The first thing you'd probably hear, if you told people that you went to Ladakh are exclamations of awe & envy. A reaction that's not unwarranted. This would definitely qualify as one of the 100 places to visit before you die.

Looking back I was lucky, though it certainly didn't feel that way when we were there. We flew into the capital Leh in May, two months before the tourist season kicked in, in time to experience the remnants of one of the harshest winters the region had witnessed in 20 years. The biting cold, the sudden hailstorms, and the relentless wind - we were ill-equipped from the start. Many passes were still closed & supplies in stores were over a year old. Once out of Leh, we survived on biscuits, soup, and condiments that had outlived their expiry date.

Breathing is laboured there and that's putting it mildly. We were 15,000 feet above sea level - living on 40% oxygen. We were also saddled with heavy camera equipment, straining every oxygen-starved muscle in our body. Once I made the mistake of sprinting up a cliffside to steer clear of a gust of wind. When I reached the top it felt like a bunch of fingers were clutching my heart, a few squeezing my neck. Our producer and camera assistant couldn't make it beyond an evening at the high altitude Tsomoriri Lake. That was half the team down. Could we actually pull this off? My knees buckled as we walked for miles to shoot some of the most elusive birds in the wetlands. Lines were delivered between gasps of air, with lips peeling & bleeding. My cameraman caught a viral fever but continued to shoot - pumped with antibiotics.

Yes we pulled it off, all 20 minutes of it in striking technicolour. Ladkah is a beautiful place - harsh- but oh so beautiful. Beyond the snow-lined peaks and monasteries, much of which travel shows usually capture, is a whole other world of multi-coloured volcanic rocks, structures of ice in unimaginable patterns by the lakeside, and golden eagles soaring in a cobalt blue sky.

But amid all this, there were obvious signs of something gone amiss.

When I first heard about the Changpa tribals and the fact that a lot of their Pashmina goats died a few months ago, I didn't really know what to expect. Maybe grim stories of what this harsh winter had cost them. I certainly did not expect nomads holding out dead ewes to our camera, 3-month-old baby goats who'd succumbed to cold and lack of nutrition that very day. There was no pastureland wherever we looked, only ice.

When we travelled to Phyang, one of the 20 towns that was hit by flash floods in 2006 - it was a surreal sight. Imagine smooth land with gardens and vegetable patches, transformed overnight into a rocky barren surface. I saw boulders the size of cars. I'm told these came down with the floodwaters and tore down the houses, burying them in mud and silt.

There's no denying that the weather is out of whack in the rooftop of the world.

But what's scary is how ill-equipped the locals are to handle these changes. We're treading on eggshells when we talk about global warming. For every scientist that tells you that Ladkah is in the grip of a climate crisis, there are two who will vouch that the glaciers here have been receding for thousands of years, that there's nothing alarming about its current decline. They'll also add that there are perfectly natural explanations for the erratic weather patterns here.

But all I see are the changes it has wrought in this land, dying cattle, disappearing species, people losing their homes and livelihood. And the very real danger that these shrinking glaciers across the Himalayas spell doom for nine of Asia's largest rivers. If they dry out - that's more than two-thirds of India's water supply and agriculture threatened.

Ladkah then is only a starting point of a cascading crisis, that Ladkakis can barely comprehend, much less influence. But despite their hardships, the people there haven't stopped smiling. They've even coined this phrase - Ladkah ka mausam badalta hai, jaise Mumbai ka fashion - the humour, twinkling in their weathered eyes.

At the airport on my way back to Delhi it strikes me, it's the people here who really make this place so beautiful. Despite their problems, they welcomed us in to their homes, shared their stories, the warmth of their hearths, walked for miles with a thermos of tea - to feed weary travelers saddled with a ton of shooting equipment. It is for them I'll hope there is a solution at hand to this climate chaos. That if it is man-made, then there is something all the policy moves and global debates can actually achieve.