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Guest house in Manali |
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Manali-Leh |
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Lake near one of the passes |
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Typical Dhaba |
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Taglangla Pass - second highest on earth at over 17,000' |
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Hemis festival |
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Camel ride |
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Dras - coldest place in India |
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Nagin Lake |
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Houseboat |
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Old Srinigar |
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Foodsellers at Hazratbal |
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Tribesman at Pahalgam |
Ladakh and Kashmir
A month to the day since the last entry. This is the holiday report. It was a great trip, made even better by the fact that we were travelling with John and Carol, two of our oldest friends from back in Liverpool (see Wildylog 27). Here's the itinerary, and a few comments about each place. There's also a slide show and a couple of video clips.
Woodstock to Leh
There was a lot of travelling - we did everything by road. The first stretch was in two hops. First, an Ambassador from school to Chandigarh. We left on Friday around 4.00 p.m. to get a head start, and arrived about 11.00 p.m. It's a nice enough route, and there's plenty of hotels for an overnight stop. We didn't see much of Chandigarh, but it's an odd sort of place - a laid-out city designed by Le Corbusier, with wide boulevards, huge roundabouts, rows of shops, everything called "Sector" this and that, all overlaid with the accretion of temporary chai stalls and shops wherever there's an unused plot. Saturday morning, Chandigarh to Manali, was more interesting - up the Kullu valley, nice river, the start of the hills. Manali is a teeming at this time of the year, and has all the hotels, shops restaurants you'd expect. It's profited from the unavailability of Kashmir to tourists over the last 15 years. We stayed in a nice old building on a farm, buckets of hot water for washing, overgrown gardens, breakfast on the verandah. Plenty of choice of eateries and we had a nice Indian in the town. One of the parents in Leh was helping us with arrangements, and he phoned us with the contact for the car to take us on the Manali-Leh run.
This must be one of the world's great drives. It's travelled mostly by 4-wheel drive vehicles (mailnly the ubiquitous Tata Sumo) and by buses and the amazing Indian trucks, which seem to go anywhere. There's also small fleets of Enfield bikes, with huge back carriers, jerrycans and spares. It goes over four high passes, including the second-highest motorable road in the world, over 17,500' (the highest is on the other side of Leh, and goes over the Karakorum mountains). The trip is done in two hops, and we stopped around a third of the way along at a nice town called Keylong. It's the main town of the area, and I'm told that per head the population is one of the richest in India on the back of terraced farmland which specialises in seed potatoes. It was refreshing after two days travelling to walk through the fields and listen to the water flowing down the myriad irrigation streams.
On that first leg to Keylong we had crossed the first pass, the Rohtang Jot. This is reached by a series of hairpin bends straight up the mountain, and has permanent snow on the top. It's therefore a paradise for day trippers from the plain. There must be 50 or more stalls on the way up hiring fur coats and boots, and there's a constant procession of Sumo and Qualis people carriers ferrying families to the top to touch the snow or to slide down a dirty snow slope on a tyre.
5.00 a.m., and it's not quite dawn as we leave Keylong. In the half-light we manoeuvre through flocks of sheep moving along the road from pasture to pasture. The light grows and illuminates the mountain tops, then slowly fills the valleys. After a couple of hours, a stop for chai and butter toast. A couple of hours further on, breakfast in one of the tent camps that spring up during the three months or so that the road is open for traffic. An omelette wrapped in a chapatti never tasted so good! The rest of the day is spent in dropped-jaw mode as we wind through arid valleys, past tortured sandstone formations, and climb out of deep valleys to find ourselves on vast high-altitude plains through which the river far below has dug its canyon. One of these plains, Moray, is 40 kilometres long, half a dozen wide, and completely flat. Half way across we are flagged down by nomadic goat herders asking for spare water. Lunch is at another tent camp, Pang, where we eat the staple - rice, dhal and vegetables (chawal, dhal, subzi). And finally to the highest pass, Tanglang La. A brief stop to savour the moment and take pictures, then down into Ladakh via the Gya valley, which runs into the broad expanse of the Indus valley. We follow the Indus for 30 miles or so into Leh, past an increasingly industrialised and militarised desert landscape. it's hard to conceive that we are at over 10,000' as we traverse this level river valley surrounded by mountains. Leh, when we arrive, is nothing like any preconceptions we had. It's built up the side of one of the dry valleys running down towards the Indus, and is an oasis of green in the middle of a desert. Looking from the Palace across the valley, it's maybe 10-15 miles to the mountains opposite, and mostly sand-brown.
Ladakh
If you're interested in the area, there's plenty on the web to read, so I'm not going to give a travelogue. The Leh district of Ladakh is essentially a 70-odd mile stretch of the Indus valley, bounded by mountains, with further high valleys accessible by driving over passes to the north. It is described as the "crossroads of high Asia", and for centuries was the central point of trade between China (tea), Western Tibet (pashmina wool) and India via Kashmir. It's only been open to tourism for around 30 years, and has preserved an extremely sophisticated and self-reliant mode of life, together with a pure medieval form of Tibetan Buddhism which is a magnet to scholars of all sorts. The language is a form of Tibetan and, with the Balti area in the north of Pakistan, further down the Indus, it was once part of greater Tibet. We were fortunate to have the loan of a car, so we drove up and down the valley visiting some of the many gompas (monasteries) built on almost every sandstone spur jutting into the valley, with an emerald oasis of fields and poplar trees below. Alchi was interesting - one of the oldest, with 500-year-old murals in the sanctuaries. It's a lovely little village, too. On the way back we stopped at Basgo, a gompa and ruined fort on a spur dominating a low pass entering the valley. Apparently the Ladakhis held this fort for three years against invading Tibetans during one of the many altercations in the area.
