Ladakh- On the Top of World - Part I

Person 1 - "Yaar mujhe ek car khareedi hai, kaun si loon? Audi A4 kaisi hai?" (dude I want to buy a car which one should I go for? How is Audi A4?)

Person 2 - "Audi A6 lele, do-teen hazaar cc ki engine hai mast rahegi" (get an Audi A6, its 2-3 thousand cc engine is awesome)

Person 1 - "Haan wo to thik hain, but A4 ki looks batter hai." (yeah, but A4 looks better).

Jumping their standards totally out of winds..

Person 2 - "Tune Q7 dekhi? lele yaar, kya fundoooo dikhti hain. Main to bol raha hun wahi lele" (have u seen the Q7? it looks amazing, get that dude).

Person 1 - "Yaar lekin ye folks wagen Jetta bhi to acchi hai....." (yeah but this volks wagon is good too).

(For those who dont know, an Audi A4 is 32 lakhs odd, A6 is 50 lakhs odd, Audi Q7 is 1 cr odd and folks wagen (Volks Wagon) Jetta is 18 lakhs odd.)
I stopped eavesdropping before their talks might get converted to whisper discussing cubic capacity of a Nano or an Alto with 85% loan options.

Anyways.

Idiotic, non-sense, out of bound, feku, non-brainy but at the same time entertaining conversation like these are very common in Delhi bound flights. If you have a connecting flight, then it becomes more prominent.
My itinerary was Bangalore-Delhi (less entertaining), Delhi-Leh (BOMBARD entertaining) when we planned to tick mark our long old wish to see the tip of our own country before we go beyond.

Yeah, we packed our bags to see Ladakh.

We had lotza options -
1- Drive our car from Bangalore all the way up to Leh, keeping the elderly in our family huffing and puffing. Ironically the elderly in my office did not let me do that. I could not get so many leaves.
2- Fly to Delhi with less entertaining eavesdrops, take a volvo to Manali and drive all the way upto Leh in a cab.
3- Like-any-other soft engineer I mean software engineer fly upto Leh from Bangalore and see the place around in a cab. (How girly and un-manly this option is, eek!) ..

So, like-any-other softie, we took option number 3. Yes the girly one. (girls I am no sexist please).

Took us three days to get things packed and off to our one and only BIA.
 

If you are overly energized like me while on the way to leh (well you will be), the best scene is when the plane lands at Leh Airport. It is a spectacular view which every bulleteer, off-roaders may miss. Come on man whatever thrill they may get, they will never enjoy the aerial view of Leh LOL! 

I have seen numerous blogs about Ladakh, about people reaching that place with varied modes of transportation, someone willingly making their life tough and going on a mountain bike. I thought of not testing my endurance and rather take the easiest route possible.

Our arrangement was done by Krishnendu (Krish) from Maavalan Travels, and I must say their service is awesome. (No they did not pay me to write this, but I whole heartedly welcome discounts). Our host at Leh was a highly hospitable family, head of whom is Dorji who is  gem of a guy (but a shrewd businessman at the same time). His wife the best cook in world, his daughter in her teens and has all the qualities of a teen, his son recently joined our club to be a software engineer. I enjoyed each and every moment with the family. Dorji, if you are reading this then I would like to say that your family is the topic of discussion at least once a day here. You are famous in my office as well as home.

We reached Leh and were welcomed with thousands of advices about the buzzword - 'Altitude Sickness' . Krish had been warning me since day one, not to touch bike first day, not to go out first day, take rest and what not. Dorji was highly synchronized with Ken with similar welcoming tweets.
Guys, gimme a break! Let me see what is this something called as 'Altitude Sickness'. To sum it up, it did not hit us for first 4 days. Things were different for last 2 days though ;-) . .
Our room was East facing and we would get the first ray directly thrown onto us. Something like this
 

 View out of the window was equally scenic 

Day-1 we were rather allowed to see places nearby. Nearest was the Shanti stupa which was hardly a km away from our guest house. We could not wait and had to stroll to control the overflowing emotion.
Started clicking pictures moment we started to walk from guest house

The Leh city in a nutshell

The backyard

The widened Shanti Stupa

Stacked up stones. This is a ritual performed by Buddhists while worshipping. Sometimes it symbolizes the number of rounds they took of the monastery, sometimes it symbolizes peace for someone who just passed away.

