Hello again. It’s only been a couple of weeks since our last update, but as usual, in our super-cool lives of high drama and fascinating adventure, a lot has happened.

After the excruciatingly long, worst bus ride of our lives (until this week that is) we arrived in Leh, the capital of Ladakh. As I mentioned in our last entry, Ladakh is a Buddhist kingdom that is culturally and racially related to Tibet and isn’t really Indian at all. We’re seeing that India isn’t really a country as such. It’s more of a union along the lines of the EU, comprised of people with completely different cultures, religions and races. For all of it’s faults, and plenty of inter-cultural violence, you could say that India does a pretty good job of maintaining a semblance of unity amongst it’s many differing peoples.

Ladakh was, until the 1970’s almost completely cut off from the rest of the world. The Himalayas make a pretty good obstacle to exploration or tourism and as a result, much of this region is largely unchanged by the modern world. You heard about the road that we came in on. It is only open for about 4 months of the year. The other road, which is marginally better, is only open for maybe half the year. There’s now a daily flight to Leh, which is steadily bringing in more tourists, including more and more domestic tourists. Even still, it’s quite secluded.

Ladakh is very very dry, getting no more rain than the Sahara desert. The mountains are parched, dusty things, as are we after spending 3 weeks in the area. Leh is at 3500 metres above sea level and much of the surrounding villages are even higher. At this altitude, the winters are bitterly cold, and the summers (i.e. now) are very hot. The sun is scorching, with the bluest skies imaginable. It’s a very harsh climate. But, the people, having adapted over thousands of years have managed to turn the narrow valleys into oases of green and life. Barley, the staple crop along with a few vegetables, berries and some fruit trees, are able through complex, ancient systems of irrigation, to flourish. Nomads roam the valleys with their herds of goats, sheep and yaks in search of the best pasture land before returning home to sit out the winter months.

This is one of the most ancient strongholds of Buddhism in the world, and the religion has practically remade the landscape. 1000 year old, crumbling stupas dot the hillsides and the sides of roads. Prayer flags fly over all of the villages and towns. Every few kilometres there is a monastery Some of the architecture is amazing. The designers of the buildings tended to choose the highest, most inaccessible mountainsides to build on. While definitely imposing and having great views, the monks must have to put their teachings of patience to good use while climbing the thousands of stairs and enduring the whipping winds of those staggering heights. As is usual in Buddhist temples, everyone is welcome to visit and to poke their noses into most nooks and crannies around the sometimes maze-like complexes. Unlike the modern temples that we visited in Dharamsala, the gompas in Ladakh have been in use for centuries, and often don’t look as if they’ve taken the time to clean them during that entire time. The prayer rooms are often dark, windowless places, with blackened ceilings, walls from the burning of millions of butter lamps over the years. Not to mention the smell of millions of butter lamps. Gompas, and many monks sure have a smell. It’s not a bad smell as such. But kind of a lingering buttery smell. I don’t mean to say that the gompas are dirty, because they aren’t. They just seem very well used. Even the monks robes are quite worn in. You can tell that things have been repainted from time to time and we got to witness a shockingly bad whitewashing of one temple, but one does get the feeling that there’s a slow decay going on. That may not be the case of course, because things seem solid enough, but the buildings do seem to be not unlike old men, and tend to sag a little. I realize that I’m not painting a very nice picture here… Actually all of these things: The darkness, the smells, the lived-in feel all add nicely to what must be a fairly accurate window into the past. The feeling of isolation is really felt in the gompas. You can just tell that some of the monks, especially the young ones haven’t ever ventured very far from the monastery. The monks are of course, terribly friendly and are happy to chat, even if their English is generally quite bad. Unfortunately the lack of light in the gompas doesn’t really lend well to photographic evidence of our visits, so you’ll have to make due with my good word.

We based ourselves in Leh, the capital, which unlike the surrounding villages, has embraced the tourist hordes. Or perhaps the tourists invaded and the locals are attempting to adjust accordingly. There’s dozens of pizza places, the usual “multi-cuisine” restaurants, German bakeries, internet cafes, travel agents and souvenir shops. Leh is actually quite multicultural, as the Kashmiris, the ultimate businessmen, have also settled in town, bringing with them their carpet and shawl shops as well as the Muslim religion. There are a couple of nice mosques in town. There are also quite a few Hindu migrant workers thrown into the mix, although I haven’t yet seen a Hindu temple. Of course there are also a lot of Tibetan refugees living here too. This being part of the state of Kashmir, with all of it’s troubles, as well as being the border with Tibet (or China as they like to call it these days) there’s an enormous military presence. The surrounding areas are full of army bases and thousands upon thousands of Indian soldiers in all their moustachioed glory.