The main gompa in the valley is Hemis, and our visit coincided with the 12-yearly Hemis Festival, at which a large thanka (religious painting) is exhibited, amidst much dancing in masks and colourful clothing on the part of the monks. Thousands upon thousands cram into the main square of the gompa and fill the area around. Pushing in through the narrow passageways was a bit on the hairy side. Unbelievably, as everyone was crushing through, there was a lone monk with a bagful of change trying to sell tickets. A less stressful activity was a half-day river rafting down the Indus valley. Not much rapids, but great scenery, a spotting a couple of grouops of rare ibex, and a picnic at the end of it. And certainly more comfortable than the hour we spent on Bactrian camels.
Plenty of good restaurants in Leh, including a couple of German Bakeries serving nice Western bistro food and scrummy cakes. Altogether a really nice, relaxed, tourist-savvy place - easy to get out into the less frequented areas, but with lots of interest in the town, curio shops, carpets, shawls and the like. We particularly liked the "Edelweiss", down a back street, but maybe that's because it was being managed by a guy from Goa with whom we had a good natter!
Leh to Srinigar
I assumed this would be a more or less straightforward run over two days, since it's the long-established motor road into Ladakh (the only one until Manali-Leh was opened up only a few years ago). How wrong! Day 1 to Kargil is spectacular - through the desert mountains, with range upon range of the Karakorams visible from the passes. A night in KargilDay 2 is an eye-opener. Leave Kargil at 2.00 a.m. so we can beat the lorries through the pass to the Sonamarg valley in Kashmir; road signs everywhere warning tht you are overlooked by the "enemy" and may be fired on; chai at the coldest inhabited place in India, Dras; daybreak over the mountains, then a long drag up what must be the worst road in India, culminating in a heart-stopping ten minutes as the pass clings to the side of the mountain overhanging the valley several thousand feet below. We were met by the owner of the houseboat where we were to stay and conducted to.. a rather beautiful spot! A waterfront garden with four massive houseboats overlooking the Nagin Lake.
Kashmir
Sorry if this upsets anyone, but Kashmir isn't the paradise it's reputed to be - and maybe once was. While you are on the lakes - in your houseboat, cruising the waterways in a shikara - it's lovely: abundant birdlife, quiet channels. Srinigar itself, though, is not so attractive - crowded, noisy, not easy to find your way around - and with the added problem that the whole tourist infrastructure is, for understandable reasons, not comparable with Leh, Manali, even Mussoorie. It took us a couple of days to get orientated and even find our way to the lakes and the river. Of course, it's also very much under military surveillance, with sandbags, razor-wire and patrols everywhere. Some parts of the valley are still more or less off limits - the tourist office recommended a visit to one place, and the taxi operators refused to take us! It's obviously been very tough for the Kashmiris, and our houseboat owner told us that there is a very high incidence of clinical depression. It seems to be on the mend, but while we were there there were gun battles between army and militants being reported, and a bomb at the main Jammu and Kashmir Bank which, amazingly enough, was ascribed to a people from Manali, worried that is Kashmir settles down, they will lose business.
What about the houseboat, though? That was a totally unexpected treat, booked for us by our parent friend in Leh at a very reasonable price. It was, as I said, on the Nagin Lake, north of the Dal - less busy, more peaceful, better views. We had a little shikara to paddle round the lake, and a not-too-onerous succession of callers by boat selling shawls, papier mache, groceries, flowers. On a couple of days we had lengthy rides round the lakes, including to the famous Shalimar Garden (nice, but not exceptional) and the similar but larger Nishat Garden. The boat was entirely panelled in cedar, full of lovely carved furnitire and Kashmiri rugs. Our meals were served under a chandelier by the ancient retainer, and we spent hours on the verandah watching the world go by and spotting birds - three or four species of kingfisher, and the most kites I've seen at one time - we counted up to 40 one evening.
Our last couple of nights were spent in Pahalgam, the "Valley of the Shepherds", which is around two hours drive from Srinigar. It is (or was) a trekking centre, full of ponies and ponymen, and a major centre for the famous Amarnath pilgimage - due to start a couple of weeks after we were there. It's got plenty of hotels and restaurants, but none seem to do any business, and most don't have any food - order something and they send out for it. It's a classic alpine-type area - you can see why it was popular.
Kashmir still has a lot going for it, but it looks like it will take a lot of time and energy to catch up with the other areas of India frequented by overseas tourists. I hope they succeed. As for us, we had a great time, despite the drawbacks. It was worth the trip.
Kashmir to Woodstock
More Sumo travel - Pahalgam to Jammu, a good nine hours with yet more high passes! Our last leg was by overnight train from Jammu to Saharanpur, then taxi for the three hours up to Mussoorie. Glad to be back? Yes, but sorry to say goodbye to John & Carol who headed back to Lucknow and Rupaidiha on Sunday. The house feels a bit empty. Still, lots of new staff, and on Monday we had our first group around for dinner, so we're back in the routine. And I've had 24 hours of amoeba and dysentery. Welcome home.