Days 3-6: Leh and Manali

“When she wakes up in the morning, she writes down all her dreams...”

-The Libertines, “What a Waster”

Locations: Srinagar (Kashmir); Leh and environs (Ladakh); Manali (Himachal Pradesh)

Photos:

Srinagar to Leh: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2046690&l=ca3a3&id=1101094

Leh: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2046703&l=453ee&id=1101094

Leh to Manali: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2046758&l=a8294&id=1101094

Temperature: Leh: 75; Manali: 82

Morale: 9

Spinning: Srinagar: Elliott Smith - New Moon (solid collection of rarities he wrote around 1998), Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, Stars - In Our Bedroom After the War (patchy), Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights; Leh/Manali: St. Vincent - Marry Me (awesome), The Libertines - Up the Bracket, Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People

Reading: Lonely Planet

Talking: Indian politics, living in London, living in New York

What's next (I think): Dharamsala/McLeod Ganj (Himachal Pradesh)

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We left the Srinagar-Leh taxi parking lot and drove back to Dal Lake to pick up the Brits who would also be residing in our spacious Tata Sumo for the next ~15 hours. Along the way, we dropped off two of the Kashmiris who had been in the back of the Sumo. Would we seriously drive to Leh with the car less than full? In most developing countries, that’s unheard of.

The Brits had names, it turned out, so thankfully I can finally stop calling them the Brits: Jatinder (36) and Jas (32) were married four years ago and have lived in London for ~13 years. Jatinder works for the BBC and is responsible for a weekly radio program called “The World This Weekend,” along with the third member of their party, Marilyn. Jas is a doctor in London, although she has spent time working with AIDS patients in Zimbabwe.

At first I wasn't sure what to think of these folks. They seemed nice enough, but I figured that by an hour into the ride I would be happily listening to my iPod.

No such luck. They turned out to be exactly the sort of travelers that you hope to meet when you're flying solo. They were intelligent, thoughtful, savvy, opinionated, and respectful of their surroundings, all of which were greatly appreciated by yours truly. It only took a couple of Bush bashes to get them to warm up to me, and shortly thereafter I was discussing everything from Iraq to Israel/Palestine to India/Pakistan/Kashmir with Jatinder. Thanks to my obsession with world news and especially politics, I could talk about all these topics somewhat intelligently with Jatinder, but even so I was blown away by his depth of knowledge regarding every topic of which I could possibly think. The discussion ended up being more of a “Here's what I know/think, now tell me why I'm wrong” kind of session for me, which was incredibly helpful for someone who gets nearly all his world news from one source (The Economist, with some BBC news and MSNBC news websites on the side).

It was clear from the beginning that Jatinder resides happily on the political left, which wasn't surprising to me given that I wouldn’t expect to find many Tories traveling around Kashmir. But as he talked more about current political issues, it became clear to me that he wasn't just a center-left kind of guy who talked liberal but had a nice cushy corporate job (I mean, it seems he does have a nice cushy corporate job that put him up in the five-star Imperial Hotel while he was in Delhi for work, but that's not the point). He seemed to be quite the social activist for those left behind by economic development. And, as I learned later, he even had an anti-establishment past to back it up—at dinner the following night, he told me that he once climbed the flagpole outside a suburban London police station in order to burn the Union Jack that hung atop it. I liked the story so much that I told him my Addison, TX police helicopter story in return.

Realizing that wisdom is hard to come by and that these folks had quite a few years on me, I happily touched on other subjects on which I thought they could be of help: living in London (too much to write, but I think I’d prefer it to New York), when to get married (LATE!), The Economist (not fans), the “post-hippie” (term coined by Jatinder during dinner on Wednesday night) crowd in Dharamsala/McLeod Ganj (“Hey maaaan, I went to Dharamsala, maaaan, and I met the Dali Lama, maaaan, and he told me to do so and so, maaaan”), etc.

The scenery on the drive was spectacular, as promised. We began the initial ascent immediately upon leaving Srinagar, and peaked out at 3500m as we went through the Zoji-La pass over the western Himalayas. Later on the trip we hit 4500m as we crossed the Zanskar chain. Snow-capped peaks were everywhere, as were surprisingly fertile valleys and lots of rivers.

