The last thing one would expect in the high-altitude desert of Ladakh is a pasta dish. But chutagi, a hearty stew with bow-tie shaped pasta, comes as a warm surprise. Skyu, a staple packed with thumb-sized wheat balls and slow-cooked in a broth, is another delicious reminder that Ladakh’s food story runs deeper than just momo and thukpa.
Ladakh’s food is born from “profound ingenuity and a pantry shaped by resilience,” says hotelier Stanzin Tsephel who runs Organic Retreat in Nubra valley’s Hundar village. Tsephel serves an elaborate, seven-course, traditional Ladakhi meal. It begins with crispy buckwheat crackers and tangy curd dip, followed by gya-thuk, a comforting soup with noodles, vegetables, and meat—a favourite at family gatherings during winter season. “When the cold winter months keep us indoors, we have a tradition: each cousin would host a dinner for the entire extended family. At these dinners our favourite dish is always gya-thuk. I remember holding the warm bowl, slurping noodles, and laughing with all my cousins,” smiles Tsephel. The setting of the sit down meal is Tsephel’s over 200-year-old ancestral home.
Ladakhi cuisine is ruled by the dense barley flour, the hardy buckwheat, slow-cooked broths, and a bounty of wild-foraged herbs. Wheat, which came much later, is used to make khambir—a popular Ladakhi bread. With a slightly chewy texture and a nutty flavour, it’s the perfect companion to a bowl of stew or a cup of gur gur cha (butter tea). The right way to eat it is to tear it open while it’s still hot, stuff it with an omelette or simply slather it with butter and apricot jam for a hearty breakfast.
Ladakh also surprises you with its cheese—Chhurpi. Made from yak milk, it’s not the usual melting in the mouth kind, but hard enough to be chewed like candy. It's this hardness that gives it a distinct flavour. There is also a soft version, mostly added to soups for the umami flavour.
But if you want something flavourful, and protein rich, relish over gyuma—a winter staple made from minced mutton. The is meat, mixed with roasted barley flour, spices, and blood, is stuffed into casings for hot and hearty sausages in winters. Delicious drapu, or dumplings simmered in a sauce made from apricot kernels, is like a Ladakhi version of a gnocchi. But the star of the meal was the Yarkhandi pulao—slow-cooked, tender meat with the aromatic richness of rice. “The pulao was brought to Ladakh by the Yarkhandi traders through the Silk Route. It used to be so rich that while eating it, the ghee would drip from the elbow,” says Yangchen, a local hotelier.
Traditionally, Ladakh had no concept of dessert. “People mostly used to eat soaked apricots after a meal or munch on dried apricots while working on the field,” says Tsephel.
In Turtuk, the last village in Ladakh, Balti cuisine blends Central Asian and Ladakhi influences deliciously. Unlike the rest of Ladakh, Turtuk is a fertile valley and the agricultural abundance reflects in the local dishes.
Walnuts play a key role here in many dishes. For praku, a popular winter staple, locals ground walnuts into a creamy sauce to coat thumb-pressed wheat pasta, while in moskot it is crushed with onions and chilies to create a chutney, which is then spread generously over buckwheat pancakes.
Ladakh’s cuisine is a soulful tapestry of flavours that warms the body and tells the timeless story of life in the mountains.