Parts of Leh are modern-ish, but there’s also falling apart stone walls, windy streets with goats being herded down them, the imposing, ruined palace and small streams running along the roads, crumbling (I need a thesaurus) stupas down dead end streets. It’s all so… ancient. It’s wonderful. And being a Buddhist place, one has the feeling that you are able to walk anywhere, and at any time of day and still remain safe. (On our trek there was a question about leaving our things unguarded in the tents. Our cook was very quick in telling us that for Buddhists, stealing was shameful and that we didn’t need to worry.) Indeed many streets are very dark at night, and this being India, the electricity fails often so getting over any fear of dark streets is a must. The people themselves are also very interesting. Like their Tibetan cousins they are extremely friendly, smiling, gentle people. Their clothing is also like that from a different world. The women have long, braided hair that is tied together at the ends. They wear strange pointy hats with ear-like flaps on the side. Many of the ladies wear sheep skins around their waists. The men often wear long dark coats tied with a single pink sash. Oh, and the shoes. Thick soled moccasin-looking things with a huge curled toe is very much the fashion. If one steps off the tourist strip, the shops are full of strange, medieval looking clothing and prayer paraphernalia. Even the shops themselves are dark, almost gloomy places filled from floor to ceiling in dusty, tarnished, weird items like yak tails and turquoise head-dresses. Down these streets there are also places making clothing dye, tiny 2 metre square workshops where jewellers are smelting gold for jewellery. There’s grisly Muslim butchers with goat heads laid out on display. It really is like something out of a fantasy novel. Or perhaps a bit like in Harry Potter where he goes shopping for new magic school supplies. And this is the most modern place in Ladakh.

We visited one monastery where the bus was packed with what we found out was a family that was going to celebrate the promotion of one of their monk cousins. Michaela gave up her seat for one Ladakhi lady and decided to sit on my lap. She spent the rest of the trip assuring the lady that my lap was indeed fine and that no, it was not necessary to sit on hers for a while. Lovely people. After we visited the monastery, we saw the same group of people, plus a couple of dozen more enjoying lunch and tea. They waved us down and proceeded to ply us with cups of butter tea (which Michaela despises) and were very disappointed to hear that we had already eaten. Butter tea, which consists of tea, salt and of course butter is definitely an acquired taste, but is a favourite amongst the Tibetans and Ladakhis and is also used as a way to put on much need fat during the winter. Luckily for us, Ladakhis love to have their photos taken and get much joy out of laughing at each other’s faces in our digital cameras. Even the old people, who normally don’t want you pointing that strange device in their faces get a huge kick out of pointing and laughing at themselves. One lady even gave her photo a typical hand-to-forehead Ladakhi greeting when she saw her face in the camera.

We really wanted to do some trekking here. We visited some of the dozens and dozens or trekking agencies but were slightly put off by the prices. Although a popular place to trek, there isn’t the infrastructure of say, Nepal, so tents, food and cooking equipment, and someone to carry it all is often needed. We liked the look of a trek to Zanskar, which was meant to be even more isolated than Ladakh, but the prices that we were getting were quite outrageous. Finally we met some people that had trekked extensively in the area and they informed us that we didn’t need a guide and that we could simply hire horses and a cook if we wanted. We thought that this was a great idea and this also took the price down by half. So, we booked the trip with an agency and waited a couple of days to head out. In the meantime two more people: Ken, from Canada and Erika from Switzerland also joined the group, so the price came down even more and we prepared to head out. We planned to trek for 10 days from Lamayuru, famous for what else, it’s gompa, to Padum, the main city in the region known as Zanskar. Erika was quite a seasoned trekker and Ken was a pretty hardcore outdoorsy type that had been trekking solo around the area for the past month, so our team was in quite good shape. We also had Tibetans Tenzing, the cook-cum-guide (India loves to use cum for everything. Bus-cum-deathtrap for example.) and Sonam, the helper. Cook-cum-guide means he’s a cook that speaks English and will help out with a few things but isn’t really about to tell you what the different plants and animals are. And Sonam, although older and more experienced was the helper simply because his English wasn’t so good. We were also expecting to see a few ponies and a couple of pony men once we arrived closer to Lamayuru. Although quite close in distance, perhaps 100 km, the trip to Lamayuru takes around 5 hours and is of the type that we drove on from Manali. At a couple of points there were the inevitable traffic jams and even one time where two pig-headed truck drivers refused to pull over for the other on the narrow road, so we had wait while they shouted and glared at each other before one finally gave in and let the whole convoy of uphill going traffic pass by the downhill going traffic. We got our first taste of Ken’s proactive approach to these sort of problems as he immediately hopped out of the jeep and started berating the truck drivers for not following the rules of the road.