The most interesting thing about the trip was not the changing scenery but the changing religion/culture/ethnic makeup of the residents. Srinagar was filled with Sunni Kashmiris who looked almost Pakistani, but as we drove east we dropped first the Pakistani/Kashmiri look (for Tibetan) and then Sunni Islam (for first Shia Islam, then Buddhism). Kargil, where we stopped for food (really good flatbread with a spicy eggplant mixture, beans, and yogurt, picked out by Jatinder and Jas), had perhaps the most interesting mixing bowl of people—we saw a Shia cleric walking around, pictures of Ayatollah Khomeini on the walls of all the restaurants, and young Tibetan-looking girls coming home from school wearing their Islamic headscarves. Fascinating.

We had a bit of trouble along the way—namely a blown tire—but nothing that could compare to my troubles in Senegal. Jatinder said, in his finest British accent, that it was a “Good job he'd been eating a lot of food recently” so he was heavy enough to stand on the tire iron and unscrew the bolts. He sounded exactly like Neil Godwin from The Office (BBC version, of course), and I told him so. Anyhow, I made sure to check that the bolts had been tightened properly before we set off—the next time my wheel falls off like it did in Senegal, I don't think I'll live to recount the story.

The drive took a little longer than expected, due to the blown tire and the time it took to repair it once we got to Kargil. We were hoping to get to Lamayuru gompa (Buddhist temple) before dark and stop off for a bit to see it, but we arrived long after sunset.

The last portion of the drive, from Lamayuru to Leh, consisted of all four of us falling asleep for a few minutes at a time until we hit a bump and slammed our heads into the seat in front of us (or, in my case, the dashboard), and us driving off the road onto some random trail until Marilyn convinced the driver that we were definitely no longer on the road. Quite a comfortable ride overall. No, but seriously, thanks to the scenery and the conversation it was not as painful as it could have been.

We got to Leh a little before midnight and crashed in our respective guest houses. Can you guess who stayed in the cheaper one?

The next morning I was supposed to meet Jatinder, Jas, and Marilyn for breakfast at 11, so I got up around 8 and explored the town a bit. But when I went to meet the Brits at their guest house at 11, they had already eaten and the girls had already gone into town. That brings me to the one weakness of these folks—meeting up for a meal at a scheduled time. Whether it was meeting for breakfast that morning, meeting for food after touring Leh Palace that afternoon, or meeting for dinner at the Tibetan Kitchen that night, there was one thing I could count on: them not being there. Good thing there's no “three strikes and you're out” law in India. But don't worry, Jatinder and Jas. Mostly I found it humorous.

Anyhow, after I realized there would be no group breakfast I got a chocolate croissant from a German bakery (which were all over the town—strange) and then the four of us walked up the hill to the ruined Leh Palace, which sat on a hill overlooking the city. Inside, we explored the palace, which is being restored (and probably ruined, according to Jatinder) by the Indian government, and made our way into the Central Prayer Room in the middle of it. The prayer room was the highlight of the trip so far for me—inside was a Buddhist nun who, ever-so-softly, was singing/chanting a Buddhist prayer. Being inside the temple was magical—it's easy to see why Buddhist monks seem so at peace. She even took out one of the ancient prayer scrolls and chanted it to us—I have a video that I'll show you all at some point. In short, it was breathtaking. When we left the room I couldn't speak for at least 30 seconds. Which is rare.

After Leh Palace I ventured off on my own to climb the 200 meters or so up to the gompa on top of the mountain above Leh Palace. The views from the gompa were spectacular—the town of Leh in the foreground, then hills, mountains, and finally snow-capped peaks in the background, followed by deep blue sky.

I climbed back down from the mountain and went to meet up with Jatinder, Jas, and Marilyn (can I go back to calling them “the Brits” yet?) at a place called La Terrasse, which had a nice rooftop restaurant with umbrellas (despite the cool temperatures, the sun was scorching our faces). But it was mealtime, and of course the Brits were no where to be found, so I did some shopping at the Tibetan Refugee market (Ladakh is not only populated with Ladakhis, who look somewhat Tibetan and speak a language called Ladakhi, but also with actual Tibetans who fled Tibet after China invaded in 1949).

