The high-altitude stillness you notice only after two days in Leh

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It is rarely the sharp drop in temperature when the airplane door opens that stays with people longest, though everyone remembers it. What lingers instead are the quiet, unhurried hours forced upon you by the altitude—mornings spent on sunny guest house balconies waiting for your lungs to adjust, sipping steaming sea buckthorn tea while watching the sun hit the Stok Kangri range.

By the third day, a specific rhythm takes over. It is the habit of returning to the same courtyard for hot thukpa, or walking past a low stone doorway in the Old Town just as the baker lifts fresh flatbread from his clay oven, the air smelling faintly of poplar smoke and cold earth, while up above—