The late afternoon sun is setting the fields of Yougar village ablaze as my husband and I wash the day’s grime from our faces in a glacial stream. The journey to this remote corner of Ladakh’s Zanskar Valley, 3900 metres up on the Tibetan Plateau in northern India, has been one of the most arduous of my life. But this moment, watching the sun tuck itself behind the 12th-century Phugtal Monastery clinging to the opposite cliff, has made every hair-raising minute worth it.

The fact that Zanskar is one of the most inaccessible valleys on Earth is one of its main appeals. In its more remote corners, intrepid travellers can still witness life being lived just as it was a century ago. This afternoon, we were transported back in time as we watched a yak being milked for our tea, dung being stacked atop mud-brick houses to burn over winter when temperatures can drop to minus 40 degrees, and locals using scythes to harvest buckwheat, barley and other crops that have been grown in this region for centuries.