Haftal + Sani – Searching Stones and finding a Lake

26. September 2026

 

 

Rinchen sometimes likes looking for stones, and I wanted to learn where and how to search (and actually find them), so Henrique came along and wanted to look, too. So we went to Haftal—a valley coming down from the glacial mountains, not too far from Padum. There is an unpaved dirt road there with no traffic, but you rarely stick to it, walking on smaller trails instead or just going off-path.

 

First, we found bear droppings. They weren’t even that old. We didn’t end up seeing the bear itself, though.

 

 

This valley is absolutely beautiful, and one can also just hike in a little way for the simple joy of it.

 

 

 

 

Huge rocks are scattered all over the place. There is bound to be a lot of interesting geology here, but none of us knew anything about it. Geological tours in Ladakh/Zanskar would certainly be really interesting. I even snapped photos of a few later on because I thought they were so beautiful.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In principle, you’re more likely to find things near or right in the river. Rinchen told me to just look down and see if I noticed anything that looked a bit different. But to me, they all looked equally different at first. The river looked pretty.

 

 

 

 

Then Rinchen showed us what you can actually find: rocks with little dots inside that look a bit more special.

 

 

 

Then Henrique and I started finding more and more, running over to Rinchen with them in the hope that he would shout “oh wow!” That didn’t happen all that often, but sometimes it did. Here is one with copper in it.

 

 

One looked pretty interesting, but it was embedded in the ground, so the two of them dug it out.

 

 

 

 

It was actually really fun searching for those stones—even though I’ve already forgotten what it was that we found. Afterward, we had a picnic and just enjoyed the fantastic valley.

 

 

 

It’s definitely something you could easily offer to travelers who are keen on keeping an eye out for stones every now and then.

 

From there, we walked down to the village of Sani and over to its sacred lake.

 

 

When Henrique was looking for something in his bag, a whole pack of dogs immediately came over, thinking he had something for them.

 

 

 

 

Quite a few dogs live there, but apart from jumping around a lot, they don’t seem to be particularly dangerous.

 

 

 

 

 

Then there was also a small Nepalese boy whose parents work as day laborers. He joined us and was happy to have a bit of company and distraction.

 

 

 

Behind the lake, there’s an extra pool where you could go swimming or boating. But neither was really a good idea—the water level was too low and full of algae, and the boats didn’t look in great shape either.

 

 

But it’s simply beautiful by the lake, and it’s a great place to just sit around and enjoy the day.

 

Next to the lake is the local crematorium—the place where the dead are cremated. In the past, they used to tie them up into a smaller, crouching position before burning them (the device where they did this was already very broken), but nowadays they are turned to ash lying down instead.

 

 

We wanted to hitchhike back. The road through Sani is wide and well-paved, and cars zoom past at quite a speed. There weren’t that many, but not few either, and plenty of them had plenty of room. But either they were just turning the corner or they simply didn’t stop. I’d already figured that hitchhiking as a group of three wouldn’t be as easy, but I really didn’t expect so many cars with plenty of space to just drive past us. Eventually, though, luck was on our side: someone stopped, and we fit in easily.

 

There were two other guests at the guesthouse: Krishna and Mukesh. They are traveling through India in their Jimny, making YouTube videos along the way. This here is their Channel.

 

 

 

We watched a few videos, chatted, and I thought to myself that India really has so many beautiful and interesting corners! It’s definitely better when you have plenty of time for it all. I also reflected on the videos and realized that that kind of setup would actually be too much for me—carrying around more gear (drone, tripod, good microphone, and a larger camera). I’ll stick with my phone and see what I can manage with that.

 

Filming is definitely a whole different ballgame compared to taking snapshots and writing, and the editing process afterward is much more time-consuming. And when you still want photos for the blog, website, and just for yourself anyway, it adds up to quite a bit. I spent a lot of time switching back and forth between video and photo mode just to gather enough material for both. Whether I’ll stick with this in the future: no idea. It’s definitely interesting to test it all out like this. I also notice how limited my perspective still is and how little I move myself and the camera. Mainly, I ask myself how much of a “story” I should already have in mind while shooting, versus whether it’s better to just collect a lot of footage and craft the story from that later. Since these are mostly travelogues so far—along the lines of “I went there and experienced this”—lots of footage seems to be the way to go. And with any luck, there are a few funny sequences in the mix. But in principle, I always feel like I’m missing something, which I can sometimes fill in with photos—or not. And something I haven’t done at all yet: actually using the microphone (or rather, I even have two) while filming to ask people questions directly, for example. What I definitely won’t be doing, though, is standing in front of the camera and talking away. I don’t like that.

 

Anyway, enough pondering about filmmaking—it was time for bed and looking forward to the next day!