The Chadar Is the Frozen Zanskar River That Zanskari Families Have Walked in Winter for Generations, and 1,325 Trekkers Followed It in 2023 Under the Leh Administration's Written Rules

The Chadar is the sheet of ice that forms on the Zanskar River in Ladakh each winter, and the Chadar trek is the walk along it that tourists now do through registered operators. For the villages beyond the gorge, the ice has been a road. Rigzin Chodon, a research associate at the Ladakh Arts and Media Organisation (LAMO) in Leh, wrote that for places such as Lingshed, Chilling and Nyerags it is the only physical link with the outside world in winter.

A road that lasts about six weeks

Outlook Traveller’s 2017 guide calls the Chadar the winter lifeline of the Zanskaris and the fourth of the valley’s four traditional routes. Chodon wrote that residents have walked it for generations, mainly to trade butter, and cited the historian Janet Rizvi and the writers James Crowden and Olivier Föllmi as having documented the route. The Diplomatic Courier reported in 2013 that Zanskar’s Tibetan settlers arrived more than 1,000 years ago, that the route has operated for centuries, and that traders mostly walked it to Leh, carrying salt, grain, cashmere wool, indigo and silk. That article does not say which of those goods moved on the ice itself, so the list describes Zanskari trade in general.

The ice season is short. Outlook Traveller says the river is frozen 6 to 10 feet deep from mid-January to mid-February, the safest weeks, and that by late February the ice is often unstable. Chodon put the trekking season at about 45 days.

How long it is depends on who counts

Published lengths do not agree. The Daily Excelsior reported in 2019 that the trek is about 100 km. Outlook Traveller gives 150 km as the length of the frozen river run, and says its author walked about ten days out and back from Chilling. Chodon, writing around 2020, put the trailhead about 60 km by road from Leh and described a five to seven day walk, with many tourists turning back at the frozen waterfall near Nyerags (the sources also spell it Nyerak and Nyraks) after about five days and others continuing to Zanskar in seven days or more. Kashmir Life described it in January 2025 as a seven to nine day walk from Chilling to Padum.

Part of the difference is where the walk starts. The road has moved up the gorge over the years, and Chodon noted that in 2019 and 2020 the trek began about 11 km beyond Chilling village. Part of it is where the walk ends, since many groups turn back at Nyerags and do not go on to Padum.

Walking on a river

Trekkers sleep in caves in the gorge wall, which locals call bau, and Outlook Traveller counted ten of them along the route. Nothing can be bought for at least five days after Chilling, so food, fuel and a sleeping bag rated to minus 20 degrees Celsius have to be carried. The same piece gives minus 30 as the low. The Daily Excelsior quoted the administration’s figures in 2019 as a daytime average near minus 10 and nights between minus 20 and minus 25.

A continuous stretch of solid ice is the first requirement. Officials told 101Reporters in 2026 that at least 30 to 35 km of it is needed for the trek to run.

From 1,043 trekkers in 2015 to 3,144 in 2019

Chodon published trekker numbers drawn from the Department of Wildlife Protection and the All Ladakh Tour Operators Association (ALTOA): 1,043 in 2015, 1,545 in 2016, 1,735 in 2017, 2,529 in 2018 and 3,144 in 2019. In 2020 the count was 2,287, of whom 2,160 were Indian and 127 were foreign. Those totals exclude porters, cooks and guides. Kashmir Life reported 949 trekkers in 2021 and 1,325 in 2023, 62 of them foreign.

The season is paid work for guides, porters and homestay hosts in the gorge villages. Stanzin Stobdan of Nyerak, a porter, cook and guide for more than 15 years, told 101Reporters that a good season brings him over two lakh rupees (Rs 200,000). Stanzin Norlha, who runs a homestay at Lingshed, said he normally hosts 70 to 80 guests and earns nearly Rs 3 lakh a season.

The four-day arrival and the rest of the rulebook

The Leh district’s disaster management authority, under the letterhead of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (the Leh hill council, covered in our Ladakh profile), issued a Standard Operating Procedure for the 2025 trek. Its opening line says the rules are for “the overall safety of trekkers and for protection of the environment”. Every tourist follows the same four days: arrive in Leh and rest, rest again, take a medical check-up at a designated place between 10 am and 4 pm (the boarding pass is checked there) and then collect a permit at the Tourist Information Centre near the J&K Bank main branch, and leave for the trek on day four.

The document puts the load on operators. Travel companies must be registered. They collect registration forms and group numbers from the ALTOA desk at the Tourist Information Centre, and they must make sure trekkers carry the right gear, without which trekkers may not start. They submit a list of porters, helpers, cooks and guides with certificates of experience and training. ALTOA issues identity cards to those crew, and the procedure provides free medical care for them and subsidised adventure insurance. Operators keep each tourist’s blood group and next of kin on record, bring firewood from Leh instead of collecting it on the route, give crew proper tents and food, and hand tins, bottles and plastic back to the Wildlife Department in Leh.

