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Published: September 20th 2007
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Manali
View of Manali
So here I am at the top of the world... In Leh, which consists of shops, advertising their ware as 'Useless Wali' or 'More Rubbish Upstairs', travel agents, hotels and restaurants... In the middle of this is the former Royal Palace of the Kings of Ladakh, which has seen better days... Yes tourism has reached up to the stars...
How did I get here? Why did I come? I suppose I was lured up here like everybody else by the stories of the generosity of it's people, the endless skies, the immense landscapes... And in part it is all true... The people are kind, the landscapes are amazing and the skies are blue... But mass tourism has also arrived with all it's evils... And I am part of it... And thus, if you have little time and little money it is difficult to see anything else but Leh... Visiting the surrounding countryside is hard if you don't have much time or money...
But I am getting ahead of myself... Once before this I was in Manali, which is like Leh, only at a lower altitude and with Alpine vegetation... I should have known what I was heading into when
Vashist
View from my balcony in Vashist
the bus I took up to Manali was a real tourist bus, not the ones I had been on so far, which were called tourist buses but where I was the only tourist... This one was full of other backpackers... I was picked up at my hotel by a cross eyed man, who I suspect might have also been our bus driver... Why do I suspect this? Well the driver, whoever he was, managed to crash twice in the night... Once into a petrol tanker and once into an unknown object, shattering the back windows and showering the passengers in the last two seats with shards of glass...
I didn't stay in Manali itself but in Vashist, about a half an hours walk up hill from Manali... I got myself a lovely room with a great view for a bargain price... But if you don't come for hiking or for smoking (and I don't mean the tobacco kind of smoking) there is not much to do in Manali except shop maybe...
So after a couple of days I got the two day bus to Leh... It was a tiring but wonderful ride, the scenery changing from the lush
Vashist
Lizard I encountered on a little hike outside my guesthouse Alpine vegetation around Manali to the desert landscapes of Leh and everything in between... We camped half way at an altitude of 4300 meters and the next day we passed over the third and second highest motorable passes in the world at altitudes of 5060 meters and 5320 meters... As we neared Leh, the Buddhist gompa's and chortens started appearing and the typical Tibetan influenced village architecture... It was all very nice...
And so we arrive at the beginning of my story... Leh... To save money I hired a mountain bike with the totally unrealistic idea of making a 100 km round trip in one day... Visiting several gompas and what not... And all this on the cheapest bike I could find of course... I never made it past the 15 km mark... In part because my bike was crap, with the brakes always on the wheel (I ended up breaking them of) but of course Leh is at an altitude of 3500 meters and that also affected my condition... Also Ladakh is not flat like Holland, what a surprise... Ha, ha, ha...Anyway a group of French tourists gave me a lift back home in their rented jeep... Vive
Manali to Leh
The valley we came from...
la France! Merci! So much for my plan of setting up an order of cycling monks... The French won't always be around to bail me out...
After this humiliating episode I decided to see if I could hire a scooter... As it was expensive on my own, I found a willing partner in Andrew who had just done a 3 week trek and wasn't satisfied yet... So the next day we got ourselves a scooter and after some initial start up problems (we did a wheelie in the center of Leh much to the amusement of the locals) we got on our way and visited Alchi gompa which has some amazing Buddhist art and Bazgo with its crumbling fort and Gompa. We also passed magnetic hill which is supposed to defy gravity... What a fake... We still needed our engine to get uphill...
So despite the expensive nature of things I have managed to see a little bit of Ladakh... And with a little bit, I mean a little bit... To see more you would have to spend at least 3 weeks up here... That will have to wait for another time...
In the meantime I dabbled
Manali to Leh
Alpine scenery
with Buddhism but gave it up... I seem to be a glutton for pain and suffering and that is just what they are trying to steer clear of... Also I am not nearly spiritual enough... My search will continue, next Srinigar...
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Ingrid
non-member comment
mooi
Heeey Ralf, Tibet is inderdaad erg mooi! Jammer dat het zo touristisch is! Hier alles zn gangetje! Doedoei Ingrid