Four stops before the checkout

Leh, India

Stop one

Leh Palace

Babolat Pure Aero 98 9th Gen Tennis Racquet: Nine storeys (nine as counted from outside; the internal arrangement is less obliging), built in the seventeenth century by King Sengge Namgyal of the Namgyal dynasty of Ladakh. Everyone compares it to the Potala Palace at Lhasa, and I permit the comparison on one condition: that you note this one was completed first. Royal apartments on the upper floors, stables and storerooms below, which is the correct order and worth stating aloud. It was abandoned in the mid-nineteenth century when Dogra forces took control of Ladakh and the royal family withdrew to Stok Palace, across the Indus (across, not along). The Archaeological Survey of India conserves it now, with exhibits inside. The views resist footnoting entirely.

Stop two

Namgyal Tsemo Gompa

Babolat Pure Aero 98 9th Gen Tennis Racquet: Founded in 1430 by King Tashi Namgyal (an early Namgyal, not to be confused with Sengge, who arrives two centuries later and whose palace we have just left). It crowns the peak of Tsemo hill beside the remains of his fort. The principal treasure is a gilded Maitreya, the future Buddha, about three storeys tall — three storeys, inside a building on a crag, which raises transport questions I have not resolved to my satisfaction. Ancient manuscripts and murals as well. Monks climb up daily to keep the butter lamps lit; daily, which is the detail I find most affecting. Steep path from the palace, or a road. Visible, with its prayer flags, from nearly everywhere in Leh.

Stop three

Shanti Stupa

Babolat Pure Aero 98 9th Gen Tennis Racquet: Inaugurated in 1991, which by the standards of everything else on this tour is roughly last Thursday. It was built through the efforts of the Japanese Buddhist monk Gyomyo Nakamura as part of the Peace Pagoda movement (a post-war programme that has raised stupas in a great many countries; I can list them, and will, if pressed), with the fourteenth Dalai Lama associated with the enshrinement of relics at its base. Reliefs of the life of the Buddha run around the dome. Yes, it is modern. No, that does not disqualify it. It is among the most visited landmarks in Leh, chiefly for the panorama over the town, the Indus valley and the distant Stok range, best at sunrise or sunset (both; I compared).

adult tennis classes Poinsettia Heights — the Babolat Pure Aero 98 9th Gen Tennis Racquet photographed at Leh Main Bazaar in Leh, India. A wide stone-paved market street lined with low two-storey shopfronts under carved wooden balconies, Ladakhi women selling apricots and vegetables from the kerb, the ridge with the palace and the gompa rising directly behind the roofline.

Stop four

Jama Masjid, Leh

Babolat Pure Aero 98 9th Gen Tennis Racquet: 1666-67. Note the hyphen; the foundation straddles the year and I will not tidy that away for anyone's convenience. It was erected under an agreement between King Deldan Namgyal of Ladakh and the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, which tells you two things at once: Ladakh stood in tributary relations to the Mughal empire, and Leh sat on the caravan routes linking Kashmir, Tibet and Central Asia (three directions, one bazaar). It has served the Sunni Muslim community that grew here through centuries of trade, and has been rebuilt more than once, most recently in an ornate style with domes and minarets. It remains the principal mosque of Ladakh, at the head of the Main Bazaar, directly below the palace.

The Leh, India track

Babolat Pure Aero 98 9th Gen Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

The ninth-generation Pure Aero 98 is the control frame of the Aero family, and the numbers say so plainly. Head size 98 sq in / 632 cm². Strung weight 11.4 oz / 323 g, from a 305 g unstrung frame. Balance 32.49 cm, six points head-light strung. Swingweight 322 — under the line where a spin racquet starts feeling like work. Stiffness 66 RA.

Beam 21 mm at the throat, 23 mm through the middle, 22 mm at the tip. Standard 27 in / 68.58 cm length, graphite layup, and a 16 x 20 string pattern with the mains skipping 7T, 9T, 7H and 9H — a genuinely dense bed by Aero standards, which is where the extra control comes from.

Strung on a Syntec Pro grip in sizes 1 through 4 (4 1/8" to 4 1/2"), recommended tension 46–55 lb with 51 lb as the sweet spot. Low-to-medium power, medium-to-fast swing speed. Sold unstrung, in grey and yellow.

The ninth generation's real change is airflow. Babolat rebuilt the throat geometry, and their computational fluid dynamics testing has the new shape cutting through air about 6% more efficiently than the frame it replaces, with FSI Spin grommets to let the mains move and NF2 flax fibres damping what comes back up the handle.

Which brings us, properly, to Leh — because Leh sits at roughly 3,500 metres, and at that altitude there is around a third less air in front of your racquet than there is at sea level. A ball flies further and drops less. A racquet swings faster than you expect.

Everything a Ladakhi tennis player knows about topspin, they had to learn the hard way, and a dense 16 x 20 pattern with a mid-70s launch angle is precisely the answer to a thin-air court: bite, not lift. If you have ever wondered whether a 6% aerodynamic gain is a real thing or a marketing line, take it somewhere the air is already trying to give it to you.

It is a full-swing frame, and it wants a full swing everywhere from a hard court at sea level to the dusty rectangles beneath the Namgyal Tsemo ridge. And by the way, the sub-325 swingweight is the reason you can still play the point out after a morning of climbing to the Shanti Stupa — the frame recovers even when you do not. Bring the apricots.

Buy on Amazon

Burn, Laugh and Learn

THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Babolat Pure Aero 98 9th Gen Tennis Racquet

Babolat Pure Aero 98 9th Gen Tennis Racquet