Hunder Sand Dunes, Nubra Valley: The Desert That Surprised Me Most

I had seen photos of the Hunder sand dunes before arriving at Nubra Valley. I had thought, from those photos, that this was a slightly novelty attraction — a small patch of sand in the mountains, the kind of thing that looks better in photographs than in person.

I was wrong in the most complete way possible.

The Setting

The Hunder dunes are in the Shyok River floodplain, at approximately 3,050m. Around them on three sides: Karakoram range peaks at 5,000–6,000m, permanently snow-capped. The contrast is the thing — fine golden sand, soft and wind-sculpted, set against grey granite peaks with snow. It looks architecturally designed, as if someone made a decision to put a section of the Sahara here to see what would happen.

The dunes are not small. The main dune ridge rises eight to ten metres. On the far side, away from the village and the camel-ride route, you can find stretches of undisturbed sand with no footprints and no one in sight and the Karakoram directly above you.

The Camels

The Bactrian (double-humped) camels of Nubra are descendants of animals used on the Silk Road trade routes. They are bigger than I expected — 1.8 to 2 metres at the shoulder, shaggy in summer with the remains of their winter coat, calm to the point of seeming indifferent to the world. Several dozen are kept by local families who operate the camel safari at the dune entrance.

The ride itself takes about twenty minutes along a marked route. It is not adventurous. It is, however, a genuinely unusual experience to look down from the back of a Bactrian camel at 3,000m altitude with snow peaks immediately behind you and a Tibetan Buddhist monastery visible on the hillside ahead.

I paid ₹500 for the ride. It was worth it primarily for the photographs, which are the kind of photographs that make people ask "where is that?" when they see them.

Sunset

We stayed until the sun dropped behind the western mountains. The dunes went from gold to orange to deep rust. The camels were being led back towards the village, their owners talking on phones and smoking. The mountain tops held the last light longest — turning pink, then purple, then grey. The temperature dropped about five degrees in twenty minutes.

Nubra Valley at sunset is a composition that happens without any effort on your part. You just need to be there and not look at your phone.

The Drive Back to the Camp

Our guesthouse in Hunder village was five minutes from the dunes. It was run by a family who had been here for three generations — the grandmother remembered when there were no tourists, only the army and the occasional shepherd. She made us butter tea, which I had tried once before and found strange. In her kitchen, in the cold, after sunset at 3,000m, it tasted exactly right.