In and around Leh

It's been a week in the US now, and what I thought I would post in the first 2-3 days is still overdue. A new job, a new set of people to work with, new place to live, new roommates (well still searching for new roommates!!) - all have contributed to the delay. I need to utilize this weekend to clear up the backlog.

So having made the trip from Manali to Leh in the last post, it's time for in and around Leh. The city of Leh is like an oasis in the desert. After being on the road for 18-20 hours on empty and deserted roads, the city welcomes you with a buzzing life of a foreign tourist centre. Mind you, it's not noisy, and the traffic is also not bad either (though people were saying it's worsened over the last few years) ... but after the Manali to Leh roadtrip, which has only one "town" on the way, Leh seems like you're finally returning to civilization.

Day 1

On the first day, all I could do was sleep (on my stomach!!!!), and rest my butt. The guesthouse I was staying with Obi was excellent considering the amount of money we were paying for it - Rs 300 per night for a double room. It's amazing how all the hotels at the hillstations where Indian tourists throng are so expensive (check out Shimla or Manali), but the foreign tourist destinations are cheap (say for example Vashisht near Manali, and Leh!). The guesthouse owner in Leh (Ser-Dung guesthouse) was attributing it to the facilities that the Indian tourists demand - Air-conditioning, TV with all the cable channels, western style toilets etc. Compared to that, most guesthouses in Leh are pretty bare - the rooms are clean and tidy, but bare with respect to facilities. I didn't mind that coz in any case for most part of the day I was out of the room.

Anyways, in the evening on the first day, we (Obi and me) went to the Shanti Stupa, which was a newly built structure a couple of kilometres from the town centre, and it overlooks the city. The views were very nice especially as we went at sunset.

Day 2 and Day 3:

We spent the two days figuring out the logistics for planning out a trip to Nubra valley. We wanted to rent bikes and drive to the valley, which is around 120km from Leh. You need to have permits from the DC (Distric Commissioner) office because that area has restricted entry as it borders with China. Apparently, something that we thought should take us 1 hour, took us almost a day. There was some weird rule on how a foreign tourist cannot get the permit if in a party of less than 4 people. And like everything in India, the travel agencies have a way around it. We found a guy who runs a travel agency, and he had told us he would get us the permits for Rs 200 (they are free if you go directly to the DC office). What he did was - he had three fictitious passports and visas (fictitious as in they were real people, but had travelled to Leh probably 2 years back) - and he clubbed Obi's name with them to make it a party of four. So Obi got his permit with 3 other people who were probably in Europe, Australia or the US!

To add to the problems, we ran out of money. Well not exactly - what happened was that Obi's debit/ATM card didn't work at any of the outlets in Leh coz it wasn't a MasterCard or Visa. Both of us had to buy airtickets to fly out of Leh - so I converted all the cash that I had (around $200) and we pooled in all our money to buy the tickets. After we bought the tickets, we had a total of Rs 400 amongst the two of us!! In the meanwhile we had figured out a way to get Obi's money - he called up his gf, actually his ex-GF, to tranfer some NZ dollars via Western Union. But because the tranfer takes a day, we were left with Rs 400 for the day. By the evening, we were left with Rs 100 (after a few phone calls to NZ for getting the money transferred), and we were yet to have dinner! As luck would have it, we ran into Remi, the French guy - and we had to ask him to sponsor our dinner. He was gracious enough to oblige us after belittling us for a while :)

We did rent out bikes on the afternoon of the third day, and we went to see some monasteries around Leh. Some glimpses ..

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!!

Internet in Leh ...

... sucks big time :( It's slow, it's expensive, and half the time there's no electricity so the UPS keeps beeping. I'll have to write about the journey from Manali to Leh, and the time I've spent motorbiking in Leh once I get back to the US. For now, the plan is to leave for Nubra Valley early tomorrow morning (on bikes), and spend two days there. I'll be back in the civilized world on 11th, when I fly from Leh to Delhi. Till then - ciao!!

Another day, another waterfall :)

Another day in Manali, and I don't feel like leaving the place - ever! It's been two laid back days hiking around the remote hills (yes - there are still remote hills in Manali!!), and two days when I really had time to myself. Strange I was worried I would get lonely traveling solo on this trip! In fact, being alone has given me the advantage to seek company when I want to have a conversation, while immersing myself in a book or just the scenery when I'm not.

Went to sleep really late last night - didn't go to any party but there were a few people hanging around the guest house talking about ... well talking about just random things flitting from topic to topic, but it was interesting just because of the diversity of the participants in the conversation - a Pole, a Swede, 3 other Indians all from different parts of the country, and myself. Everbody had interesting travel stories to share, and the Europeans had seen more of the country than all 4 Indians put together :)

Woke up finally at 8 in the morning, had a quick bath in the shared bathroom (I had to wait for 30 minutes, and believe me, it wasn't pleasant!), had a quick breakfast, and I was out for the morning's hike at 11 :) The weather was perfect - nice and sunny. Met a Bengali family with their 2 kids who were traveling with their Punjabi driver - like any typical Indian family on vacation they had gone from one sightseeing point to another, and clicked pictures at all those places, and had therefore exhausted Manali in 2 days flat. Probably I'm generalising here, and probably this is true for ALL families and not only Indian families, but since I've had the most experience with Indian families, I can only talk about them. Probably you'll see me doing the same in another 10 yrs with a wife on the arm and 2 tiny tots following us, but that's the reason I want to avoid that stage for as long as possible :)

Anyways, after the Indian family, I met up with four beautiful damsels from Israel (darn why didn't I take a picture!!!!!!). Had a long and interesting conversation with them about the Israel-Palestine problem, and Judaism in general. All four of them were 21-22 yr's old, and had just completed their compulsory military service, and were traveling for 3-4 months before going back to Israel to join university etc. The interesting thing about the whole discussion was that though they all agreed that all the violence was killing a lot of innocent people, and they were fed up of traveling within Israel and being roughed up by the security people at the entrance of all malls, hospitals, schools, colleges (YES - they had airport type security EVERYWHERE!) etc., but when I asked them why don't you guys stop fighting then, all of them said in almost a chorus that it's not we who are fighting, it's them. And I'm pretty sure that people on the Palestinian side have the same opinion.

