Advertisement
Day One
Gypsy girls that lived in the village at our first campsite. Hi everyone! Finally, having a bit more spare time, we squeezed in a short writing period right after our breathtaking (but cold) Himalayan trek. First, let me tell you how we got to Srinagar from KL.
The morning after our last day in Kuala Lumpur, we flew back to Delhi, this time not for long. In fact, we really didn't want to come, considering it was over 42 degrees celsius!! Anyway, being forced to stay there two nights we whizzed around town in a non- AC rickshaw, five of us cramped in the tiny back seat, sweating like mad. Then, after two days, we took yet another plane to Srinagar, Kashmir. Back in Delhi, we had booked a house boat with a friendly man who had told us the boat was brand new and never been used, so not knowing what to expect, we tried our luck. When we arrived in Srinagar, the owner of the house boat, Bashir, picked us up and took us to the boat. We all sat there frozen solid, because the freezing Kashmiri weather was surprising for us! Anyway, thankfully the boat was beautiful. It had a living room, a dining room and
Alia had a little lamb, little lamb...
I think this is why I don't eat lamb anymore. four bedrooms, but we only used two. We were there a few nights, figuring out what to do in the next three weeks of our time in Kashmir. After 2 or 3 days, we finally decided to take a 5 day trek into the Himalayas, not wanting to miss the adventurous part of Kashmir. On the trek we were to bring 5 stong ponies, in case we got the least bit tired. So, early the next morning, we packed our bags and left for our first day in the mountains. That day we walked a little ways and camped near the bottom of the mountain with a bunch of gypsies who lived there. The same day I, with my bad luck, was kicked in the leg by one of the stubborn horses. We played "UNO" to fight the cold and since it was raining, we didn't bother having a camp fire.
Our second day was our longest- about 5 or 6 hours. We had walked up quite a bit of the mountain and a big plateau, meeting huge groups of sheep. After we had our share of chasing the fluffy animals, we countinued across the plateau,
It's dinnertime!
I'd have to say that one of the really good parts of our trek was the soup. Yum! only stopping once because we saw a four-day-old sheep, and I was thrilled having my chance to hold the tiny thing and carry it half way across the plateau, dropping it off when we saw a bunch of sheep grazing on a huge field. Don't think you could do that in Canada, huh? Anyway, by the end we were exhausted and disappointed because again we had no camp fire, just like the previous night.
On our third day, we slept at the same camp site and in the morning had eggs, oatmeal, and of course, like every other day, drank Kashmir's famous apple juice. We walked over the hill that surrounded our campsite to a small mountain lake, where we caught a fish for our dinner. There were huge beds of flowers and you could also see all the Himalayas around the lake, for it was a clear, sunny day. Back at our same campsite, we had hot apple cider and were given very warm Kashmiri gowns (we don't really know the name) that looked like, as Jamil pointed out, robes that seemed to have come straight out of a Star Wars movie! The rest of the evening
Horses gotta eat too!
That is what I call a meal with a view! we kids played on the rocks, while mom sat and read, and the live chicken who was brought along to keep dinner fresh (ugh!), simply walked into mom's tent falling asleep on her hip!
On our fourth day we followed a path to another lake. The walk was short but painful and all of our legs (especially mom's) hurt afterwards. The lake was freezing because it was way up in the mountains, and we made up short stories as we walked up the steep, steep mountain. We couldn't take the horses up partly because of the slippery snow, it was almost impossible to get them up there.
Our fifth and final day we trekked down the mountain. We walked downwards the whole day untill we came to our very first campsite, then drove by jeep back to Srinagar because we were to stay at the house boat for a few days before driving to Leh, a city in Ladakh, which is a piece of land in the middle of Kashmir.
Anyway, I'll write more later about our road trip to Leh! Bye, Alia.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.103s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 11; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0652s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb