Near Kargil and the Pakistan border. We were a bit concerned about traveling here due to recent "surgical strikes" along this border region and shelling on the roads. Locals helped us determine when it was safe to pass through between attacks.

Short break with our horse in Zanskar.

Thiksey, Ladakh

After four years of persistent petitions to the Indian government (which involved collaborating personally with the King of Ladakh), I finally received special permission to visit and film a place very few people on earth are allowed to see: Hanle, Ladakh. 15,000 feet high in the Himalayas on the tense border of India between Pakistan and Tibet (and a full day’s drive on rough unpaved roads from the nearest town), you won’t find much here but silence, and the people who are using it to push the boundaries of what we know about the universe and ourselves: astronomers who built the world’s second highest optical telescope here, and a 400 year-old Drukpa monastery inhabited by only ten monks (pictured).

One night in Zanskar, a group of child monks invited me to have dinner with them in a cave near a mountain top, which they used as a kitchen, with an open fire and pots to make soup and tea from rancid yak butter, barley flour, and yak cheese. Just outside the cave entrance, it was a vertical drop-off straight into the river far below. Above, shooting stars and the milky way illuminated our dinner.

A short rest for our horse in Zanskar.

After thousands of years, this Maitreya Buddha (or future Buddha-to-come) is still overlooking the old trade route in Mulbekh, surrounded by ancient Kharoṣṭhī inscriptions, a language used in present day Afghanistan and Pakistan from roughly the 3rd century BC till it died in the 3rd century AD.

Zanskar

Shergole, Ladakh

Near Cha village, Zanskar

Leh

Ladakh

17th century Hanle monastery

Restricted zone, Ladakh

Jan waking up on a rooftop in Zanskar.