Well we couldn't have solved the Palestine problem in one trek, so we said goodbye's and I walked a little more to find a good spot to read. No Barnes and Nobles or Borders could have beaten the ambience - lying under a tree near the top of a mountain with 360 degree views of the snow capped mountains - it cannot get better than that. If I had been a Tagore it was the perfect spot to produce Gitanjali!

After 2-3 hours of reading, I carried on with the trek to the waterfall, and well I'll leave the description to the pictures. I met a British guy and a girl on the way back (they said they weren't a couple - so I have to say they were a guy and a girl :), and we started talking about Indian religions, culture, food etc., and before we knew it we were back to our village (Vashisht). Because the conversation was still not over, we completed it over cups of Chai with Paneer Pakoras. Well the conversation is still now over, and we're supposed to get together after dinner around 9, and watch some movie which we will decide at my guest house. Joy (the keeper of the guesthouse - Sonam Guesthouse), is very friendly and he's always looking to meet new people - so we'll get together and ask him to put on some good foreign language movie in the TV room.

And coz it's already 8:30, I better rush to get some dinner before everybody starts getting together for the movie. Did I tell you this place feels like home? :)

The First Day in Manali

Finally, the Himalayas!! I'm back in the Himlayas after 3 years, and it seems like a long long time. But the way weather behaved today, it seemed to be a welcome for me :) Reached Manali at 10:30 in the morning from an overnight bus from Chandigarh. The semi-deluxe bus was much more comfortable than I expected, and it took roughly 10 hours from Chandigarh. I had looked up some of the tentative places I wanted to stay at from the Lonely Planet guide, and a place called Vashisht - a village 4km north of Manali - seemed to be perfect. The village was supposed to be in the wilderness, away from the hustle bustle and traffic of the main city. Well, the village does not have the hustle bustle of Manali, but the traffic seems almost that bad. The only saving grace is that if you walk 2 mins you are at some trail that will lead you to the wild.

So the hotel - well it would be an overstatement to call it a hotel, it's more like an old wooden guest house. It's called Sonam Guesthouse, and the rooms are clean but old, and the bathrooms are shared. The major positive is the rent - 120/- per night!! Not to mention the friendly keeper (his name is Joy) who helped me find a cheap internet place, and the friendly Swiss couple who's living in the room next door (and who came on the same bus as me from Chandigarh). The place has a TV room which the keeper insists on calling cinema room, and they have around 35-40 odd movies which you can watch, and write on a board outside as to what time you are going to watch that movie so other people can join you. All in all, a decent place to live - expecially for someone traveling alone and looking for company.

So I tried getting a couple of hours of sleep, and it was lunch time. Had lunch at the roof of World Peace Cafe :) They have wonderful views, and I was surprised at the variety of cuisine they serve! They had Italian, Spanish (YES - Burrito's!), French, Chinese and Indian. I just sampled tofu with rice which was written under the Chinese section, and though it didn't taste quite Chinese, it was pretty decent. Also, the ambience was wonderful - they have seating on the ground with cute bench like tables to have your food on.

After lunch I went for a short hike uphill which was supposed to take me to a waterfall. The hike was very steep, and I was soon regretting all the excercise that I did NOT do the last couple of weeks. But the views made up for all the hard work - it was cloudy and the snowy peaks were covered with a tinge of grey. I walked up as close to the waterfall as the trail allowed me (which was still quite a distance). After a while it started raining, and I had to take shelter under the backyard of a house. The experience was somewhat spiritual - the weather, the mountains, the clouds, the trees, the vegetation - everything played it's part in creating that ambience where all you can do is be thankful for that moment. I tried capturing some of it in pictures, but even pictures don't do justice!

Good night for now - time for dinner, and might go for a party that Joy told me about :)

Traveling solo ...

Just 2 more days to go for the trip I have been looking forward to for so long - Leh!! The biking trip has been converted to a trekking, hiking, and reading/relaxing trip coz of some friends who ditched me at the last moment (Sumeet I'll never forget to remind you this for the rest of your life!!). Neverthless, I'm still excited at the prospect of being in the Himalayas after a long long long time. And I'm excited about traveling alone!

Now my parents, and family, and relatives, and friends etc etc all seem to think that a trip up in the mountains alone is not a good idea, coz it will get boring after a while. But the 2 days I spent in Switzerland exploring the area alone has opened my mind to the idea of traveling without any companions. I actually observed more and took in more of the scenery while traveling alone versus when I was with Ashutosh, where our heated conversations would overpower the scenery!! Not to say that I didn't have fun being with a friend - it is just that probably some conversations are better had when you are in a dimly lit apartment in the middle of the night.

I'm taking 5-7 books with me, and I plan to spend some time relaxing in Manali (2 days), and then in Leh (3 days), apart from the traveling that I'll do around Manali and Leh. I also plan to travel to Pangong Tso lake, and spend another day or two doing small treks in the area. I'm looking forward to meeting other travelers who were ditched by their friend, and are therefore traveling alone :)

And I'm still due with all the pictures and the stories from the Swiss trip - seems like I'll have to wait till I get back to the US to do that - the internet conn in the cyber cafe I use is awefully slow!! I'll try some other place and see if it's fast enough to upload pictures. Till then - bubye!