I bought a few handicrafts at the Tibetan market, which is of course much better for one’s karma than buying from other, more corporate, stores in town (although nothing in Leh is very corporate). Afterwards I went back to La Terrasse and found the Brits, who had stopped to visit some gompas on the way down from Leh Palace. We ate pakoras (vegetables deep fried in spicy batter—as Adam Wible insightfully notes, think Outback Steakhouse’s Bloomin' Onion) and spring rolls (now served all over India, but originally from Tibet) on the rooftop, which was quite pleasant. Jatinder ran into some stomach problems and made for the squat toilet in a shed behind the restaurant, which I'm certain was quite unpleasant.

We retired to our guesthouses to shower, and then at 7:30pm I went to meet my new friends for dinner at the Tibetan Kitchen (which reportedly had the best food in town). Of course they weren't there, but at that point I expected nothing less. As it turned out, they had been held up trying to purchase tickets from Leh to Delhi (quite an ordeal, and one that made me happy I was taking the comparatively simple jeep ride to Manali), so of course I was more that happy to start dinner late if it meant them figuring out their travel plans. Only, they hadn't quite been able to purchase the tickets. Booking air travel out of Leh, you see, is not particularly easy.

At Tibetan Kitchen we ate vegetable/cheese and chicken momos (dumplings) and vegetable and lamb sha-bale, which is flatbread stuffed with cheese and vegetables or meat. The food was fantastic. I also had my first Indian beer—Kingfisher. It tasted like… beer.

We spent much of the meal discussing the many problems that plague present-day India. I knew next to nothing about the country at this point, but luckily Jatinder was quite knowledgeable and more than willing to impart some of his wisdom. One thing I learned about was the plight of migrant workers in northern India who hail mostly from Uttar Pradesh (northeast of Delhi) and Bihar (east of Uttar Pradesh, towards Calcutta), two of the poorest states in India. These migrant workers travel to places like Leh and Manali and McLeod Ganj for the summer to find work, but aren't paid particularly well for it, and aren't treated particularly kindly by the local residents (think how many people in CA and TX (or the racists in Hazelton, PA, for that matter) react to migrant workers from Mexico). Anyhow, these folks, especially the Biharis, are the low of the low in India. One job they often did in Leh was make bricks, and according to Jatinder one laborer would make something like 30 or 40 bricks in a day and be paid a couple rupees. And here I thought the Kashmiris and Ladakhis were poor.

After dinner we stopped by the internet cafe we had been frequenting, which also happened to be a travel agency. We were interested in making a one day trek the following day, but we wanted to book it before going to bed if possible. The owner of the place called a guide, then another guide, and finally found someone to take us. For all three of us the guided hike would cost Rs 500 ($12.50) total, plus the cost of the taxi ride back from the end of the trail. Seriously? That’s called disgustingly cheap labor, my friends.

We planned to meet our guide at the internet cafe at 8:00 the next morning, and then we all went to bed.

I got up early the next morning and went down to the main bus station, just outside of town, to buy my Tata Sumo ticket to Manali for 2am that night. I had a choice of sitting in the middle row by the window for Rs 1500, or sitting in the back and wanting to kill myself for Rs 900, so I went with the former option. Then I walked back into town, past a bunch of stupas (statues/columns that are supposed to protect gompas, or entire towns), gompas, and prayer wheels. I need to study up on Tibetan Buddhism because I know next to nothing about any of this stuff.

I got some breakfast at another German bakery and then went to meet Jatinder and Jas (Marilyn had flown back to Delhi early that morning) at their hotel. But when we all arrived at the internet cafe/travel agency at 8, our guide was nowhere to be found. It seems he had caught a bit of the “Jatinder & Jas disease.” Ha ha!

Anyhow, the guide never did show up, so the owner of the place called another guide while we surfed the web at 28 Kbps. Apparently this new guide was arriving from somewhere approximately as far away as Timbuktu, because it took him about 2 hours to turn up in a town of 28,000 people (in the summer; 15,000 in the winter).

