July.

Hello!

This could be the start of a routine here, maybe. July’s been a busy month over here; I’ve spent it in the North of India avoiding the worst of the heat whilst the plains and the South cool now the monsoon rains have arrived. The start of July I was in Manali saying goodbye to the last of the wedding folks going back home. As I mentioned last time I bumped into an old school friend (Tom) well we had great fun catching up, we rented these Enfield 350’s and went riding through the Himalayas on a couple of occasions. Pretty surreal really, talking about shenanigans at Balfron whilst sipping a chai at a roadside tea stall in the Kullu valley! Tom left for Nepal and I went North, the rough plan is to meet up in Sri Lanka in a few months for a bit of surfing.
Now getting back to avoiding the heat, on the 6th it was the Dalai Lama’s birthday so I decided to make the trip over to the hill station of Dharemsala for the festivities. I enjoyed loads of Tibetan food, entertainment and finding out so much about the history of the exiled people and their struggle since the exodus back in the ‘50s. I stayed in a very small village of Bhagsu which was very quiet and tranquil, I met a really interesting Columbian guy ‘Fabian’ who’d just come from Ladakh and Kashmir so I got quite a lot of useful info. My plan was to head up to Ladakh and assess the situation from there, I really wanted to go to Kashmir but the situation is always unpredictable with conflict having lasted over 30 years now!
Ladakh is a fascinating region, way up in the far North of India it’s people share a lot with the Tibetan culture. The land is sparsely populated and was inaccessible to tourists as late as the 1970’s before the Indian government decided to modernise the region and open it up to the outside world. Therefore the area has seen vast changes over the years, especially with the conflict affecting visitor numbers to Kashmir. To reach Ladakh you have to take the long and windy road from Manali, it’s only around 400km but the route passes through some incredible stretches of mountains and the bus takes 2 days with a stop in Keylong. The road from Manali to Keylong climbs the Rohtang Pass, which was an incredible drive,. The previous night it had rained the whole night and waterfalls gushed from both sides of the valley! Once over the pass the landscape looked remarkably more rugged with a lot less green, and plenty of snow by the side of the road and on the surrounding peaks. I travelled on the bus with a couple from Canada, we were all in awe of the epicness of the journey. So we set off from Keylong the next morning at 5AM for part 2 of the journey. By mid-morning or so we had arrived in Ladakh and the landscape was completely different, the mountains were transformed from your epic Himalayan snow capped peaks into these sandy coloured ranges that resemble something from Star Wars. We got a flat tyre in the afternoon which delayed us a bit as in true Indian style we were unprepared without a spare or a jack! Back on the road and we continued to climb as we drove North on the road to Leh the capital of Ladakh. The last pass we climbed over was above 5300M making it the second highest motorable road in the world (the highest is on the other side of Leh - and requires a special permit). I was conducting a wee experiment, I had bought a packet of narvateem mix and was going to see at what altitude it would pop,.it went at around 5000M I think. It makes you think what sort of affect the high altitude can have on your lungs!
We eventually arrived in Leh after midnight, a sleepy little town which as we found out the next morning was bustling with tourists. Most of whom had flown from Delhi and avoided the incredible/epic/horrible all rolled into one bus trip. Leh has an old palace and several gompas (monasteries) which overlook the town. My first day in Leh I had a pounding headache from the altitude,. The town sits at around 3700M higher than Ben Nevis,. And it’s incredible how tiring just walking down to the shops for some water can be, especially as it’s very warm aswell. After shaking off the altitude sickness I got up to watch the sunrise over Leh from the Shanti Stupa which sits on a peak on the west side of town. Sometimes making that extra effort really makes the difference, and seeing Leh at 5 in the morning with the pinky orangey light filtering through between the peaks encircling the town whilst everyone else is sleeping is pretty special. After breakfast, we (myself, the two Canadians and Murdoch from NZ) caught a bus to Tikse which is the site of one of the most famous gompas in the region. On the way back we stopped at Shey and had a tour of the old palace which used to be of great importance back in the day.
