bus from passing through - this has been our mantra for the past five
days as we conquered pass after pass. Mix and I have taken fair turns
at feeling nauseous - she due to the sheer vertical drops with plenty
potential for immediate death and me due to the endless twists and
turns of the neverending rollercoaster roads. Descends lead to lush
green valleys crossing terrential rivers, turquoise with glacier water
and waiting to be paddled one day, in some future adventure.
Srinaghar then Kargil and on to Leh. Bright prayer flags, shrines and
memorial stones occasionally flagging the roadside. As we climb
higher, the landscape becomes evermore hostile. Hot, dusty,
unforgiving, raw, uninhabitable. Yet human dwellings and monastries
rise out of the mountain side to merge with the dull surroundings.
At 3505m Leh awaits. A new town filled with the hustle and bustle of a
tourist hub. Pashmina shop, Israeli tourist, carpet shop, German
tourist, trekking company, hotel, Tibetan refugee stall, Israeli
tourist, shop. Leh fails to capture our immediate admiration in the
same way that Srinaghar did. We thus decide to devote ourselves to
gaining a better understanding of the fine arts of pashmino and carpet
weaving: knots per square inch, silk on silk, belly hair versus neck
hair - we have become near experts on these topics.
At midnight under accompaniement of Leh's howling stray dogs, we board
a minibus to begin the final leg of our pre-expedition journey.
Expectations are high for this "road that every person should travel
before their death" (quote: a local). We are proud to be coping well
with the altitude even as we reach the road's heighest point of 5100m.
Unfortunately it is still dark and we cannot see much. Day breaks to
unveil a landscape that consumes every fibre of one's being.
Magnificent canyons open up onto mellow grassy plateaus crowned by
snow-capped mountains in the distance. Every shade of brown appears to
be reflected in the scene. I would go further still to say that these
mountains have succeeded in making brown beautiful. As we enter into
Himachal Pradesh we are confronted by sheets of rain for the first
time. A couple of hours to go till we meet up with the guys and
Kaushal...
...dammit. Note to self, never write a blog entry before the evening.
So much for a couple of hours. Little did we expect a 'minor' traffic
jam on the Rothang Pass, only 2 hours away from Manali. Jam being the
appropriate term for this scenario, as the road had turned into one
colossal muddy jam in which every car was getting stuck. Add to this a
landslide and a rock fall and the chaos is complete...but of course
there ain't no landslide muddy enough to keep our bus from passing
through and we're finally back on the road.
--
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