Central Asia via the Karakoram Pass (18,176 ft) — the trans-Himalayan trade route that carried Central Asian horses, jade, silk, dried fruit, and saffron south into the Indian subcontinent in exchange for cotton textiles, indigo, and spices. The partition of British India in 1947 closed the Karakoram Pass (the pass now lies in Pakistan's Gilgit-Baltistan province, immediately south of the Ch…