31 May 07 – Delhi: Where’s the Heat?

30 May 07 – Departure from Shangi La

More to follow.

29 May 07 – Over the River and through the Snow to Pangong Tso

28 May 07 – High Way along the Indus

More to say later....when I can use Word.

27 May – Monastery Row

Having some file problems, but here are some photos from an amazing day!

26 May 07 – Climbing to the Palace

What a wonderful day this turned out to be. I slept fairly late and had my usual thin omlette. I’ve decided they use chopped up green onion tops in them for the mildly spicy taste. Yum. And you gotta love the hot coffee when the weather is soooooo cold! My number one priority today is to get something warm to wear. Anything. It’s just freezing here.

Freezing or not, I went to the rooftop restaurant for breakfast and sat in the sun. When the wind off those snow fields stops and the sun comes out, it’s almost tolerable. Met an older guy up there who lives in Chang Mai (Thailand) but comes here every year for a month, and he told me about some great things to do around the area. Dunno what he does…maybe he’s retired. Anyway, we talked over breakfast, and I found out that today is election day so everything is closed. Yeah, everything. Tourist shops, clothing stores, restaurants, Internet cafes. Oh well, so much for an altitude-pampering day of shopping. Headed for Leh Palace hoping, since I had to walk across town to get there and hoped I’d find something open.

Nothing was open, and the path to the Palace wasn’t exactly marked well. Take the road by the mosque, I was told, and look for the red trash can that says “2 Palace.” Well, I found it! Headed up through what seemed like back alleys with the little sewage troughs on the side giving the walk that unmistakable odor. Felt (and smelt) lots like a place David and I went off the coast of Kenya a couple of years ago, Lamu. Also ran into a loud, disapproving Israeli woman who was looking for the Palace, too, and was complaining that the $2 entry fee was going to be rip off. She thought all of Leh stank, too. And the way wasn’t marked clearly enough.

Saw a couple of teenagers and asked them the way. My recently-acquired companion didn’t trust them, so I left her and went to the 17th century Leh Palace myself. It’s a very cool place built in traditional Ladaki style with a square design and firmly seated on a rock outcrop. The place has been neglected for years, and restoration work is only beginning, but that was part of what I liked about it – there was still a sense of abandoned, er, grandeur about it. As I wandered through the various rooms and floors, I noticed damaged and faded frescoes, worn or broken decorative wood carving, and doors and windows just being restored. It was a real pleasure climbing up and down the makeshift ladders to get to the various floors and their verandas that overlooked the city. What a wonderful, exotic place it must have been in its heyday. One room seems to have survived somewhat intact – the storeroom/library. This was a very dark room with lots of dirty, aged, ritual paraphernalia and stacks of texts of rectangular scripts wrapped and tied up in bundles. The room reeked of dark, musty, not-totally-forgotten and not-totally nice wisdom.

From one of the verandas, I saw the Israeli making her way up the slope beyond the palace with a new companion…going, alas, in the direction of my next goal, the early 15th century monastery and temple, Chanbal Lhankhang. It was quite a steep climb, but as I wasn’t passing out or panting from the Palace experience, I headed on up, passing the two on the way. I met a very friendly monk at the top who opened the temple for me to see the Buddha in it and asked me not to use my flash. It was striking; this temple was build before Columbus set out to find India. I found the same sense of old learning here as I’d seen in the Palace, though with slightly less menace.

The Israeli soon entered with the British traveler she’d met. She wanted to use her flash and insisted on it when she was told no. The Brit tactfully took her camera and offered to do a photo for her. Then, she wanted to climb up on the altar and stand between Buddha’s legs so her photo would show scale. She argued with the monk, saying it was important for her picture while the poor monk implored her to stay off the altar. Again, the Brit intervened and said he could show scale if she stood where she was. I restrained myself from telling her to have a little respect for beliefs other than hers; I went outside before I opened my big mouth.

The Brit guy came out of the temple after awhile; he was in Leh for trekking, some of the best and most reasonable in the Himalayas, apparently. Thirty-five dollars a day…wow! How great would it be to do a 10-day Himalayan trek for $350? Another trip? Miss Personality soon joined us and told me I had missed the country by flying to Leh instead of taking the two-day bus trip. Again, I deferred from telling her that if she paid a bit more attention to what was around her, she would miss less of the country herself. Instead, I walked on higher up the mountain to where there was an abandoned fort above Chanbal Lhankhang and enjoyed the wind, prayer flags and sharp breeze. I stayed up there until the two were well on their way down the slope.

Feeling pretty good about avoiding the feared altitude slam, I walked on down the slope and back to Leh. Met the hotel manager and arranged to hire a car for a couple of days to visit some temples and monasteries outside the city. Then slept very heavily.

25 May 07 -- COLD!

Wow! Up at three and to the airport to catch the flight to Leh, which was delayed until 7:30. No prob…I’d rather wait than have some nut trying a risky landing in the Himalayas. And it was a beautiful flight. Way above the clouds, I noticed the mountains in the distance, and the last part of the trip was directly above them, heading to the (slightly) lower plateau beyond. It was fantastic, seeing the abrupt, jagged peaks with rivers of snow and ice flowing off them…eventually leading to a trickle of glacial run-off which ran through a pure gray-brown landscape that, too, was rough and pointy. Spectacular, dramatic and wonderful. Golly!…this is the Himalayas. We circled a couple of times until a group of clouds blew away, and we landed, coming in so low over a ridge I felt like I could’ve put my hand out the window and touched them.

At the airport, there was a similarly striking view – brown all around with snowy peaks not so far away. Most of the valleys were similarly dry, but I’d notice that Leh itself was a set of green terraces in this arid environment. As were a couple of other villages. I got a very nice taxi driver at the airport, and we headed to the hotel I’d chosen. I had some apprehension about the day in Leh, but for now, it seems I might have overestimated one thing and underestimated another. OK….I’ll freely admit I was worried about the altitude. It’s 11,000 feet here, and I have nothing but bad – very bad – memories of altitude. Dizzy and almost passing out in Chavin, Peru; splitting headache and unable to walk or breath at Todos Santos, Mexico; dizzy, disoriented, weak and congested on Kilimanjaro. Why can’t the cool stuff to see come with oxygen? However, as things turned out, I just spent the first day sleeping a lot and, when I moved, moving slowly; so far, so good on the altitude front.

What I underestimated was the temperature. It is COLD, and I mean REALLY COLD! I thought I heard the pilot say six degrees Celsius….no conversion thing handy, but I think that’s low 40s. This is just unbelievable when, earlier today, I broke a sweat just making the six steps to the car. No sweater, no long sleeve shirt here – the baggage allowance was only 10 kg, and my camera and laptop were most of that. I think I’m the only person in the whole city with short sleeves. It’s time to buy a sweater…or a coat.

Had a pot of tea at the rooftop restaurant before I started my four-hour nap. My god…the views! On one side, the snow-capped Himalaya emerging and vanishing under clouds; on the other side, a perfect view of the Leh Palace, done the same style as the Potala Palace in Llosa, Tibet. Also had a chatty Nepalese server and listed to lots of drums and chanting in the distance. This is what I’d hoped Dharamsala would be like, I think. Small, very friendly people, not too overtouristed and definitely low-key. So far.

And the rest of the day was rest. After my four-hour nap, I read some, had dinner, and went to bed at 9 pm. I have great hopes for surviving the lack of oxygen.