We were given
a smaller snack on the Leh leg of the flight, I don't think I
could have managed another breakfast like the last. The
views over the Himalayas were quite spectacular, especially when
we dropped down between the Zanskar and Ladakh ranges on the
final approach to Leh airport. We were greeted in the
arrival building by a Ladakhi women wrapping a short, thin white
scarf around our necks. Because this was an internal flight,, we
didn't have any immigration procedures to go through, although
we did have to fill out a registration form for the tourist
registration people. After collecting our checked in bag
from possible the shortest carousel I've ever seen, we got a
taxi for the 10km drive up into the old part of Leh. The
town starts almost outside the airport, and is spread along the
roadside, climbing several hundred metres to the old part of
town at the top of the valley. We
had picked the Ti-Sei Guest House as it was fairly close to the
town and but very reasonably priced. Negotiated 300 rupees a
night for a double room with a fantastic view over the vegetable
patch. Oh, and a pretty good view of the Himalayas as
well! There were 2 bathrooms across the hallway, no hot
water on tap but available by the bucket with 20 minutes
notice. Our room was fairly plain, one chair, two single
beds with extremely firm and thin mattresses, pushed together,
and a couple of recesses in the walls with a few shelves and
glass doors. The ceiling was a traditional Ladakhi build,
with 6 - 8 inch thick tree trunks forming the joists, and 1 inch
diameter rods laid closely together over the top and at right
angles to the joists. On top of this, but not visible from
within our room, was placed a layer of special type of grass,
and on top of that was a 6 inch layer of mud! From what we
could see, most floors and ceilings in Ladakhi houses are made
this way. Ladakh has a very low annual rainfall of about
50mm, most of which falls as snow, so I guess erosion of the
flat mud roofs is minimal. After
a couple of hours rest and chill-out, we walked slowly back into
the town centre. Our plan was to take it very easy for at
least the first three days, to gradually try to
acclimatise. Rita especially, but me also on occasions,
had had terrible problems in South America with going up to
altitude, not helped by the fact that we only spent a few days
at altitude before returning to the coast, only to repeat the
exercise a few days later. Pressure of time meant that we
couldn't spend longer than a couple of days in the high altitude
places before moving on, and moving on to the next place
invariably involved going back down to sea level. But now,
we had almost three weeks in Ladakh, plenty of time to take
things real easy. Lunch
at La Terrasse consisted of Indian mixed veg for Rita and
a chicken Jalfrenzy (yes, thats how it was spelt on the menu) and dhal fry for me, helped down by some
Kingfisher beer and pineapple juice, not together of
course. Starting to feel the effects of the altitude, so
wandered back to the hotel, picking up a few essentials on the
way such as toilet roll, bottled water, and a nice big shiny
stainless steel padlock for our bedroom door. It seems
that we end up buying a nice shiny padlock in most countries we
visit, I'm sure Rita thinks I've got a fetish about them, but I
like to feel secure, and a piddly little padlock doesn't do it
for me. The
power supply in Leh is a bit temperamental, but elsewhere in
Ladakh its non existent, so I guess we should be glad to have it
occasionally. We were back in our room by 8pm, but with
the light going out and coming on again a infrequent intervals,
we called it a day and went to bed. Back
to Itinerary
Sunday 11th September, 2005 The beds were
harder than at first feared, and the pillows were pretty ineffective
too. We were both feeling under the weather to say the least,
with symptoms other than those you would normally associate with
altitude sickness, so it was a very long, uncomfortable night.. I started with a dose of Delhi Belly,
rather an appropriate name as that's probably where I collected
it from, but I also developed muscle aches, somewhat akin to
flu. Rita was also suffering, she had the headaches in the
top of the skull, the usual place for altitude sickness pains,
but was also suffering from the flu like muscle aches.
