Indian Subcontinent

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Delhi
We arrived in Delhi early doors and it was already hot and sweaty. The traffic, according to our taxi driver, was not bad but, our ears still rang with sound of horns and it still appeared to be mayhem to the untrained eye with no lanes, no indicators and apparently right of way to ever beeps the most! Hence the photos are what there is to see mostly: traffic!




Delhi in general is a mixed bag. Every vista will present some form of poverty; a birds nest of electrical wiring hanging precariously from the falling down roofs; hustle and bustle; colour and culture; spices, saris and silks; filth and squalor, cows and some evidence of urine, be it the foul stech from the open urinals or a local peeing at any available wall!

Srinagar
From Delhi we headed to Srinagar in Kashmir rather niavely unaware of the troubles that were being experienced at the time! Hence, during the duration of our stay everything was closed in a strike against military curfews and the fact that someone had been shot in a demonstration in the town. As such there was a large military presence which, may have marred our experience. However, we couldn't help but, think that we woudln't have been a fan of Srinagar anyway.

We stayed on a house boat which, is meant to be one of the classic Srinagar experiences but, the owner, Sultan, was very pushy and constantly trying to get us on trips or tours, he even threatened a lovely local guy, who invited us into his home for dinner with his family because all the restaurants were closed. He claimed that 'we were his tourists to make money from.' What, we newly dubbed 'satan, failed to grasp was that this was just an act of kindness and no money exchanged hands. On top of that the Dal lake, once a mirrorlike beauty is now clogged with weed and sewage.

We did visit the Moghul gardens which were pretty nice but, had a run in with a makeshiuft roadblock set up by some locals who happily informed us that we were fine as we were foreign but, if we'd been Indian he'd have had to kill us! As you can imagine we were therefore not particularly disappointed to leave and head off into the Himalayas.




Leh
The trip between Leh and Srinagar took 18 hours and wended it's way through some specatacular scenery. Snow capped mountains rearing up from the green lush valleys and giving way to a desert of lofty mountains and Leh itsef didn't disappoint either. Leh, nestled in the Himalayas was a great little town, consisting half of Tibetan refugees providing a colourful splash of prayer flags, orange clad monks and buddhist Stupas and Gompas and Ladakhi locals preserving an Indian feel.

The town is surrounded by, Buddhist temples and relics. We nearly killed oursleves climbing up to the Gompa above the town (we blamed the altitude rather than being unfit) where we found a nutty monk who, bypassed the zig zagging path and every day just ran straight down the side of the mountain back to the town!





Spituk - Stok Trek
While we were in ther Himalayas it seemed rude not to do some form of trekking. As you know, I'm not exactly a trekking fan so what better way to spend birthday than doing a 9hr trek?!

The first stint was four or five hours to a tiny village called Zinjihn where we stayed with a family the mother of whom was hilarious, especially her charming mime of what fuel was being used for the fire - Yaks pooh!



Rumbuck
From Zinjihn we headed to Rumbuck for another homestay by way of a snow leopard research camp and a rather novel way of boiling a kettle! Chai (a sweet cardamon tea) is the staple diet in India and even thought the kettle took 8hours to boil this way, there was still plenty of Chai to go around!



last day
The final day was the hard day. An estimated 9 hours of walking, hyalf being up hill and an hour of which pretty much vertical to reach the 4900m Stok pass. It also just so happened that this was my birthday! It was actually pretty good in all honestly. Some keeno had still managed to get a string of prayer flags all the way up there. Quite possilby the three Belgians who rather annoyingly sauntered passed us in sports casual and smoking! The views from the top and walking back through the valley below werepretty spetacular plus we met a great couple from New Zealand up there too who in their 50's and early 60's showed us all up (especially the next day whe Pats and I were walking around like cripples and they were bounding about like spring chickens!) We were also lucky enough to see the endargered blue sheep which, actually look like grey goats but, it was pretty cool nonetheless!


Manali
Our next stop was Manali which was a very hairy bus journey South lasting 24 hours. Now, I have been on some pretty bad bus journeys in my time; breaking down, people driving into the side of us, missing mudslides by minutes, curious drivers leaning over petrol tanks with cigerettes in there mouth sporting 2cm of glowing ash. However, I can honestly say this is the most scared I have ever been on a bus! The bus had to wind its way down and up unmade, single lane mountain roads, squeezing past oncoming traffic and negotiating cavernous potholes. I was fine with this until, the wheel of the bus actually went partly off the edge of the road and started to tip over, I was sat by the dropside window and at this point was swallowing hard and peering down into a kilometer deep valley. The whole bus leapt to the other side of the bus which, gently rocked back onto the road. The girl in front of me burst into tears, a local guy was sick out of the window and the driver carried on without even slowing down like nothing had happened! As such when after 24hours we arrived in the small town of Manali I was pretty glad to be arriving anywhere at all!

Manali was a cool little town with plenty of outdoor persuits, mountains, rivers and a hippy little town where if you refused everything else that was on sale you'd be offered weed! We did a spot of climbing which was great fun. It actually felt pretty good to be up the side of a cliff again, once my brain had forgotten the dislocated ankle that had arisen from the last time!




After Manali it was sadly back to Delhi as Pats once again had to head of back to work and I was left to my Indian adventure on my own. My next stop would be Amritsar, home of Sikh's holiest temple: the golden temple!

Full photos can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/japanstotem/JammuKashmirDelhi

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