I’m in Leh right now at the very Northern tip of India. It’s almost 12,000 feet elevation and a center for trekking, rafting, and snowy mountain peaks. It’s also extremely beautiful in a Western desert mountain kind of way. Our guest house that we are paying 3 and a half dollars each for is up a bit away from the city and is a great place to hang out and watch the sunset over it.
The drive to get here was a great experience on its own. It took us 2 days to drive 300 miles. The road is essentially only 1 lane but there is still traffic going both ways. When vehicles pass each other they generally do it very slowly or stop and often have to back up to find an acceptable place to pass. There are no guard rails or anything and you come remarkably close to falling off the edge but you just gotta trust that the driver knows what he is doing. I have a few pictures of truck corpses that had fallen and rolled down the mountain some time ago.
We have been hanging out with the same people (2 German guys and an Australian girl) for the last week or so, traveling together from McLeod Ganj to Manali and then Manali to Leh. There are tons of Israelis up here and we’ve been having a good time with some of them as well.
Today we went white water rafting on the Zanskar river, known as the “Grand Canyon of Asia” here. It was an incredible 1.5 hour drive to get there and then 2.5 hours of rafting through a hugeeee rocky valley. The perfect weather, rapids, and scenery made it a superior rafting experience for me compared with the rainy Seti river in Nepal.
Tomorrow we are going to take a jeep up to the highest motorable road in the world (18,000 feet) and then mountain bike down from it (1.5 hours). Apparently it was snowing up there a couple days ago. Oh man I love India and Nepal.
The day after tomorrow a group of us are going to Tsomoriri lake to camp for 2 nights. Check it out (not my picture):
No more time to type but I will quickly say that I have some bad news. I have noticed multiple viruses on my external harddrive and I have met some body who had gigs of pictures ruined because they got viruses on their external harddrive. It happens when you connect it to computers here. It means that to play it safe I’m not going to post any more pictures for the remainder of the trip (less than 3 weeks). Anyways, things are great in India. More after our trip to Tsomoriri.
Sounds really wonderful. Be safe and try to keep those fabulous pictures safe also. Will you be visiting the Taj Mahal?
Yes, please be safe. If you must get viruses, confine them to the hard drive, don’t catch anything that is hard on the human body!
Is it safe to post messages?
wow. everything sounds so exciting. I can’t wait to see all the pictures and I really hope that they are safe. 17 more days =]