In any case, the guides (there turned out to be two of them) finally arrived, but by this time it was 10:30am and the airline offices were open, so it made sense for Jatinder to take care of the airline booking before we left (because we would likely be getting back to Leh after everything was closed). Jas and I got some fruit juice (still not sure which fruit) and momos from the All Ladakhi Unemployed Youth Association restaurant, which was a bit confusing to me because if the unemployed youths are working at the restaurant, aren't they, by definition, employed?

Jatinder was finally able to purchase the airline tickets, though with great pain (they didn't take sterling or credit cards, so he had to go back to the hotel and get sterling to change into rupees), and by the time we were ready to leave it was past noon. The guides said we didn't have time to do the trek (it was usually a two-day trek, but for people who walked a lot slower than we did), but Jatinder convinced them to let us take a shortcut and still go. So we scarfed down the last of the dumplings and set off.

We walked through a couple villages outside of Leh before trading civilization for solitude. Although the slope was gentle, we all found it difficult to breathe due to the altitude. Or at least that was my excuse.

We passed a couple gompas, some donkeys, some cows, and a whole bunch of dzos (mix of cow and yak), and the views of the mountains around Leh were fantastic. After hiking for a couple hours, we came to the base of the mountain we were supposed to summit, but we were running low on daylight, and Jas was feeling bad (as she had just told me that morning, she was two months pregnant, hence her exhaustion. By the way, I asked her if she planned to have children in the jeep on the way to Leh, and she said “Hopefully.” Clearly, I missed the joke).

I thought it made sense for the guides to split up (we did have two of them for a reason, right?): one would take Jas and Jatinder back, and the other would summit the mountain with me. But the guides didn't want to split up for some reason unbeknownst to any of us (by the way, the guides spoke little to no English. The only way we were able to communicate with them was through Jatinder and Jas speaking to them in Hindi, which happened to be every participant's second or third language). So Jatinder and Jas graciously offered to retrace our steps alone, and sent both guides along with me.

The guides said we would take a shortcut to hike the mountain extra-quickly, and then we would hurry down and catch up with Jatinder and Jas on the way back down the trail. Feeling invincible, I said I could go as fast as need be, and the guides and I started the climb.

But within a couple minutes we veered off the trail that went to the top of the mountain through a series of switchbacks, and started climbing directly up the steep slope. I started feeling the pain, but figured this was the short cut and thought we'd be back on the switchbacks in a few minutes.

No such luck. We quickly lost the other guide, who stayed behind to rest while we climbed (so why didn't he just go back with Jatinder and Jas to begin with?). I asked when we'd be back on the trail, and the guide laughed and said, “No trail.” This, apparently, was the shortcut we had to take to get to the top of the mountain before dark: hike from 12,000 to 14,500 feet by going straight up the side of the mountain, without any switchbacks whatsoever. I indicated that I understood, but that this wouldn't be much of a shortcut if I hiked extremely slowly (it seems sitting at a desk in New York was not helpful for my fitness).

I asked how much longer the hike would take if we stayed on the trail, and he said one hour, which we didn't have. So I swallowed my pride and hiked back down the mountain to catch up with Jatinder and Jas. On the way down, I attempted to jump over an effective stream of mud and water that ran through one of the valleys, but the rock I stepped on moved, and I landed on my back in the middle of the mud. Once the guides saw that I was ok, they started laughing their asses off. Once again, I'm happy I could entertain. I walked over to a proper stream and soaked my shoes, socks, and pants in the water, figuring it would be easier to dry my clothes than to clean them.

We caught up with Jatinder and Jas just before the nearest town, and we all caught a taxi from the town back to Leh. By this time we were all feeling like hell from the sun, altitude, and dehydration, so when we got back to town Jas went back to the guest house to sleep while Jatinder and I went for a “drink” (elementary school style—apple juice and water). In the restaurant, we saw our first poster of the city of Lhasa (Tibet), which we would see multiple times around town in the next few hours. It must be strange, and awful, to feel an attachment to a place to which you couldn't return anytime in the foreseeable future.