We finally arrived and the boys (that will be Tenzing and Sonam) dumped us at Lamayuru and they drove on ahead to Wan La where they got things set up for our first night. We visited the gompa, which was again, ancient and crumbling, and wonderfully perched on the side of a mountain. Unfortunately there weren’t many monks in attendance, so the place was quite quiet. We trekked that day for only a few hours over a route that Ken had already walked a few days before so he acted as our guide for the afternoon. It was quite an easy walk and we only had one small pass to make it over before we arrived in the tiny, green little village of Wan La where we camped the night. After dinner, the boss at the agency made a surprise appearance to tell us that there was a problem with our horses and that we would be getting donkeys instead. However, they wouldn’t be available the next day as planned and would we mind hanging around for the day. We didn’t mind, so we visited the gompa, which was again very quiet, but extremely peaceful and commanded great views over the village. When I say the village was tiny, I mean that it had perhaps 20 or 30 homes, so it wasn’t very big. The next day the boss was still hanging around and looking quite stressed. Our donkeys had pulled out. Finally that evening he returned to assure us that everything had been sorted and donkeys were on the way. The next day we awoke to find six fuzzy, miniature beasts standing no more than a metre high at the shoulder, plus one youngster that was perhaps three quarters the size of the others. They sure were cute, but didn’t really look up to the job of carrying all of our gear over the mountains for the next 9 days. Plus, we were told that we were going to have six horses, not six toy-like donkeys. The donkey men were as well a bit of a worry. One of them who looked to be in his late 40’s looked all right, but his partner, in his 60’s with his weathered Ladakhi jacket, purple woolly cap, grizzled face, and moon-goggles didn’t look all that sturdy. However, we were assured, with a phrase that we were to hear innumerable times over the next few days, that there would be “no problem.”

The next day was to be quite easy. 5 or 6 hours partly down a paved road to the village of Hanupata. The donkeys were quite slow, but we saw that the donkey men had stopped to pick up some supplies so we thought they would be okay. They then had a bit of trouble crossing the first bridge – donkeys are stubborn – but made it in the end. Things got a bit more troublesome after that. The road turned into road building, and the donkeys didn’t like it very much. They refused to go over the tiniest of rocky patches and even started collapsing under what seemed to be overly heavy loads. Soon we were one person to every two donkeys, pushing, pulling, yelling and slapping them along the way. Even the older donkey man was on the verge of collapse. Ken, who had a bit of experience with donkey trekking was telling the guys to let one lead donkey go and to let the other others follow without us interfering and that they would follow like a little train. The donkey men weren’t having it, so Ken got pissed off and walked on ahead. We soon tired of pushing the donkeys and walked on as well. We arrived in the village where we were invited to butter tea and tsampa in one of the villagers houses. Tsampa is a barley meal that is the staple food in the area. Normally it is served dry, like flour. Try eating a spoonful of flour and you see how fun that is. It doesn’t taste bad though, and all Tibetans and Ladakhis will go on about how powerful tsampa is. Fortunately it is also often mixed with tea and formed into a kind of dough which makes it easier to eat. People also dump it into their tea or into chang which is a homemade barley beer. More on the chang later. After about an hour of relaxing and tea drinking, the older donkey man made an appearance to tell us that the donkeys weren’t moving and that he needed help. We went down, helped to motivate the donkeys, and 3 hours behind schedule made it to camp.

All of this donkey business was very worrying for us. Our donkeys looked half dead, as did our donkey wallah. (wallah in Hindi means something like man as in the tea shop man is called the chai wallah) We decided to hold a meeting with our donkey wallahs with Tenzing as the translator. This is where working with Asians gets difficult. All sorts of cultural barriers go up. Tenzin The donkey wallah, not wanting to lose face kept assuring us that tomorrow there would be no problems, despite us continually enquiring with what-ifs about possible disaster scenarios. After resigning ourselves to the fact that there wasn’t much we could do but give them another day and making sure that both the donkeys and the donkey wallahs (who seemed more concerned with drinking chang than eating) were fed, we laughed, shrugged our shoulders and hoped for a better tomorrow.

The next was indeed a bit easier, although the donkeys were still quite slow and seemed to be struggling a bit. At one point we stopped to wait for them to catch up and talked to a German couple that were coming the other way. They were kitted out in very nice trekking gear and had lovely looking horses. We told them all about our donkey troubles and were taking bets on when they would arrive. Finally they crested the hill and plodded towards us. The lead donkey, who we were trumpeting as the only decent member of the bunch ambled towards us and proceeded to collapse in an exhausted heap directly in front of the German woman. How embarrassing yet sadly funny that was. We definitely appeared to be on the low-budget trek. The donkeys rested for a while, the wallahs drank some chang and everyone moved on again. Eventually we arrived at our camp site which was set in a lush little valley beside a swiftly running stream. The donkeys were unpacked and they were soon off eating and drinking away the dust. Within a few minutes they were frolicking about, so we were quite content that things would be ok. A bit slow, but all right.

