On our way into Leh we'd passed through a couple of villages with white hilltop monasteries and lots of white stupas. We decided to head back to the furthest of these. Thicksey is home to one of Ladakh's biggest monasteries which tops a large rocky hill with layers upon layers of Tibetan style buildings that pretty much form a village. The main gompa of course sits at the very top. Before leaving town we saw another mask dance at Leh's central gompa then caught a local bus to Thiksey, they are like small buses that run every 30 minutes and they have bugger all leg room. It took us a bit of finding at the bus station, but unlike Delhi people locals do give you help and correct information and after a bit of asking around ... read more

'Gruelling', 'strenuous' and 'tough' are all words we've seen to describe the road from Manali to Leh, usually combined with the phrase 'only want to do it once'. It is also time consuming and with time being precious and these warnings ringing in our ears we had pre-booked tickets to fly back from Leh to Delhi. The road is only open from June to September, for the rest of the year Ladakh is cut off by snow on the high passes. A few months before the trip we had watched a programme 'The World's Most Dangerous Roads' where they took 3 ice road truckers, stuck them in Indian lorries with a local 'co-pilot' and sent them off over the Indian Himalayas to make deliveries. Only after seeing it, shortly before the trip did we find out ... read more

Flight number 12 to Beijing ran a little late. We landed in smog. If you are transferring in Beijing you can get a visa stamp for 24 hours. Having 6:30hrs to kill with no likelihood of visiting China anytime soon (we don't agree with the Chinese occupation of Tibet so don't want to give them our tourist dollars) we decided we may as well stick our heads outside and get some 'fresh' air. It killed some time anyway as we got directed to one immigration queue, got to the front only to be sent to another, to do the same again before being put through the diplomatic channel. 'You want to go outside?' 'uh-huh' we replied. So we got to taste Beijing smog for ourselves. We also got a better choice of coffee shops and places ... read more

Day 13 Snow! It was a very cold night, Emma got Marie up at 2:30am to relight the stove. When we got back up at 6:30ish we were shocked to open the door and find wetish light snow falling, more surprisingly although the ground was wet it was sticking. We stepped out and looked across to the big hill we climbed the day before, it was white. Our decision to take the ger and not tent it was well and truly validated. We loaded the jeep up in record time, Biklar even put the heating on. The road had been poop before and it was even pooper now after all the rain the day before. It was muddy and the puddles were huge, Biklar even gave up trying to avoid them which was a first. For ... read more

Day 4 We packed up and refilled the water container from the well in the settlement that was ringed by a tyre with a bucket made from a recycled tyre on the end of a rope with a ladle made of wood. As luck would have it a local man went to the well at the same time as us and showed us what the deal was. Water supplies in the desert are often communal, locals rock up with thier 20L containers on all manner of transport, motorbikes, trolleys, horses etc. Toilets in towns and settlements are often communal too, people can't have them in their homes/gers and there is no such thing as town plumbing. Men of course don't use them unless they have to. The young guy turned up in his jeep (the one ... read more