Another race bites the dust

Sadly, now it’s the turn of September’s Ladakh Marathon to be cancelled, due to this wretched Covid-19 pandemic.

Here’s the official announcement, & the link to the website:

Interestingly, the 2 ultra events haven’t yet been cancelled – so let’s hope they, at least, might still be able to take place.

For those of you who do not know India, Ladakh is in the Himalayas, and is geographically part of the Tibetan plateau. Climatically it is a high altitude desert, its barren landscape studded with Buddhist monasteries.

It is an absolutely stunning part of the country.

I ran the Ladakh half marathon in September 2018, & a very jolly experience it was, too.

It was also very exhausting, since running at over 11,000ft altitude is no joke.

Ended up running the slowest half in the history of mankind, but I loved it, and had recently started toying with the idea of perhaps running the marathon there.

But not this year.

Poor, dear Ladakh.

Not only has this fun event, which was growing exponentially year on year, been cancelled, but there are also border issues on the LAC (Line of Actual Control) with China. There have been incursions and fighting and deaths. As I said, poor, dear Ladakh.

For me, Ladakh is one of the most beautiful places in India, with such lovely, friendly people – and so it’s sad to see a burgeoning successful event such as this race suffer.

Fingers crossed for next year, Ladakh!

While I’m reminiscing, let me sneak in a quick shout-out here to my sister & brother-in-law who decided to join us in Ladakh on holiday, while I acclimatised for the race, and ended up doing the Fun Run.

AND they loved it – their first ever race, and they coolly decided to tackle one of the highest in the world 🙂