That evening the donkey wallah, perhaps in a bid to improve our relationship, told us that there was a wedding in the village up the valley and that we should come and check it out. Ken and I decided to go along. We went into a small village, that was perched magically on a cliff overlooking the valley. As at all villages that we were to encounter, there was no electricity, no running water, no modern conveniences of any kind. The nearest road was over a day’s walk away. We followed the donkey man into a dark building that was obviously used to store animals, then up some stairs to the first floor and where the people lived. I know I keep going on about how archaic things are here, but this was incredible. There was a dried ram’s head hanging on the wall, dirt floors, a clay stove where yak dung was being burned for fuel (there are next to no trees for miles around.) The wall was stacked floor to ceiling with pots and pans of all shapes and sizes. Huge copper basins apparently used for winter water storage were stacked along one wall. Bent photos of family members covered the soot blackened walls – there was no chimney. A couple of pots bubbled on a gas cooker. A small child slept in one corner on a pile of blankets. We sat down on a small blanket covered wooden bench behind a low table – most people sit on, or very near the floor. Our idea of using a table for cutting food or doing household chores is not something that has generally caught on in Asia where the floor does the job nicely. The man of the house came in and started to pour us some very fresh chang. There was a large bucket full of moist, fermenting barley, of which he scooped out a pitcher. He then poured through some water, which came out quite thick, almost green from the barley. Our cups were filled and the drinking began. Chang is quite tasty. Almost like a cheapish white wine or perhaps (at a stretch) like German white beer. I’d guess that it has about the same alcohol content as light beer. It’s not really something that one buys, but is instead served at festivals or to guests. Soon, a woman that appeared to be the man’s mother appeared and she soon took over the task of making sure that we kept drinking, whether we wanted to or not. She also brought out a silver bowl full of tsampa that we were urged to mix in with our beer. A steady stream of people came in and out of the house and the donkey men gave quite a few people small gifts of tea or biscuits. I’m not sure what this was all about. Perhaps it was payment for letting the donkeys graze near the village.

After a while, when we were feeling quite good we said our goodbyes and made our way to the actual wedding party. It was more of a pre-wedding party and we were ushered into a more formal setting with people sat around the perimeter of a well laid out room drinking more chang and eating from numerous bowls stacked high with tsampa. This time there were about three women on chang duty and we found it hard to say no. If we let our cups stay full for any amount of time there was a stern look from one of the women urging us to drink. We didn’t stay for long, but during that time gallons of chang were being brought in and dished out by the women.

The next morning was happily hangover free. As we were packing up our tents we could hear the distant sound of drums. Coming down the valley we could see a procession of horses and men wearing elaborate costumes and hats. Thinking that this was another part of the wedding party we rushed to check things out. The men invited us to follow them to the village where there was an obvious buzz around the village. There was a tent set up, people were rushing about carrying pots of food, chairs, tables, pots full of chang. Awaiting the men was a large group of women holding a large tree as a barrier against their entry into town. They shouted and waved branches theatrically at the group in a playful attempt to keep them out of town. We assumed that this was part of the ceremony whereby the groom’s party was attempting to take the bride from her village. A small musical group consisting of horns and drums was playing music and the men started to perform ceremonial dances in an attempt to convince the women to let them pass. Needless to say, ridiculous amounts of chang were poured. Even the musicians’ horns had the drink poured through them, to the obvious detriment of their tuning. All of the people in this village were of course wearing very traditional clothing of the kind described earlier. It was like watching something out of a fairy tale. We felt very lucky to see this; even as mere spectators. That’s another thing that was great. We were completely ignored. Actually everyone that passed us gave us smiles and waves of “juley.” but other than that, no one even looked at us, unlike in the rest of India when you have what seems like a sea of people constantly peering into your face.

Eventually we pressed on with the trek. That morning Michaela wasn’t feeling that well at all and after a few hours of stumbling up the mountain trail and almost falling asleep on her feet, she couldn’t go on. We made an early camp while she slept on the grass, only waking up when a donkey, in very Indian style, parked beside her and stared her into waking up.

The next day, Michaela was fine and we kept moving. We had a big day, walking for around 9 hours and crossing our highest pass at around 5000 metres. We had no problems and made it to Lingshet, which is a beautiful village and gompa. We had to time to visit the monastery where one of the monks showed some of the rooms, including a newly painted hall with amazing murals. After our visit we waited for the donkeys. Finally after around two hours they arrived, completely shattered. Unfortunately this camp site was very very dry and there was no grass for them to eat. The disappointment on their fuzzy donkey faces was painfully obvious. Ken, in an attempt to save us from a terrible following day paid the donkey man to go into the village to buy some food. Eventually he returned foodless, but what can assume, filled up with chang. Luckily though, our donkey men finally saw sense and worked out a deal with some horsemen to pick up the remainder of the trip. The next morning we had 2 professional looking horsemen and 6 big, healthy looking horses.