What a pair, eh? Late breakfast of Ladakhi
bread, butter, jam and a cup of coffee, at our guest
house. Didn't notice until afterwards that breakfast is
served from 7 'til 9, but they didn't say anything when we
ordered at 10. Not the most difficult meal to prepare,
though. The bread is a round flat bread, similar to a naan
bread, but cooked in an oven instead of a tandoor. I
wandered into town to look for a two pin power lead, the 3 pin
lead I had bought in Delhi should have been sufficient, but our
room only had one power point and that was a two pin socket,
which I couldn't quite get the 3 pin plug to fit. Being
Sunday, some stalls were closed for day, but a lot of Muslim
traders were open. If I was looking for a kerosene
cooker or spare parts for one, or shoes, clothes or radios, I
would have soon been sorted, but it was 20 minutes of walking
down to the old bus station before I found a suitable
shop. And he had an appropriate adaptor, for only 50
Rupees. After a quick beer break in La
Terrasse restaurant, I returned to collect Rita from the hotel,
and we strolled, slowly so as not to exert ourselves, to the
Mentokling Garden Restaurant. We had spotted it on our
brief foray into the town yesterday, and it looked like a quiet
spot, away from the traffic in a pleasant garden setting.
After a fairly dull start, the weather was perking up a little
and the sun was even popping out occasionaly. We had a
kadai veg. and a mixed veg., accompanied by a dhal fry and some
garlic naan and roti. The curries were quite bland
and oily, and the sun didnn't seem to get through to the garden
at all, too many trees. This could be our last visit to
the Mentokling. Back
to Itinerary
Monday 12th September, 2005 Rita feeling
a bit better this morning, me - slightly worse. The fast
and furious hasn't really subsided so I start on the Immodium.
I don't like to take Immodium as soon as problem begins, because
I'd rather let my body sort it out itself, which it often
does. But after 24 hours, it was time to give it a hand. Breakfast
time, so I'll stop talking about toilet habits, for now
anyway! We'd heard a few good reports about the World
Peace Cafe, attached to the Pumpernickel German bakery.
There are apparently at least 4 German Bakeries here, hadn't
noticed that many German tourists but I guess they don't check
your passport when you go in, so we should be OK. Rita
had an Israeli breakfast, consisting of an omelet, bread, salad,
humus and a cup of coffee. I fancied something solid, and maybe
a bit binding, so I had what was described as roast potatoes on
the menu, but which turned out to be mashed potato fried like a
thick pancake. Not what I was expecting, but quite nice
all the same. After a few coffees each, the bill came to a
reasonable 200 Rupees. Spent most of
the afternoon in our room, with me making frequent visits across
the landing. By evening, things had slowed down a
little, so we watched one of the DVD's we had bought with us, on
my laptop. Potato crisps and biscuits for tea, what
luxury!. Back
to Itinerary
Tuesday 13th September, 2005 Role
reversal this morning, I'm feeling better and Rita has worsened,
she has a bad headache, probably due to the altitude, she hasn't
had any alcohol for a number of days so we cant blame
that. I went into town at 8:30 to see if I could find any
of Rita's migraine tablets, but I'm told the chemists dont open
until 930. Back at the hotel I had my first hot wash since
we arrived, from a bucket. It's not bad really, like a
shower but you pour the water yourself using a small mug.
The only drawback is the water goes all over the bathroom floor,
but thats a common feature of most showers in Asia, Back
to town to check out the chemists, no luck with the migraine
tablets, although they had heardof them and they were sold under
a different brand name in India, they didn't have any in
stock. They didn't seem very interested in getting any
supplies in, either. "It will take a week for them to
arrive, they have to come from Delhi" I was told.
"We're her for 3 weeks, so we can wait" I
replied. "Oh no, they will take too long, they have
to come from Delhi."