Jatinder and I thought the liquids would make us feel better, but we were incorrect, so we went back to the guest house and I passed out on the floor.

After sleeping for a couple hours, we got up and Jatinder and Jas were nice enough to let me shower at their place. Then we went to dinner at a restaurant that served Indian and Tibetan food and that came highly recommended by Lonely Planet, but it turned out to be less than impressive. The service was horrible—ordering from the Bihari kid was like pulling teeth—but then I felt like an ass when Jatinder pointed out that the kid was probably illiterate and that's why he made us write down what we wanted instead of just telling him.

After dinner we headed back to Jas and Jatinder’s guesthouse to say our goodbyes. I must admit, I was bummed to be leaving my new friends. While I do really like doing things on my own, it was nice to have some travel companions, especially ones with whom I got along as well as these folks. I promised that I would visit them the next time I was in London, and if I end up moving there someday I'm sure I'd look them up.

At this point it was midnight, and I had two hours to kill before my jeep left for Manali, so I took a slow, dark walk to the bus station (my flashlight had already burnt out). Upon arrival, I met an Israeli guy who spoke decent English, and we chatted about our travels while we waited.
Before I recount the story of my terrifying jeep ride from Leh to Manali, allow me to offer a few final words about my experience in Ladakh.

First, a quick word about the Ladakhis: I love them. Never did I get asked for money, hassled, lied to, or anything. They are totally gentle and kind people, despite the fact that they are dirt poor and live in a region that is cut off from the rest of India (and the world) for 8 months out of the year. They made the Kashmiris, whom I also thought fairly highly of, resemble Egyptians. And they made the Egyptians resemble another species altogether.

Next, a bit about Ladakhi politics: for no good reason that I can see, Ladakh is ruled from Srinagar and Jammu by the state of J&K. They speak an entirely different language than the folks in J&K (not to mention their vastly different religion and culture), and language is the Indian government’s stated criterion for dividing the country into states, yet still they are refused autonomy. Needless to say, most Ladakhis don't seem particularly happy to be governed by J&K. Kind of ironic—Kashmir, which is being occupied by India and Pakistan, is in turn effectively occupying Ladakh. Can't everyone leave everyone else alone?

Finally, a survey of costs: Ladakh is cheap. A 1 liter bottle of water costs Rs 15 (37 cents). A cheap, but not awful, guest house room costs Rs 200 ($5). A 3km auto-rickshaw ride costs Rs 20 (50 cents). A plate of momos (dumplings) costs Rs 40 ($1).

Back to the bus station, and to my new Israeli friend. He had just finished his time with the IDF (Israeli Defense Force), and was traveling for a year before entering university. He seemed to be on somewhat of a spiritual journey—instead of the typical Indian destinations, he planned to visit places like Rishikesh (self-proclaimed “yoga capital of the world”) and Dharamkot (a village just north of McLeod Ganj known for its spiritually-enlightened Israelis).

A quick word about Israeli travelers, and bear in mind that I am not speaking on the basis of any commonly held stereotypes, but purely on the basis of my own experience. And I do have 15 or 20 data points, I'd say. Anyhow, they are, in a word, cheap. They stay in the cheapest hotel possible, but only if they can't stay in a Jewish guest house that they don't have to pay for at all. They take the worst seats in the car to save Rs 300 (indeed, the back of my Sumo to Manali was filled with the Israeli I met and three of his fellow countrymen, none of whom he knew prior to this jeep ride). If you see an otherwise well-to-do backpacker haggling over a few pennies, you can be certain he is Israeli.

Ok, right now Jim Nimberg is having a field day talking about me riding around on my white horse with my cape, but seriously, I don't have a problem with this behavior (after all, I'm like that too, but to a lesser extent); mostly, I’m just mystified by it. What about Israeli culture breeds cheapness beyond necessity? That's not a rhetorical question.

While waiting for the Sumo I also met a Polish girl who had lived in New York for the past 13 years teaching yoga to underprivileged children (yoga? I mean, whatever...). She asked what I did in New York, and without hesitation I told her all about my job as a high school teacher in the Bronx. Oh, guilt.

