“Darling,” read the road sign as we hammered past, “I like you — but not so fast.” That was all very well, but I was in something of a hurry. Dawn was breaking across the Indus Valley, the yawning sun spotlighting the snowy tops of the Himalayan peaks all around.

When the rays reached the roof of Thiksey monastery, the monks would put conch-shell trumpets to lips and honk a mournful call to prayer across Ladakh. It wasn’t something I wanted to miss.

Two of them were poised in purple robes as I ran up the monastery steps. The view would have been breathtaking if I’d had any breath left to be taken. Running up stairs at an altitude of 11,500ft is not to be recommended; it makes you feel dizzy and confused.

I could have sworn I heard a mobile-phone ring tone as the monks raised their horns.

The shorter of the pair stopped and reached inside his robe. A tinny version of West Coast hip-hop rang out again across the ancient building. He pulled out a
 
 
slim phone, silenced it with a few quick prods and tucked it away again. Not an eyelid was batted. Up came the trumpet, out came the honk.

Nothing, it seems, is quite as it should be in Ladakh. You’re in India, but the locals look Tibetan and practise Buddhism. You’re in a dusty desert, but all around are icy mountains. The hills are brown scree, the valleys so lush you could be in Somerset.

Even in the monastery’s austere prayer room, the atmosphere was like that of a school assembly. The remaining mobiles might have been on silent, but the chattering and horseplay was at top volume. Cymbals clanged. Hands clapped. As the old boy in charge speed-read from a holy book the size of Yellow Pages, a teenage monk took advantage of the distraction to gleefully thump his mate on the head with a drumstick.

I slipped outside into the bright sunlight. Encouraged by my guide, Siddhartha, I flipped coins at the wishing stupa (monument) in the courtyard. The third one landed on the top ledge, wobbled and stuck. Buoyed with the news of a lifetime of good luck, we set out on foot across the arid ochre.

Even that early in the day, the sun was fierce. In the shadows you froze, but there was so little shade in the valley that even the bare rocks were sweating. It seemed inconceivable that there could be snow leopards lurking in the hills. “

It’s not the leopards you want to worry about,” Sidd said cheerfully. “It’s the packs of wolves. If they catch you, they’ll tear you apart.”

We dipped down into a deep gorge, slipping and sliding over loose stones. The silence when we stopped was interrupted only by the sound of dry air rasping through my gasping lungs.

There was an eerie, brutal romance about the place. Tiny pockets of purple lavender sprouted hopefully from cracks in the baked earth. The occasional antelope skittered into view before streaking off into the distance. To the north lay China, to the east Tibet and Nepal, and to the west Pakistan and Afghanistan. With a squint and a daydream, you could imagine yourself as a 19th-century Flashman-type politico, playing an undercover part in the Great Game between Russia and the Raj, seeking alliances and advantages in a land lying on the borders of the two avaricious empires.

Further down the gorge, the colours multiplied. Poplars and willows, turned mustard and tan by the arrival of autumn, spread along the banks of a stream. Fluttering flocksof sparrows exploded up from fields of sunblasted wheat and barley. Grumpy-looking yaks turned to stare, like nosy neighbours.

We lunched in an orchard near the village of Stok before jumping into a Jeep and taking the winding road southeastwards into the hills at Hemis. “Better be Mr Late than a late Mr,” a sign cautioned, as we sped past in a whirl of sand.

The monastery we found had none of the carefree whoopee of Thiksey. While there had been a festivalrecently, its centrepiece had been something that translated as “the dance of death” and involved monks dressed as demons waving mummified human hands. Let your mobile ring out of turn there and you were likely to fall foul of a fearsome deity named Gyalpo Pager, a booze-loving 400-year-old harridan who would haunt you for ever if you dared take so much as a pebble from her temple. Worse was on offer in the caves high in the cliffs above the building.

At a spot charmingly known as “the vultures’ place”, Hemis’s monks brave daytime temperatures as low as - 35C to meditate alone for three months, three days and three hours — a brutal privation familiar to anyone who’s ever waited for a train at Ely station during the Christmas holidays.