"But...it's...we're.......", why bother, he obviously
isn't going to order any. After a quick check
for emails at an internet cafe, I returned to the hotel again,
at least I'm getting a bit of exercise today. Rita is up
and about and feeling a little better. Returned to
La Terrasse for lunch at around 1pm. The weather had been
closing in all morning, and now it was starting to rain, so we
sat inside rather than in the rooftop restaurant. It was
quite busy in there, I guess the rain was taking everybody off
the streets, it was quite heavy, quite unusual, we were told. Found
and internet cafe that would let me connect my laptop to their
network so I could get on to the internet. Connected up
ok, but it was painfully slow. Rita tried to check her
email on another terminal but couldn't get past the log on
screen. After half an hour I'd managed to download two
messages and gave up. After
exploring some of the old town for a while, we had tea at the
World Peace Cafe, I wont bore you with the details of my meal
but Rita had a fabulous falafel sandwich. I
know what you're thinking, all we seem to be doing is eating and
walking between the hotel and the cafes. Well, that's what
your supposed to do when you trying to acclimatise, take it real
easy! Back
to Itinerary
Wednesday 14th September, 2005 I'm still
having a few problems in the toilet department, but I've carried
on with the Imodium and thinks are improving. Just thought
you'd like to know. Late breakfast in town,
followed by a spell in another internet cafe that will let me
connect my laptop. The connection is better, but it keeps
on stopping and everyone despairs. Perhaps this is all we
can expect this far up in the Himalayas? Although this
place we're using at the moment is supposed to have a satellite
connection, I think they might be sharing it with a number of
other places. 3pm is the highlight of the
day, as far as the Ladakh festival is concerned, anyway.
It's the final of the polo competition today. There has
been a match every other day during the festival, but we haven't
made it to any of them. Yet. This final is between
the Ladakh Scouts (not boy scouts, I thin they're a branch of
the Indian Army) and a team called Animal Husbandry (probably
also something to do with the army but could find out, must be a
secret). We reached the polo ground, not far
from the centre of Leh, a little after 2pm, a bit too early for
the 3pm kick off but at least we could pick our seats.
I've never been to a polo match before, so I wasn't quite sure
what to expect, a bit like hockey on horse back, I supposed, and
I wasn't far out. The local variation of the game has few
rules and play is fast and furius. There is a referee, but his
job seems mainly to be to chuck the ball in the air and blow his
whistle when a goal is scored. The Ladalh Scouts
overwhelmed the first half and scored 3 goals to nothing.
The second half was slightly better for Animal Husbandry in that
they scored a goal, but the end result was 8 - 1 to the Ladakh
Scouts, a fair result. Wandered
back into town with the rest of the crowds, but, unlike the
others, we headed to the Norling Restaurant, a place we
hadn't tried before. Quite a nice chicken fried rice (I'm
still taking it easy on the stomach front, need something to
help slow tings down a little) and Rita was more adventurous
with dhal mackenie and roti. The waiter, originally from
Nepal, spoke to us at length about how good his Indian food was,
but said the Chinese food was only so so. Perhaps he
should have told me before I ordered my
dish! Back
to Itinerary
Thursday 15th September, 2005 Gave the
Noorling another try, this time for breakfast. I had a
standard breakfast, a bit below standard if you ask me, Rita
plumped for the Israeli breakfast, just for a change. Not
over impressed, wont come back here for breakfast. It
perhaps wouldn't be so bad if the waiter didn't go on about how
his place was. We are changing hotels today,
for a number of minor reasons. 1. When we arrived, we told
the manager we'd be staying for 5 days, (mainly to try and
squeeze an extra bit of discount out of him but it hadn't
worked). 2. The beds were rock hard, surely they weren't
this hard everywhere! 3. We wanted to try a different part
of the town. 4. We were getting a bit fed up with
the toilets in our old hotel, especially the state of the toilet
seats, and we seemed to be the only people who flushed them
(often the flush didn't work so you had to fill a bucket of
water and pour that down. Not too difficult,
really). Why am I justifying it, we were moving, that's
all. The Rainbow Guest House had a good write
up in the Footprints guide book. There were some en-suite
rooms which she would let us have for 250 Rs, normally 300 Rs
but because it was nearing the end of the end of the season she
reduced it without asking. Bed was still pretty firm,
actually very firm,, and the pillows weren't much better.
But we had our own toilet. The views were not as good as
described in the guide book, in fact from within the grounds of
the guesthouse there were no views to be had at all, but if you
walked back up the road a little way, stood on a small pile of
boulders and craned your neck, you could just make out the top of
the Shanti Stupor, a distance over to the west. Back
to town in the afternoon for the closing ceremony of the Ladakh
Festival, at the polo ground. Arrived a little late to get
a good spot, but later realised that what might have appeared to
be a good vantage point at the start would not necessarily be
later on. There was a long line of people dressed in traditional costumes spread across half of the polo ground,
obviously lined up waiting for a procession of some sort.