Chai is ready

Multicolored flag

And here comes the Stupa

From the stupa

 

 

Mamaji

Sunset SOOC

Reflection

We had lots of energy left to see the streets. Off we went

Sunset is at 8 PM. We were not tired, still we were made to think so by our beloved Dorji. After a sumptuous and extremely delicious meal at his house we went to sleep and lost into dreams listening to all the flight bound entertaining conversations. I recalled one more gossiper who knows someone from London who runs a safari somewhere he had no idea about. He knows someone who owns a 15 bedroom house in Jaipur which is spread in 2000 gaj land area. 

Too of a much ! .

Krish had very carefully planned our trip considering our soft(ware) nature thus day-2 was eased a bit. We thought we can make it slight tough though. So in addition to places around leh we thought of seeing the Lamayuru monastery as well. This falls in Leh-Srinagar highway. Man names like Srinagar, Kargil, Drass etc. gives such thrills, these places are really great to visit.
Enroute Lamayuru you cross the Magnetic hill which has a special property of pulling any vehicle towards the hill . I made a video out there as well. Scientifically I think it is some kind of optical illusion where downhill road is mistaken as plain level.

This is the Leh-Srinagar Highway


We crossed Sangam which is a confluence of river Indus and Zanskar. FYI Zanskar is the river where the world famous chadar trek takes places. This is the shot of Sangam.

 

The journey towards Lamayuru goes alongwith the green-blue Sindhu river. On the way we stopped at a village Khalatse for a quick tea break. Some other tourist out there told us that the main highway is blocked due to landslide and we may have to take the 'ancient' road from Lhangru. 'Ancient' is the word that person used to explain the situation to his foreign guest.

The Lamayuru Monastery

The road from Lhangru to Lamayuru is heck of a fun. Non-tar twisties with no barricades and fully loaded trucks crossing from opposite side in a single lane road. It was an awesome thrill.

The road

In ancient times looks like vehicles had only one seat and were as wide as a bike it seems, that is why they made so narrow roads.

I forgot to share our tea shop experience in Khalatse where we were informed about the roadblockage. In general the people of Ladakh are very hep and are very smartly dressed. At times it is pretty hard to differentiate between rich and poor (no offense the case is same in down south as well). The bus drivers will have a kilo of gel on their head with multiple antennas, their low-waist jeans pointing opposite direction of their hair spikes, multicolored T-Shirts which will not read anything less than Gucci or Armani. 

I sometime wondered what if mobile phones were not made so lighter, and were still like those in olden days when a mobile phone was used as an alternative to 'hathoda'(Hammer). Imagine people with low-waist jeans carrying those 'hathoda' mobiles on their Jeans pocket, and suddenly a snow leopard appears and all they could do is run away or jump in fear. If they do latter with that 'hathoda' in pocket, the jeans would not take more 2 sec to kiss the holy earth.
 

 So this waiter at the tea shop (in the getup as explained above), took the order, cleaned the table, served the tea, cleaned the table again and went to the counter, took out his comb, positioned himself in front of a mirror, combed his hair, tightened his clothes and sat in the same position as he was before, and ready for next order. Maintenance you know ! .

Coming back to topic. We reached Lamayuru after quite a bit of organ exchanges due to the condition of ancient road. Organ exchanges as in for some time the kidney and heart exchanged their position, same with Liver and brain. Before we reached Lamayuru everything came back to their position thankfully.

There was a festival going on at Lamayuru and a huge population gathered in there to celebrate. I took some information about the festival from Lumpung, and all he told me that there will be a guru preaching moral science. Simple isn't it? But we missed all of them due to travel on ancient road.


Here are the pics of Lamayuru

 

 

 

Village behind Lamayuru Monastery

Friends forever

 

The scene was viral full of energy, spirit and enthusiasm.

 

Behind the monastery there is some kind of soil formation into a shape and texture of a moon. This place is named as a moonscape. This part of the hill looks completely different, the image may not tell the real story. It is something to go and feel it.

While coming back we crossed saspol and stopped to view the greenery of mustard field forming foreground of snow clad himalayas.

Had a chance to shoot this moon while one the way back 

This is the end of Part-I.
Part-II is about many other exotic locations such as Hemis, Shey, Thiksey. The section is under construction and I will notify as soon as it gets ready.

Here is a glimpse of shey monastery lined up in Part-II of this blog.