Getting Leh'd
- Jul 2, 2016
- 4 min read
S: We took a shared jeep for the roughly 15 hour drive from Srinagar to Leh (pronounced lay). The road to Leh is only open May to October and involves crossing the famously dangerous Zoji La…
We were really excited to finally be out away from the houseboat (the idea of choosing our own food made us giddy). The scenery on the way to Leh was really unexpected though. Our trek in the mountains had made me think that high in the Himalayas was green and covered in trees, but once we were above a certain altitude the landscape changed dramatically. It now looked more like Arizona; an arid desert with scrubby patches of grass clinging on for dear life. There was also a sign announcing we had driven through the second coldest inhabited place on earth. Cool.
The Border Roads Orangisation (BRO) had thoughtfully put up regular road signs along the way, warning you of the dangers on speeding etc. My favourites include;
Divorce your speed, not your wife,
Better Mr late than Late Mr,
I’m curvaceous be slow,
Don’t lose your nerves on my curves.
Plus, the controversial: Don’t gossip, let him drive.
It was about 11pm when we arrived in Leh and the value of being on an organised tour with Raj became apparent. The jeep pulled up and all the bags were taken off, a car pulled up and said he was there to take us to our hotel, everyone else was left stranded trying to find the homestay they had booked or something that was open that might have a spare room.
Apparently this is the year to come to Leh. Last year they had about 120,000 visitors in total, in the past two months alone they’ve had close to 200,000. Our hotel was great, a huge room on the 2nd floor with beautiful views of the surrounding mountains. It’s hard to believe there’s several towns living this high in the Himalayas, it’s like another world. Leh in particular is full of Tibetan Refugees and the main religion up here is Buddhism.
Unfortunately, we arrived just as a three-day strike was starting, we were told it was because people from other areas of India were starting to come to Leh and setting up stalls, so the locals were protesting. This seems strange as we would have happily gone into the local shops and restaurants to spend our money. Instead everything was closed and open cafes were like gold dust.
G: After the usual recce of the town, we managed to find one open restaurant, which was suspiciously branded like kfc, called kc. N.B we are vegetarian so aren’t eating any meat, most is battery farmed out here and could tug on the heart strings of the biggest T-rex. One lunch time during this strike we waited 2 hours for food, bearing in mind one girl from Chile ordered a bowl of cornflakes….2 HOURS! Must have been growing a cornflake bush. The more time we spend here we realise we must un-learn western logic and adopt whatever bizarre morphed logic is here.
Enough ranting about that, Leh itself is fabulous. A true chill-out haven, full of German bakeries, market bizarres, Tibetan exile markets and back street curry houses.
During our jeep ride over we had made firm friends with a swede. No we haven’t taken too much acid, this is a man from Sweden. His name was Jonas and by god he is a bad dude.
I shall tell you about Jonas later, but on point, we spent our days wandering the desert like town, sandstone buildings, towering mosques and two very interesting attractions above the town on the surrounding hills. (Hills used relatively as we were already 4000m high). These two attractions are: a palace and the Shanti Stupa which is a Buddhist temple built in 1991 and looked like a big marzipan cake, no seriously it looked like you could take a bite out of it. The mobile torture that is the Shante Stupas’ staircase is something to rival rocky. And, in mid-day heat in the desert, was a spectacularly bad decision on our behalf. Mo Farrah would have had to catch his breath on this one.
Anyhow, at the top of this “stair” we marvelled out across the landscape, "EXCUSE ME", no peace and quiet, I became a family’s personal photographer, I tried to explain that if they put a zoom lens on their camera it wasn’t possible to photo all of them, I tried my best. After the photo shoot they all required a photo with us, until we realised that other families were joining in on the photos so we closed the press conference.
In the evenings we would meet up with Jonas for dinner, and exchange stories of the day’s events. One night we heckled Jonas until he told us the story of when he cycled to the amazon, built his own raft then paddled down the amazon with his bike, and continued to cycle South America for 2 ½ years. “Thanks for making us look lame Jonas”, if you’re reading this then we hope you’re doing well and are safe.
The last note about Leh is the Indian air force. Whatever the time, whatever the hour, they are on station to show off their force. This involves flying around in circles above Leh, which on the hotel roof was quite impressive given the Mountain backdrop. I think after Kashmir we have seen all that the Indian army has and they seem to be having a good time so we leave them to it.
S: As the blog is a little behind us we have the benefit of hindsight before we post these things. Leh is the standard we measure everything against. It was bloody brilliant and our favourite so far.
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