There were a lot of foreigner, us included, strolling along the
line taking photos. I was a bit embarrassed at times by
the gall of some of the foreigners, practically sticking there
cameras up peoples noses without a please or thank you.
There are limits. Soon the local dignitaries
turned up in their posh Ambassador cars. I say posh, the
Ambassador was one of the only cars produced in India at one
time, so they were used for all purposes, from a (wealthy)
family car to taxis and official cars. These days, there
are all sorts of imported cars and cars manufactured by foreign
car companies within India, but the Ambassador still seems to
hold a special place in the hierarchies of government and the
civil service. Now the VIPs were here, the
procession started. The VIPs walked to their reserved
seats in the main stand, followed by the costumed people, who
paraded past the stand and continued on to a waiting area.
Then there was a long speech to welcome the dignitaries and
every other Tom, Dick and Harry. While this was going on,
the hordes were kept at bay by the local police, patrolling the
limits of a large space in front of the main stand, cordoned off
by metal railings, and waiving there rattan canes at anybody who
dared to poke their nose into the cordoned area. Just
as we were about to go home from boredom, thinking we'd seen the
procession and that's probably it, bar the shouting (or speeches),
the costumed people began doing their party pieces. The
cordon was gradually abandoned, with groups of people being
allowed to sit on the floor, within the cordon, closer to the
performance area. It was a shame that the performers
seemed to be performing mainly to the people in the stand, in a
small carpeted area just in front of the stand. During the
speeches they had said a great deal about how the Ladakh
Festival was designed to bring in more foreign tourists, but the
closing ceremony seems to be for the benefit of the local dignitaries.
The police were very good at keeping the crowds sitting,
especially with their big sticks, but, because there were so
many of them and because they were standing between the crowds
and the performance, as the crowds got closer it became more and
more difficult to see the performance! Despite this, we
did see some wonderful costumes, if thats the right word to
use. Dinner at Grand Norling.
The waiter said he would do something special, a surprise.
Rita was game for it, but I knew what I wanted and didn't fancy
a surprise. Ritas special dish turned out to be a
veg sizzler, something taht a lot of the cafes do. I'm not
sure its especially a local dish, I think it is of India origin,
but is basically a hot cast-iron dish covered in a layer of
cabbage leaves on top of which were numerous vegetable cooked in
various ways. It was okay, but was also one of the most
expensive items on the menu, especially for a veg dish.
This could be our last visit to the Norling. Reviewed
our photos from today and the last week on my laptop. I've
also got a DVD writer now, which should hopefully reduce the
number of discs we have to carry. During our recent world
tour, we ended up with 35 cds full of our photos, with DVDs that
would have been reduced to 6 or 7 discs, quite a saving it
weight and volume. But tonight I'm having problems writing
to the discs I've bought with me. Hopefully its just that the
DVD burner doesn't like the brand of discs I've got, rather than
the DVD writer is on the blink! I'll have to try and get
some more blank dvds to try. In Leh? I think I'm
going to be pushing my luck find them here. Back
to Itinerary
Friday 16th September, 2005 Spent ages in
the internet cafe, downloading other versions of DVD burning
software, just in case its the fault of the software.