With everything running smoothly now, I suppose I should tell you a bit about the actual scenery that we were seeing. As I said, most of Ladakh, and adjoining district of Zanskar are very very dry. There’s next to no rain here. The mountains are for the most part, brown or grey parched monsters. The valleys are, after centuries of work, green with fields of barley and watered by an intricate irrigation network. The mountains are big. Many over 5000 metres, and we crossed numerous passed at around this height. At the beginning and end of the trek we walked through sweeping, smooth looking valleys the scales of which are quite difficult to perceive from my photos. As I said, there are no roads whatsoever. This area is completely cut off from the outside world. The roads are the same trails that we have been walking, and are of course only open for a few months of the year. The rest of the year these people are literally stuck in their villages. During the middle few days we crossed the more rugged mountains where most of the time we seemed to be closed in between one peak and the next. The paths aren’t exactly smooth, and are at times only narrow tracks running along the side of a very steep cliff. The middle peaks were more colourful, appearing green or red or brown. And despite the dry climate there was no shortage of flowers, including huge bushes full of aromatic, pink roses. All of the villages are terribly beautiful. The houses are big and of the same square design. They are all of mud brick painted white with black or red trim, with the roofs piled high with straw or sticks as insulation. The houses are surrounded by green fields of barley or vegetables. Nearly every village has it’s own gompa perched on the surrounding mountains. At times we saw herds of yaks being led to the high pastures by groups of nomads.

The tops of all the passes are decorated with stupas covered with a tangle of prayer flags fluttering in the wind.. Stupas also appear at random places along the trail, and more so around the villages. Low wide, flat stone walls covered with carved stones depicting deities or Buddhist scriptures called mani usually indicate that a village is near. Sometimes the scale of the mani walls is incredible. There may be walls that are totally covered with flat stones, beautifully carved that stretch far off into the distance. It is custom to walk around religious articles in a clockwise fashion. As such, the trail would often divert from it’s direct route to take in a small pile of rocks upon which someone had laid some mani stones.

The trek itself was quite tough. I wouldn’t say it was impossibly hard, but it sure wasn’t easy. We had many high passes and at times the trail was quite rocky. It sure wasn’t the Annapurna trek in Nepal, where most of the path was a stone trail and we could expect tea ever hour or so.

After a few days of crossing the rugged bit in the middle of the trek, we emerged finally to flat land. The last couple of days were spent walking along the side of the Zanskar river, through it’s wide valley. In the distance we could see the Himalayan range with it’s more classic snow-capped, rocky peaks. We were lucky enough to have another village stop where one of the horsemen invited us for tea and chang at his house.

On the second last day of the trek we stopped in the village of Karsha, which is also famous for it’s gompa. We camped in the pleasant garden of a village house where we prepared for our last meal together. While Tenzing prepared his 9 course meal, we visited the gompa. Most of the monks were out in a neighbouring village preparing for a puja but one pointed hatted lama was kind enough to show us around the place. He was also happy to pose for photos with the girls. Bizarrely as we were ascending the insanely steep climb to the main hall, we were stopped by a French woman living in the monastery. She had been spending the last 3 years, off and on, staying with the monks. She gave us tea and freshly made banana and pineapple pie! And they say that Zanskar is one of the most isolated places on earth…

Our 9 course meal turned out to be excellent, as did the 3 bottles of rum that washed it down. The horsemen and Sonam sang us Ladakhi and Tibetan songs while Tenzing, the youngest of the bunch entertained us with Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears tunes. We knew it was time for bed when the normally sure-footed Sonam nearly fell over and the party finished up.

The next morning, we were woken at 5:00am by a man chanting outside of our tents. Actually Ken had the worst of it as the man was chanting next to his face as he had decided to sleep outside. The mantras went on for an hour and a half, and we never did find out who he was or why he was there.

We decided that we wanted to check out the big puja that had drained the surrounding monasteries of their monks. We hopped a jeep for the final leg of the journey, said our goodbyes to Sonam and Tenzing, who were heading back to Leh, and made our way to a village called Soni, where the puja was being held.

The Soni gompa was a small one. As was the village where it resided. It seemed that the entire village had turned out to enjoy not only the religious aspects of the puja, but also it seemed, to use the day as an excuse to visit with friends and family. There were hundreds of people sitting in the fields, eating food or walking around and around… and around the gompa. Dozens of monks, including a lot of bored, mischievous young boys sat and prayed inside the temple, taking turns to come out for fresh air, to help pass out food and tea or simply to get a change of scenery. Yaks and dzomos were donated to the temple, and the younger monks were put in charge of tying them to trees in public display for their auctioning. The monks costumes were slightly different to those we had seen in Ladakh. The red robes were of course the same as other Tibetan monks, but the Zanskar monks and nuns liked to wear tall hats with curly ear pieces attached to them. As part of the formal ceremonies that included processions and music, some monks wore enormous yellow, curled hats and banged on drums and blew trumpets. Towards the evening, the processions made their way out and around the village where a monk dressed as a wrathful deity danced and smashed small figures formed from tsampa dough. He even threw a couple of arrows and even a knife into the delighted crowd. Even during these apparently solemn ceremonies, the people couldn’t keep themselves from constantly laughing and giggling with each other.