It was almost enough to make me feel guilty about my own luxurious circumstances. Later, while I was lying toasty in the lantern-lit dining room of a tastefully modernised village house, there were monks up there with nothing but a wraparound yak-hair coat for company.

It used to be that the only way to see Ladakh was to rough it. Not any more. As those monks sipped freezing water from a silty mountain stream,I warmed my cockles with a peaty Laphroaig by a woodburning bukhara stove. While they were reliant on occasional food parcels left by locals,I was sitting down to a four-course gourmet feast, served on starched tablecloths and copper plates, andfeeling a deep sense of spiritual achievement for merely being able to chew without getting out of breath.
  
 
 
 
Fuelled by a breakfast of strawberry porridge and fresh coffee, I headed somewhere even colder than their meditation perch. At 17,582ft, Khardung La is said to be the highest motorable pass in the world, two hours of terrifying uphill from the busy little town of Ley.

“Check your nerves on my curves,” ordered the sign on this one, withthe spangled wreckage of trucks in the ravines far below a trashed testament. It was via this pass that the caravans of the Silk Route used to bring in their costly cargos from China, although these days it’s all bellowing army trucks and frozen soldiers rather than opium, cloth and spices.

Both the colours and altitude knocked us sideways. Primary-dyed strips of prayer flags fluttered furiously in the freezing wind against a sharp background of white snow and blue sky. “KIKI SOSO!” roared Sidd. “LYARGYALO!” we roared back, completing the auspicious chant with chest-clutching effort.

The lack of oxygen was sending us all a little loopy. One of the party had collapsed in giggles, like a caned Californian. Another was pretending to talk to an invisible butler called Smithers. I became obsessed with slight variations on the same tedious joke. “This is the highest pee I’ve ever had!” I chortled, staggering through the snow to the world’s highest motorable lavatory block. “And that’s my highest wheeze! And my highest intense shortness of breath!”

“Drive like Hell and you will be there,” warned a sign on the way down, but all we could do was hoot with laughter.

Calm was only restored in theaptly named village of Chilling. Apt for two opposing reasons: for the bucolic atmosphere and warm, dappled light under the willow trees; and for the huge lumps of rock that kept crashing down the valley sides from the cliffs on either side.

From there, we clambered into a bobbing raft to paddle our way down the Zanskar Gorge to Nimoo, a prosperous village stretched along the Indus. Finding Nimoo wasn’t a problem, despite what the film might have you believe — the river took us straight there.

What was harder was taking your eyes off the spectacular rock formations on either side. There were teetering slices of dark red, maroon and khaki, pale bluffs that looked like giant sponge fingers, angular boulders perched so precariously on ledges, they seemed a sparrow’s sneeze away from tumbling down on top of us.

The swim in the river was probably ill advised. Sidd had warned against it, but, not having experienced glacial meltwater before, we were convinced any water that sparkled turquoise had to be inviting.

“Kiki soso?” offered Sidd as we sprang out the same shade of blue as the sky. “Very so-so,” I shivered, reaching for every layer of clothing within earshot.

Later that evening, recovering with a pot of darjeeling on the house’s roof, feeling a crinkly tightness across my sunburnt nose and cheeks, I watched fat grey snow clouds gathering further up the valley. Winter was coming. High above, a kestrel rode on the last of the day’s thermals.

A car braked and slowed on the road far below. I knew the spot well — it was where a sign read: “Don’t gossip — let him drive.”

Tom Fordyce travelled as a guest of cazenove + loyd and Jet Airway

Travel details: cazenove + loyd (020 7384 2332, cazenoveandloyd.com) has eight nights in Ladakh from £3,687pp, including flights from Heathrow via Delhi with Jet Airways (0808 101 1199, jetairways.com), guide, porters, rafting trips, walks and drives, as well as one night in the Imperial in Delhi. Or try The Ultimate Travel Company (020 7386 4646, theultimatetravelcompany.co.uk), Exodus (020 8673 0859, exodus.co.uk) or KE Adventure (017687 73966, keadventure.com).