Tried out 3 different programs, but none would write to my
DVDs. The Nero trial I downloaded expired as soon as I
installed it, now thats what I call a short trial period! I
thought it was supposed to be 30 days, seems more like 30
seconds. Didn't do much else today, walked
around the town and ate and drank. We are on holiday, after
all!. Back
to Itinerary
Saturday 17th September, 2005 Did even
less today than yesterday. Still no joy on DVD
front. Back
to Itinerary
Sunday 18th September, 2005 Our first
trip out of Leh since we arrived. Both feeling a lot
better today, taken some time but you cant rush these things. Dull
and cloudy today, hopefully it will brighten up later, as it
seems to often do, although the clouds look a little different
today. Up early, breakfast at World Peace
Cafe, then walked to the bottom end of town to the new bus
station, about 20 minutes walk. !0am bus to the Thickse Gonpa, a
Buddhist monastery, about 25km, or an hour on the bus. Started
out not toobad, but as we got to the outskirts of Leh, more and
more people got on. Not sure how they got on, a lot of
pushing and shoving and they disappeared into the back of the
bus, somewhere. I think the bus had about 25 seats, but
there must be have been at least 60 people in there at times,
and I don't know how many were on the roof! The
view of the gonpa as we got off the bus was quite impressive,
sat atop the end of a ridge above the village and Indus valley
below. Shame about the electric pylons and wires spoiling
the view. It was not as difficult a climb as either of us
thought it looked from the bottom, and we were soon at the first
of several temples in the gonpa, not too out of breath and
actually feeling quite good. The
most impressive sight was the huge Buddha in one of the temples,
it was seated on the ground floor of the temple but its head
reached up to the top of the second floor. I think the
temple had actually been built around the statue. After
a cup of tea with the monks in their communal kitchen, which
they wouldn't take payment for but accepted a donation, we
headed back down to the main road to catch a bus back to
Leh. Stopped off to take some photos of some farmers
threshing their barley, all manually of course. Had to
stand for the hours journey back to Leh, could have been worse,
at least we weren't asked to sit on the
roof. Back
to Itinerary
Mon 19th September, 2005 Back
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Tues 20th September, 2005 Back
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21st September, 2005 Back
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Thur 22nd September, 2005 Back
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23rd September, 2005 Back
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24th September, 2005 Back
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Sun 25th to Thu 29th September, 2005 After
our 3 day trip out in the homestays and visiting the monsateries,
not to mention the walking, we decided to chill out in the last
few days in Ladakh. A lot of the shops and restaurants
were starting to close down at the end of the season, but we
still managed to find a few good ones who were staying
open. Our hotel was staying open at least
until we left on the 29th, and possibly longer, but there were
fewer and fewer guests as the days passed. Our
departure from Leh airport was marred by what we now call the
battery incident. We had arrived early at the airport, too
early to be allowed to go through to check in, so we waited in
the outer waiting hall. When we
passed through to the check in desks, we were second in
line. The lady at the check-in desk said we weren't
allowed hand luggage, so I said it was all fragile and valuable
things that couldn't be checked in. She didn't argue, but
did say they may not allow us on the plane with it. We
then went though another scanning process ( our third since
arriving at the airport) to get through to the departure
lounge. I use the word "lounge" loosely.
Nobody seemed to object when I put my hand luggage on the x-ray
machine conveyer belt, I thought I was home and
free. But then the guy operating the machine shouted out
that I had two spare batteries in my luggage. So?
You're not allowed to take spare batteries in your hand luggage,
it seems. His assistant got me to open up my bag and get
the batteries out. Something was coming back to me, I
vaguely remember something about Indian airlines being a bit
funny about batteries in hand luggage. I pulled out the
spare battery for my camera, an expensive lithium-ion
jobby. She wanted to know where the other one was, I said
I had no others but she checked the rest of my bag, missing the
spare battery for my laptop. Phew. I was then told that
when I went out to identify my checked in luggage, I could put
the battery in there. No problems, I didn't mind doing
that. The problem was that the man with the gun guarding
the checked in luggage didn't want me to touch the bag, let
alone put anything in it. I went back to the x-ray machine
guy, who took me back out and had a long argument with the man
with the gun. Rather him than me. No, I cant put my
battery in my checked in luggage! Next option,
I hand over the battery and somebody will give it back to me in
Delhi. What do you mean, somebody? Who is this
person? Do I get a receipt? Will I get compensation if it
doesn't make it? The nly answers to these questions were
shakes of the head. Finally, Rita came to rescue and
offered to check in her hand luggage with my battery in it, a
solution that seemed to please everybody. The
bizaar thing about this no batteries rule is that it only
applies to spare batteries. The identical battery that was
in my camera was perfectly ok to take on as hand luggage, but
because the spare was not in the camera, it was not
permitted. How stupid is that? If I was a terrorist
and wanted to take a battery on board or some illicit reason, I
would just have to put it a battery operated device and I'd be
on my way, to heaven and the attentions of 72 virgins, probably. The
rest of the flight was uneventful, except for the specatular
views of the Himalays, of course, which we weren't allowed to
photograph for security reasons. Give me strength. Back
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