We ended our trek in the town of Padum, which is the main centre in Zanskar. Although the centre of the known universe in these parts, there isn’t more than a dusty road, and some rather average restaurants. The bus back to Leh only left once every 2 or 3 days, so we rested ourselves in a leafy guest house for a couple of days while we waited. As is fairly common in Indian, interesting people appeared before us and we spent a few hours being given an informal teaching on healing by a sort of new-age Thai monk.

The bus back to Leh was quite special. The first leg of the journey started out at 2:00am and took us over a back breaking gravel road for 16 hours to Kargil, near the Pakistan border. The seats were rigidly one pieced, and interestingly upholstered in the same material as London buses. Westerners were not in mind when this bus was designed, and my knees had to be forcibly squeezed into the seat. The aisles were packed solid with bags of unknown goods, so stretching out was a bit of a … stretch. Understandably we were quite tired and anxious to get to Kargil. Unfortunately as often happens, things don’t go quite as you would like and there were innumerable passport checks along the way to slow us down. This is Kashmir, which is quite a volatile region, so the army prescense was visible. However, the passport checks were absurd. Only westerners were recorded, forget about protecting the locals. We repeatedly asked why we had to turn in our passports, but not one person could tell us. The questions differed at each stop and the word “Austria” was so badly mangled at every checkpoint that we figured that this was pointless. Eventually a few of us tired of filling in our details, so we stopped doing it. This was the one time that they actually counted us in the bus and got quite annoyed that we didn’t want to cooperate. They still couldn’t answer why we had to fill the forms in, but for the sake of the rest of the bus we cooperated. It really bothered us that we are expected to blindly hand over personal details without question. But as is often the case in India if you ask a question, you shouldn’t expect an answer. At least not one that makes any sense. The way however was very beautiful. A lot greener than the landscape on our trek, and as a result there were large herds of animals grazing along the way. We even saw a couple of yaks swimming across the freezing, fast flowing rivers.

Finally we arrived in Kargil, which had the feeling of a transit city. It is populated almost entirely of Muslims as were the past few villages that we passed through. Michaela complained of having male eyes following her around as we walked the main street looking for something to eat; something that never happened in any of the Buddhist areas. Actually, like Hindu India, this part of India had almost no one but males on the street. And even the smallest of little girls were covered with head scarves.

The last 10 hours to Leh were better as there were less people in the bus and we could spread ourselves a bit. It was rather uneventful as the road was a bit better and the scenery less spectacular.

For the last few days we rested ourselves in a very nice little guest house in Leh, preparing for our departure from India. Yesterday we flew to Delhi. We’ve had enough of buses. Before we boarded our plane, we had to go through quite rigorous security procedures. Cleverly, the airport authorities hired Ladakhis for the job. We were given smiles all around as we passed. One man even gave us two-handed handshakes and “god bless you’s” as we passed through the checks.

We’re now trying to adjust back into Indian life. It’s extremely hot and humid. It’s filthy, stinky, loud, and Indians are still weirdos. It hasn’t changed much.

So, that’s about it for India. It’s hard to come up with any sort of conclusions about it. We obviously still haven’t worked it out. It’s a place where a man can walk naked down the street and no one will even glance, while a woman’s shoulders will turn men into slobbering animals. There are so many awful, completely unconscious people yet there are some absolutely highly advanced beings as well. It’s terrible and fantastic at the same time. We hate it more than anything, but love it above any other place too. It’s definitely a special place and we’ll miss it a great deal. We just don’t want to hurry back.

Tomorrow we head to Nepal for the last leg of our journey. Most of it will be spent in meditation centres, so I’m not sure how many stories of fabulous action we’ll have for you, but I’ll try to come up with something.

Just a reminder that I will be in Canada from the 12^th - 30^th of August and Michaela will be in Austria at the same time. That means we’ll be back in London on the 31^st of August, looking for a flat, jobs and important things like mobile phone providers.

Oh yes photos of Leh are HERE

And photos of our trek are HERE

Until next time

Michaela y Len

Categories: India, Travel
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Hello,

Please make sure that you read the entry below this one first!

After Dharamsala we took one of those wonderful Indian night buses to Manali. Along the way, the driver stopped for food (he was the only one eating, as everyone else had logically eaten before the 20:30 bus) at a roadside restaurant where there were so many flying insects that all of the pot covers were drowning in dead bugs.

We arrived very tired to Manali, which is a place that we weren’t that much looking forward to visiting as we had heard that it would be swarming with tourists, many of which were here to sample the famous Manali charas which is harvested from fields of naturally growing marijuana plants. As happens quite often, what we expected and what was actually the case were two different things. Manali is a typical hill station made awful by overcrowding, noise, cars, over-development and obnoxious tourists. However, Old Manali, where most of the backpackers head is beautiful. There are pockets of guest houses and cafes scattered along a mountainside, overlooking a valley of orchards. There are wild looking pine forests and the old town still has more farm houses than guest houses. The people are very different from normal Indians. They have quite pale skin, dress completely different, and are very amiable. Most of them seemed to be farmers. We saw quite a few women carrying in bundles of grain that they would beat by hand in the front yards of their fantastic stone and timber houses. The architecture in Manali was also very traditional, unlike the ugly concrete block buildings in most other towns. Even the town’s temple was wooden and had the feel of an Alpine log cabin.