The Tribune’s January 2025 report on the same procedure adds figures that are not on the single page of the document we could read: at most 10 groups start each day with no more than 10 trekkers in each group, vehicles carry an oxygen cylinder, guides leave a security deposit that is refunded when their rubbish comes back, and first offences carry a fine of Rs 20,000 to Rs 30,000. Chodon’s account says the cap in earlier years was 100 trekkers a day, which matches ten groups of ten.

Written rules go back at least to the 2019 season. The Daily Excelsior reported in January 2019 that a health check-up and medical insurance had become compulsory, and quoted officials as saying the trek saw four to five deaths and several injuries every year. In January 2020 the Tribune reported that more than 100 trekkers, later put at 120, were stranded at Nyraks as water overflowed the ice. The administration had already moved 41 people to the village, the district magistrate said everyone was safe, and Ladakh’s civil aviation department asked the Air Force for helicopters. The report does not say how the evacuation ended.

The road that now runs beside the gorge

The Border Roads Organisation (BRO) has been building the Nimmu to Padum to Darcha road, 298 km in all, and the work changed the trek. ThePrint reported on 27 March 2024 that the BRO linked the road end to end in January, after rushing heavy equipment and men in while the Zanskar was frozen. Of the road’s length, about 240 km was already blacktopped, and the last 58 km, between Niraq and Chilling, took about eight years. The only pass on the road is Shinku La at 16,558 feet.

Construction cut the trek’s route. Kashmir Life wrote that parts of it were cut short in 2024, and the Tribune said on 4 January 2025 that the season would use only nearly 20 km of the river, with the Council’s chief executive councillor announcing a 7 January start. The start slipped when the ice was late, and the Tribune reported the trek opening on 13 January 2025.

Zanskaris disagree on the road. Chodon quoted Tundup Dorjay of Lungnak, who wants an all-weather road and pony trails along the cliff sections so no one is stranded for days, and Tsering Angchuk, a travel agent, who argued that the road will cover the Chadar and end the trek while being needed for year-round access. A tunnel is meant to close the winter gap: the BRO director general said in April 2023 that the 4.1 km Shinku La tunnel would join 36 Zanskar villages with 136 Lahaul villages. We follow that tunnel in our piece on the Atal Tunnel and Himalayan engineering.

January 2026: the ice did not come

The 2026 season was due to open on 10 January. A reconnaissance team walked the route that day, and Kashmir Life reported that the Additional Deputy Commissioner of Leh, Ghulam Mohammad, expected a start around 15 January. Rigzin Wangmo Lachic, president of the All Ladakh Hotel and Guest House Association, said the ice was too thin in places.

A Tribune report updated on 13 January said the Additional Deputy Commissioner then issued an order. The recce team had found the river largely unfrozen and the route unsafe and hazardous. The order suspended the Chadar trek with immediate effect until a review on 20 January, barred trekking and allied adventure activity on the route, and told operators and local stakeholders not to organise or promote it, on the ground that the river’s condition posed a serious risk to life. Outlook India reported on 14 January that officials were monitoring conditions and looking at other winter tourism activities.

We did not find the outcome of the 20 January review. 101Reporters, in a report on the trek’s cancellation published on 14 April 2026, said the ice never formed properly despite reconnaissance every ten days in December and January, and that locals could not remember a winter like it.

Sonam Lotus, who heads the meteorological centre in Leh, was among the officials who told 101Reporters that erratic temperatures and irregular snowfall prevented even freezing. Down To Earth reported her figures on 26 March 2026: Leh’s winter snowfall was 4.2 cm against a 14-year average of 15.3 cm, and the 2025 to 2026 winter was Leh’s warmest in the 2019 to 2026 period. The two reports give different winter average temperatures for Leh, so we print neither. Tsewang Namgail, general secretary of ALTOA, offered another cause to 101Reporters: debris from road construction at Chilling, he said, fell into the river and broke the thin ice. The order, as the Tribune summarised it, does not mention it.

Down To Earth described a 2016 study by researchers at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the National Institute of Hydrology, in a 2022 report. It found a rapid rise in Leh’s temperature from 1991 to 2013 and falling annual precipitation from 1995 to 2012. For measurements of the mountain ice itself, see what the data say about Himalayan glaciers. Kashmir Life, in January 2026, cited a paper titled Climate Change over Leh (Ladakh) that reports a warming trend and reduced precipitation in the current decade.

Before you plan a winter

Dates are set late. In 2025 the start moved from 7 to 13 January, and in 2026 the trek was suspended in January and, in 101Reporters’ April account, cancelled, so any date an operator quotes is provisional until the ice has been checked. Leh’s district administration says every tourist arriving in Leh must spend at least 48 hours acclimatising before going higher (page updated 6 June 2026), and the Chadar procedure builds in two rest days before the medical check. Permit and fee rules for the rest of the territory are in our first-visit guide to Ladakh.

The Leh administration’s tourist-information page, read on 28 October 2026, lists the 2025 procedure as its only Chadar document.