At last we were ready to leave, and I hopped into my Sumo with the four Israelis and a family of Frenchmen (three teenagers and their dad). Luckily, I had learned some French from Nimmy, so I could converse with these people. Or, they spoke perfect English.

We set off along the incredibly bumpy road out of Leh, and all of us tried to sleep, to no avail. French dad almost broke his nose when we hit a big bump and he slammed his face into the dash.

Then we popped our first tire. That meant an hour of standing outside in the freezing 4am air while our driver plugged the hole. Sweet.

Then we popped our second tire. Ok, fun's over now!

So, the first two hours of the drive took us about six. After that the engine overheated, and we sat on the side of the road fixing that for another hour.

By this time it was morning, and so I was fully awake when we drove over the highest pass of the trip—Taglang La (5328m). The mountains around us were even higher than the road—most were around 7000m. But even at 5000m we were driving through clouds and snow, which was kind of cool considering it was August, and as I found out later I had just driven the second highest road in the world (I guess maybe the highest is in Nepal? Richard, Ian?).

The next few hours of the trip were uneventful besides the amazing scenery—this road makes driving the Blue Ridge Parkway look like driving through Nebraska. Mountains, valleys, gorges, rivers, snow covered mountains—this one had it all. It even topped the previous drive from Srinagar to Leh, which I previously thought impossible.

We stopped for food and passport checks a couple times (there is a surplus of Indian military personnel in Ladakh. If only the Indian government would spend half as much money on building roads and other infrastructure in the region as they do on stationing soldiers there, everyone would be much better off. But then, I’m American, so who am I to talk?). Though we were way behind schedule, everything went smoothly until it started to get dark. That's when our Ladakhi driver (who had, as we found out later, driven from Manali to Leh (20 hrs) the previous day before resting three hours and then getting back in the car to take us back to Manali) fell asleep at the wheel and put us inches from sliding off the side of the road, which happened to be a cliff. Actually, if it wasn't for French dad grabbing the wheel at the last moment, we'd all be dead.

After that we made certain to keep up a conversation with the driver (in broken English, the always-common denominator) for the rest of the trip, and in so doing we learned that just the previous day, a Sumo had careened off a cliff and all the passengers had been killed. How nice.

By the way, the Indian government runs these Sumo taxis and pays the drivers, and so they are fully aware of the inhumane hours these drivers are working. It's utterly ridiculous that they allow this kind of treatment of government workers. But then, according to Jatinder, the Indian government is also responsible for moving entire villages in the name of development, usually telling the usually poor inhabitants that they will be compensated (but how can you compensate someone for taking their home and most likely their proximity to their source of income?), and then doing nothing to compensate them. Nice. I asked Jatinder how the government got away with this, and his answer was a lack of NGO's to keep the government in check. The unspoken answer, of course, is that not enough people in the world give a shit about what's happening to poor people in India.

Anyhow, we forcibly engaged our driver in conversation for the next few hours as we approached Manali, and when we stopped for our last passport check I bought him a Coke (a cheap insurance policy, I thought). But with only a couple hours to go, he pulled off the side of the road and said he couldn't stay awake, and said he would call another car to come pick us up. But the Israelis protested, and complained that we should have been in Manali for hours by now, and the Frenchies didn't have the guts to stand up to them. Go figure. (Am I offending anyone yet? I certainly hope so.)

So despite having just told us that he couldn't keep his eyes open, our driver got back behind the wheel and drove us down the steep mountain roads to Manali. It was 1am at this point, but never have I been so awake. When we finally pulled into the Manali bus station at 2am, the driver received a warm round of applause. After all, it's not his fault that he drove 44 out of the past 47 hours.

But despite everyone's happiness at arriving safely, no one thought it was reasonable to tip the driver, even though he had most likely been paid only a fraction of our fares. So I gave him Rs 400 ($10), and that was enough to guilt French dad into walking back to the car and offering a tip of his own. But not the Israelis—no, they held firm. No extra expenditures, damn it.

I went with the Frenchies to their guest house, which they had booked in advance. Luckily they had plenty of rooms open, so I got a nice large single with private bath and hot water for Rs 200 ($5). Exhausted, I fell asleep immediately.