We spent a couple of days walking in the hills, enjoying the silence and fresh air, and I caught my one and only Euro 2008 match. Croatia 2 – Germany 1.

Our reason for being in Manali was to catch the bus northwards on to Ladakh on the famous Manali – Leh road. The road is famous because it goes through some of the most inhospitable landscapes on earth. It’s quite a feat of engineering on the part of the Indian army that crosses deserts and rivers. There are parts where the snow has been shovelled out by hand so that the road seems to pass between enormous walls of snow. There are passes of over 5000 metres, including Taglang La, the world’s second highest motorable pass at 5328m. The road is only open for the summer, leaving Leh closed up except for air passengers for a good part of the year.

We opted for the “deluxe” tourist bus that was meant to take 2 days to reach Leh. We woke up on the first morning at around 4:30 to get the bus for 6:00. the first part of the trip took us towards Rohtang La, where many Indian tourists make a day trip to get their first glimpse of snow. As is the norm with most tourist destinations popular with Indians, the road up was incredibly clogged with traffic. It took us the best part of 6 hours to make it about 40km. If I leave with one memory of India it will be of white taxi-jeeps, belching out black exhaust and crammed sardine-like with Indians. The stupid thing is that all of the vehicles, even when parked for 30 minutes, would be idling. And as tune-ups don’t seem to happen very often here, even the newest cars are puffing black smoke. We thought we would die of carbon monoxide poisoning on the side of a mountain. Only in India could this happen.

The road up to the pass was lined with hundreds, if not thousands of shops renting out 1980’s neon winter gear for the Indian tourists to suit up with in preparation for the “extreme” cold up ahead. In reality the temperature was probably around 20C on the road, and perhaps 10C at the top. Winter boots and snow-suits were definitely overkill. After crawling up the single lane road filled with two lanes of cars, jeeps, buses and trucks, we finally made it to the pass. We nearly pissed ourselves laughing to see what all the fuss was about. The snow was blackened by the throngs of vehicles spewing out exhaust, plus the dirt of spring. There were muddy, wind-blown tent restaurants with dirty plastic chairs and tables. A few scruffy ponies and yaks were being led in circles with Indian tourists atop them. Some makeshift sleds were being pushed down the snowy/muddy mountainside. It was hilarious. But, as is the case with most Indian tourists, the photo in the costume in front of the temple/mountain/foreigner is more important than the experience and they all looked decidedly pleased with their day out in the snow.

We were pretty pleased to leave the convoy of cars behind and to finally start making some progress. Our driver, in what would be a recurring theme over the next couple of days, was very reluctant to stop for food or pee breaks, instead choosing to drive like every other person, as fast as he could, riding the tail of trucks in front of him and constantly honking his horn, overtaking vehicles in the most dangerous places imaginable. Bear in mind that this road isn’t really a road as most people know roads. It was tarmacked in a few places but the vast majority of the “road” was nothing more than an incredibly rough dirt track. There were boulders in the road, enormous holes, 500m drop-offs, broken down vehicles, mud, snow and speeding vehicles. This is a road literally carved into the mountainside. It’s more of a donkey trail than a road, and definitely not one fit for anything less than a 4×4 or a beastly looking TATA truck or bus. (TATA is India’s biggest company making everything from 90% of the vehicles to tea, jewellery, steel, air conditioners, and insurance plus about a million other things. They’ve also recently purchased Land Rover and Jaguar as well as Corus, the former British Steel.)

Due to the morning’s traffic problem, we didn’t make it anywhere near our planned evening’s stop. At one point it had taken us 10 hours to go 71 km. We spent the first night in a tiny one room tent restaurant/hotel/shop/family home where we crammed, 20 of us or so into about 12 beds. The couples shared single beds, and yes, we still had to pay by the person. But, the family that ran the restaurant was very pleasant, and made us some good food and we had a great night’s sleep. It was by now that we noticed another change in the people. By now most people were looking more Tibetan in appearance, speaking Tibetan or Ladakhi instead of Hindi and were Buddhist instead of Hindu. Of course the clothing was now completely different as well. Instead of saris, the women wore long, warm looking layered outfits. Following the trend of other Buddhist peoples, they were also very smiley and laughed a lot. As is normally one’s first reaction when faced with what appears to be a very uncomfortable situation, we let out a few internal groans. However, seeing that this family of four shared 2 beds between them and literally lived in a tent made us think twice about how bad the situation really was. The older daughter, perhaps 12 years old, who was sleeping when we arrived, hopped out of bed, got dressed and soon set about taking orders from everyone while her father passed out blankets and the mother cooked food. The smallest daughter had the privilege of staying in bed.

