Glimpses - Manali to Leh

For all the advice that I got from people about traveling from Manali to Leh, I was still grossly unprepared. No no - I had all the pills for AMS (Acute Mountain Sickness), I had stuff for motion sickness, and I was even prepared for an upset stomach in the case of diarrhoea. But what I really needed, and what nobody told me that I would need so bad, was ... A CUSHION! Yes, that's what I mean - just a pillow or a cushion - or just something that takes all the bumps as a shock absorber. Because after 21 hours of riding a rickety Sumo on one of the world's toughest roads, my condition was worse than that of Sameer (Saif Ali Khan) in Dil Chahta Hai after he hitches a ride from Bombay to Goa on a truck. Hell it was worse than having 3 GPL's one after the other (if you don't know what GPL is, search for GPL and IIT Kanpur lingo on Google!). Anyways, it took me 3 days to recover before I could rent a bike and brace myself to being a road warrior again.

Anyways, coming back to the journey - it was a 21 hour marathon run which started at 2 am and finished at around 11 pm!! The driver took 3 breaks of around 20 mins each - other than that it was non-stop driving, rickety roads, loud music, and continuous charas smoking (not to mention the middle-aged guy behind me who would fall on my shoulders every few minutes coz he would fall asleep!!). So the taxi works this way: you pay according to the seat you want - the middle row seats are the highest - I paid Rs 1600 for mine in the middle row next to the window. Next come the front seats with the driver, and the cheapest are the 4 seats in the back (and you really need to have a stomach of a devil to not feel sick on those 4 seats). I had great company in the middle row - a frenchman and a kiwi. The Kiwi (his name was Obi) would be my travel partner for the next 5 days. The Frenchman, Remi, was a journalist in France, and was in Leh on a 4 month contract with a trekking agency to accompany French tourists on treks in the area - how I envy the guy - getting paid for trekking in some of the best trek routes in the world!!

Well to cut a long story short, I'll just have to present some pictures, because the beauty of the area is indescribable in words!!

This is the first stop that we made after starting from Manali - right after Rohtang Pass.




Some shots that I took from the Sumo ..


Can you believe that!! That's THREE HUNDRED AND SIXTY FIVE KILOMETRES!!!


Some more shots ..



That's Darcha - yes thats all of Darcha, one of the places for which we kept waiting 2 hours, and for which we were seeing milestones for about 70 km.

Just to give you an idea of how wide the road was ..

Some parting shots ..

Road warnings in Ladakh ..

.. are, well, hilarious to say the least. Most people in India have seen the ubiquitous "Speed Thrills But Kills" signpost amidst the speeding trucks and buses, and you might have seen some funny stuff written at the back of the trucks, but the official road warnings put up by the BRO (Border Roads Organisation) beat them all, probably just because of the fact that they are "official". Take for example - "Without hurry, no worry". Or - "With Whiskey, Driving is Risky". I wonder who writes all this stuff. Do they have like people sitting in the government thinking up all these 2 liners? :)

Below are some that I captured on camera, so you wouldn't think I was making them up (and there was a good chance you would have thought so!!)

Ummm, isn't that a little sexist, considering the number of women drivers in the country?

Another one on liquor - what they really need are some posts warning against driving while being high on "Charas" - I think 90% of the taxi drivers in the area smoke charas while driving (Charas is the name given to hand-made hashish in India and Pakistan. It is made from the extract of the Cannabis plant ( or Marijuana )).

But below is my personal favorite - this one had me laughing for about 5 km!!


More pics coming up from the Manali to Leh drive, and the Nubra Valley trip!!