Blogs from Leh, Ladakh, Jammu & Kashmir, India, Asia - page 9

At about 10,000 ft above sea level, you do feel quite literally on top of the world in Ladakh. And curiously, there's also almost some sort of palpable sense here of being close to the horizon where heaven and earth meet. The air is pure. The location remote. And the snow on the encompassing mountains is dazzling white. This place is a veritable mountain Shangri La. The flight up was very exciting. The aircraft passed through mountain corridors meaning that looking out the windows on either side all you could see was wall after wall of sheer rockface. Soon after arrival, I started suffering some mild symptoms of altitude sickness - headaches, fatigue and breathlessness. The rarefied mountain air gets to most visitors eventually and luckily I had packed with me appropriate medication to combat the ... read more

So, finally we've moved on. Some days ago (5 maybe..) we set out from McLeod on the night bus to Manali. It's about 10 hours. It was ok. We actually managed to sleep most of the way. So Manali's an experience. It's in a beautiful little valley with mountains like a wall all around it. Also we arrived simultaneously with the end of monsoon, witch means we had two days of brilliant sun. We lived in old Manali filled with flowers and apple trees, and it was just what we needed. I could get a proper Indian meal for the first time, and it was so good! It was like I hadn't had food for a month. The downside of Manali is the Israelis. There are loads of them. Much because of all the marijuana that ... read more

Some places are such that when you think of capturing the beauty of it in words, you feel afraid that you will do injustice. Ladakh was an experience like that for me. It was so overwhelming in its grandeur and visual experiences that I kept postponing this blog for months. I would stare at the pictures and loose myself in those unforgettable moments. 5-days for experiencing Ladakh is really too short. But that was all that we had - Debdeep, Maya and me. Debdeep is in some sense my photography guru and to get him to accompany us in this trip was a bonus. There is no place in Ladakh which does not seem to explode with photographic grandeur - every mountain, every monastery, every angle. One can go completely berserk snapping pictures, and still feel ... read more

JULY 29, 2008 Leh, Ladakh - Jammu and Kashmir I write now from Leh, Ladakh in the Himalayas in the subdistrict of Jammu and Kashmir. I had to be at the airport at 3:30 AM to catch a flight to Leh at 5:00. The flight was only 1 hr and 10 min from Delhi for $85…I got a deal. Flying into Leh was amazing as we approached the runway. . The pilot had to skillfully navigate the mountains into the Leh Valley here….and it appeared at times like the tips of the airplane wings would clip a mountainside! Of course the passengers clapped upon successful landing. The view from the airplane was phenomenal…the Himalayas are beautiful and a dream come true for me to see. Ever since I was young and even recently, I would flip ... read more

In far northern India, precariously rests the gem in the crown of India, the state of Jammu and Kashmir. And in that far northern state lies a remote and sparsely populated region called Ladakh. The name in the Ladakhi language literally is La-Dags, and means 'land of high mountain passes'. Ladakh, one of the last refuges of Mahayana Buddhism in the world, is also called 'Little Tibet' or the 'last Shangri-La'. It lies cradled high in the Himalayas, between the Karakoram and Great Himalayan ranges. So for me, as soon as school was out for the 'summer' and I had endured enough of monsoon drenched Mumbai, I went north to the high altitude snow desert that is Ladakh! In general, there are two ways to get there - at least in the summer. In the winter, ... read more