The next morning we were woken up at 3:15, and we set off in the dark. We made one breakfast stop at 9:00 but then at around 12:00 the bus stopped. Once again there was a long convoy of vehicles backed up. By now there were only a few jeeps and dozens of trucks hauling diesel or supplies to the army bases tucked away in the valleys. It didn’t look like we were going anywhere soon, so we walked up ahead to check things out. There was another river to cross, but this time it was deep enough to be causing problems. One truck was stuck in the middle and a couple of jeeps were unable to cross either. The truck drivers looked like they were in no hurry, while the jeeps kept speeding to the front of the queue and trying their luck, unsuccessfully, to cross the river. We were assured by everyone that the army would soon be around to sort out the problem within the next couple of hours and to simply hang tight. The army did arrive, and there was much arm waving and pointing and paper rustling, but for the next few hours nothing was done. Finally at around 17:00, two big army trucks loaded with soldiers arrived. They started scouting out the situation. The line of trucks started firing up their engines, as they did once in while when it looked as if things had improved. The valley was soon choking in a cloud of smoke. I asked one Indian man why all cars in his country emitted such clouds of smoke, and he, perfectly seriously said that the smoke was not from exhaust, but was the army sending a smoke signal to indicate that there was a problem. O-K.

There was one enterprising man that tried to convince everyone that we could divert the raging torrent of a river so that we could make it shallow enough to cross. It was a rather pointless idea, but at least he was trying. A few of us got the idea to use the army trucks, which lifted like dump trucks to fill the river with stones in order to reduce the depth of the water. Unfortunately, at around that time the army, having crossed the river, decided to bugger off. They weren’t there to help at all. They were simply going the other way. Then of course all of the Indians said that, “well no, of course they weren’t here to help. It’s not their duty.” Bloody hell. People seem to have this belief in the idea that things will work themselves out. The westerners however, wanted to do something about the problem. We asked around for shovels, which no one had. Then we got bored and we too started trying to divert the river, which as I said earlier was pretty stupid. Finally it started to get too dark to do much, so we resigned ourselves to a cold, hungry night in the bus. We hadn’t eaten since the morning and were drinking river water. The truck drivers weren’t too worried and they started cooking themselves food inside their trucks. I saw flames nearly up to the ceilings of the cabs. In diesel trucks.

We dug out our warm clothing from our backpacks and got ready for bed. I should probably mention that we were at 4800 metres. Many people in our bus were suffering from altitude sickness, with headaches, nausea and even vomiting. And 4800 metres in the Himalayas in the spring is really cold. Needless to say we didn’t have the best of nights. It was freezing and the bus was very uncomfortable. Even we were getting headaches and every movement during the night made our heads feel like exploding.

Finally, the next morning at around 5:30, the trucks started firing up and we crept forward. The river had gone down to less than half the previous day’s level and the trucks were starting to force their way across. Finally we too were able to pass. Needless to say, we were very happy to be out of there. It’s not that the place was a bad one to pass the night. All of the trip up to then was through stunning scenery. Our night was spent in a canyon with high desert-like mountains all around us. It was beautiful. But we were cold, hungry, thirsty and wanted to get the hell out of there. Only about 10km down the mountain was a tent camp where we ate instant noodles for breakfast and sucked down what tasted like the best tea in the world.

From there, the road passed a large military base where most of the trucks were stopping and the way got even more barren. But at the same time more beautiful. We passed through vast flat plateaus with the mountains on view in all directions. There were nomads herding sheep and yaks. The road, when it wasn’t a goat trail snaking along the mountainside was really just a couple of tracks heading off across the plain. The scenery was absolutely amazing.

Finally we climbed up to the highest pass at something like 5100 metres where we stopped for 10 minutes for tea and photos. From there we started descending and only had one real delay where the army was widening the road and we had to wait for a few minutes. Finally, after asking our uncommunicative driver to stop for food, he was kind enough to let us have a lunch break at around 14:00. From there the road was easy going for the last 100 km or so to Leh. As we neared Leh, the landscape became more rugged and dry. The mountains were dotted with crumbling 1000 year old Buddhist stuppas and the highest cliffs held ancient monasteries. It was very surreal. Like something out of a fantasy novel about magic and cave hermits. Finally, at around 17:00, and only a day behind schedule, we arrived in Leh, the capital of the ancient, formerly off-limits kingdom of Ladakh. The Tibetans refer to Ladakh as something like the holy land. It’s a dream for many of them to come here. It’s an ancient land that is largely unchanged since thousands of years. Buddhism is the dominant culture here and the people are mainly of Ladakhi or Tibetan origin. It’s as if we had left India and arrived in some strange, hidden land. But more on that next time.

The trip to Leh was wonderful and horrific at the same time. Much like India. So many beautiful things to see. You just have to suffer to get to them.

By the way, here are some PHOTOS of our adventure.

So, we’re here now. Tomorrow we are off trekking for 10 days or so to Zanskar. We’re happy, safe and well-fed.

Len y Michaela

Categories: India, Travel
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