The destination from Leh would be Srinigar the capital of Kashmir, which is the only other way into the region other than going back the way we came. Going back that way was not an appealing thought, having already seen the scenery it would just be a bone rattling 2 day endurance test. So onwards in the direction of Kashmir (another equally epic 2 day journey), breaking up the crazy road with a few stops along the way. The first Lamayuru lies 6 hours from Leh and it’s a lovely wee village, very quiet with hardly any houses. It has a lovely gompa on top of a cliff which overlooks the village and it’s a great place to relax for a couple of days. The second day, myself, Murdoch and Hans embark on a bit of a trek, so we head off into the valley down from the village. The landscape is barren, it almost looks like the Aussie outback but for more hills. We walked for a few hours before coming to a couple houses with some fields around them. An old guy waves us over and invites us in for a cup of tea. We sat for half an hour, as he quizzed us on where we’re from and the usual stuff, and we asked him a few questions whilst his wife got the chai on the go. While that was being prepared he offered us some yak butter tea. It’s just like black tea with a big blob of salty yaks butter in it,, not bad but I preferred the sweet taste of chai with yaks milk. We had some biscuits for snacks so they went down quite well. We chatted for quite awhile and had a few refills, the hospitality was really warm and genuine and it’s times like that, that you realise how lucky you are to travel. Anyway we thanked the old couple and headed on our way climbing up over a ridge and getting a fantastic view overlooking an army base in the valley below, we climbed down and made our way back to town before sunset.
The next day we aimed to get to kargil which is technically in Ladakh but culturally very much Kashmiri with a massive Muslim influence and Urdu spoken in favour of Ladakhi. The bus to Kargil starts in Leh and is jampacked by the time it gets to Lamayuru so we decided to hitch with one of the many gas tanker trucks which plow the route between Leh and Srinigar. It was a pretty cool experience the guys didn’t much English though so I was just content with having my head out the window most of the journey. Kargil itself was pretty uninteresting and only useful as a stopover, with the success of the previous days hitching, we decided to hitch again. We split up, me and Murdoch and then the Canadians in another vehicle, the journey was crazy the road was in seriously bad nick in parts of it with huge drops on either side. Most of the vehicles on the road were now army vehicles and a heavy military presence was everywhere with many soldiers patrolling armed with AKs. Quite intimidating but once I spoke to a few I feel a lot more comfortable. One army guy gave the hitching sign and jumped into the truck for a lift over the Zoij La pass, so we chatted for a bit and he was really friendly. He gave the truck driver some army supply coffee as payment for the lift. We paid the same as the local bus would have cost, but got there much quicker and had way more fun.
Anyway we arrived in Sonamarg which took about 6 hours from Kargil, and it was amazing. The landscape was still pretty barren up until the last pass before you descend into the valley which is lovely and green,. Pine trees covering the steep slopes, horses in the meadows,. It looks like Switzerland but for the military presence. We ended up spending 2 nights here,. There’s a glacier that all 4 of us trekked to. We saw no other tourists here and the locals were so desperate to know what we thought of Kashmir, nicknamed the ‘Paradise of India’. Next we took the bus to Srinigar, there was a really scary moment on this bus when people started screaming and everyone scrambled off the bus! I’ve gotta admit I was terrified, my first thought was bomb.. AHH! But what actually happened was some guy just went nuts and everyone else started going hysterical because they thought something was wrong,. So in actual fact there was nothing wrong at all,, and the guy who started it got a few slaps from some of his fellow passengers. We stayed on an old British houseboat.. back in the old colonial days the Brits had quite a lot of houseboats and they became really popular with tourists but the military problems have really put a dent in tourist numbers. When we arrived the houseboat owners were fighting over us and we got an amazing boat for under 100rupees (about $2 a night!) complete with a bathroom sink made in Barrhead! So we spent 4 days on the HB, swimming in the lake and just wandering around the city.
Since Srinigar, I’ve pretty much headed straight for Amritsar, to the golden temple,. So I’m staying there just now. Yesterday I got my wallet knicked,. I was waiting for my train in Pathankot and it was 3 hours late, being the only tourist in the crowded station (Murdoch had just left for Dharemsala) I had a crowd around me the whole time. So I was playing cards and answering millions of questions,. As crowds of Indians gathered round. I had hardly anyway money in my wallet and my CC safely in my money belt, so no harm done. One weird thing that’s happened is I’ve been called Andrew quite a few times from random people, whilst I’m thinking, ‘How do you know my name?’ turns out they were referring Andrew Symonds the aussie cricketer who has dreads. Anyway Golden temples awesome, tomorrow I’m heading to the only open land border with Pakistan, not to cross it but to watch the ceremony that happens at the end of the day with some flag raising and all sorts of other nonsense.

Anyway that’s all for now, heres some photos

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=44675&id=223002516&l=a3c7a3924d


Take Care.

A

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