week 1!

---

greetings all hope all is ok back in blitty!

well as first weeks go this one has been, pretty amazing! if anyone is thinking of going to india, word of advise, fly to anywhere but delhi! i arrived at about 5 in the morning and the outside of the airport was busy as anything! fortunaly i bumped into two french canadian's and an english guy, and together we made our way into delhi city centre!

where we were staying was a complex of little alleyways. the alleys where just about wide anough to fit a car down! the street's were packed with cow's, goats, people, rickshaws and cars, all fighting against each other, to get to were ever they were going! at night the streets where really dimly light and it gave the place a feeling of being stuck in the late 1900's!

on the first day there we were acosted by two guys who were trying to get us to go to kashmir! as i wanted to go to kashmir before the roads became inpassable we thought we would listen to what they had to say!

we were taken to a little shop down a small alley where we met mobarick! a kashmirey muslim! he spoke to us for about 4 hours trying to convince us to go to kashmir stay on his house boat and then go trekking! by about midnight, we had our flights booked to shrinigar in northern kashmir about 50k from the pakistan boader!

the next day we were supposed to be shown around delhi, this never transpired! yes we were escorted every where but we weren't shown any of delhi. that night we went to stay at mobaricks house as we were to fly at 5am! the house was most deffinatly his!

i read alittle bit out of my lonley planet guide on shrinigar! this contained a very interesting paragraph, which said ' house boat owners can be pushy, especially the ones in delhi, once on the house boats they have lots of scams to get money out of travelers, bla bla bla...." you get the picture!

flew up to kashmir, coming out of the airport was more like coming out of a military base! soliders everywhere with guns, sand bags banked up, soliders hiding in wholes in the walls, road blocks every where. we had to keep on getting of the taxi be patted down by the military and to reister our passports at every road block!

we arrived on the house boat whcih was nice anough, but mobgarik and his familmy wmouldn't leave us alone! always trying to sell us stuff! we had left delhi to get away from all the noise and the constant bombardment, to find that we know on the edge of the himalayas and beingheld hostage by mobarick and co, if we wanted to get onto the main land they had top take us, this was not my idea of freedom!

that night we plotted to get away, with the sound of gun fire in the hills! the plan was to get out of srinigar and head to leh!

the next morning it took us about 2 hours to get mobarick to accept that we weren't staying, we made our way to the main land and booked our bus for the next morning!

6 am we started our two day journey to leh, over the second highest road in the world! kashmir is beautiful, i never seen scenery like it before! austria eat your heart out! we went along traversing roads across the himalayers, just wide anough for a lorry to pass! all the way we kept on having to stop a military road blocks, to show our passports, highly annoying! 8 hours later we arrived in kargil, a mainly shite muslim town! we were deffinatly not in india now although we were! the faces had changed from the indian and muslims and they resembled now more chinise features!

the whole time we were in kargil, people were just stareing at us, as if they had never seen white people before! i now with the indo pakistan war going on that not many tourist go through theese parts, but there are still travelers who go through! we caused much amusement when we eat food from some small kids of the street! it probably wasn't the best idea i've ever had but when in rome! the meal consisted of tripe rapped in goats stomach and tripe cooked in pumpling! nice!!!

our bus left at 5 am and again we were on the move! the himalayers changed from lush green scenery ofkashmir to the arid landscape of ladhak, which only nutter would live on, i thought it could quite easily be the moon! on the way two of us got ill from the food we had night before, i hasen to add that i was not one of them! this was a source of entertainment1 ecspially for the locals how would try and see what was going on everytime someone had to run of the bus to go!

we finally made to leh! and oh my god this place is amazing set in the himalay's at 3500 feet above sea level! it's mainly a bhudist town, and it shows, it's so laid back. everyone says hello people still stare alot but you get used to it! there are a lot of tibetians here in exile, there's a palace at the top of the town which is a small version of the palace in tibet! i really can't discribe this place, it's amazing. around us our the snow capped mountains. it's baking hot in the day and by night it gets down to about 5c!

well i've probably bored everyone anough now so i shall leave you until next time! inshallah!
oh yeah i have the you no whats now! eating that dam goat! dam the goat!!!!

---