If you want to see spectacular mountains (and this, alongside the visit to the Golden Temple in Amritsar, was right at the top of the list for this visit), then the flight from Dehli's domestic airport to Leh is the best way.   This easily matches the flight past Qomolungma (Everest) into Tibet.

The photos above are of an unnamed glacier coursing through the Himalayas - with many peaks of greater than 7,000 m, snow is a permanent feature of the mountaintops as are glaciers.   The views as the plane swings around the mountains into Leh airport are equally spectacular and this has to be one of the most scenic approaches to an airport I've ever had.

Visible in the distance from the plane mid-flight (below) was Mount Godwin Austen, better known as K2 (second highest mountain at 8,611 m or 28,250 ft after Everest, at (8,848 m or 29,028 ft), surrounded by the rest of the spectacular mountains that make up the Concordia area of the Karakorums.   It's not just the Himalayas (stretching from Burma, through India, Bhutan and Nepal to Pakistan) that have resulted from the northward movement of India into Asia that has been occurring for some 50 million years (as the mountains rose up, rivers such as the Indus cut down into them and thus remained at the same level).   There's also the Karakorums (India / Pakistan), the Hindu Kush (Pakistan / Afghanistan), the Pamirs and Tian Shan (China / Kyrgyzstan / Tajikistan / Uzbekistan), the Kunlun Shan and the Tibetan Plateau itself (Chang Tang) that have directly or indirectly resulted from this collision of land masses.   And neither party was insured.

I managed to bore a couple of American women senseless telling them all this (misunderstood what they asked me).   Yup, I can bore for England - England 1 - 0 USA!!!

No climber waving from the top here.

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