7 Days in Ladakh - Planning and Day 0

(Morning lights of The Tribune-Chandigarh- taken at slow shutter speed)

Ever since i'd heard the adventurous tales of wild enfield riders to the utterly remote and seemigly forbidden heights of Ladakh in my school years, i'd nurtured a deep desire to take the same route on my bike some day. However, being located in Bangalore and having regular bouts of neck pain for some time had made it an impracticle one to fulfill anytime soon now.

And yet the urge had to be satiated somehow, and finally, on 8th Sep 2008, the day of my birth, I made an impulsive decision to do it within the coming month.

Since I was to go home for Diwali anyways, I decided to take another week off and take off for Ladakh before visiting home.

Quick emails were dispathed to a few friends to get more travel mates, but ultimately only my colleague Hari responded and a plan was hatched.

We decided to take the road from Manali to Leh (If snowfall didn't shut it down for the season), and take the return flight from Leh to Delhi.

The status of the road, though, kept us on our tenterhooks literally till the last moment, since on 17th Oct, the day we were to fly to Delhi, we came to know the highway had closed down due to heavy snowfall, but also that the Army would clear it within the next 1-2 days.

We decided to take our chances and stuck to the original plan, reaching Delhi at 12 am midnight.

After having a quick dinner outside the airport we took the next available taxi for Chandigarh and reached my home at 5 am.

I was as usual ecstatic on meeting my parents after this long interval, and after introducing Hari to them and having a quick breakfast we both decided to catch a few hours of sleep.

On waking up at 12 noon, we had a scrumptious home-made lunch, bade our farewells and took the next Deluxe bus from Chandigarh to Manali(320 kms/10 hours drive) , and thus began the actual journey.

It took us through the Golden-Green fields of Punjab

which were quite amusing for Hari( He's a Keralite and this was his first trip to North).

Soon we entered the lower hills of Himalayas marking our entry into Himachal Pradesh.

One thing which we noticed during a chai break was that our bus driver(pic below) was actually more smartly dressed up than some senior most gentlemen in our company's management !

Yet another interesting incident which startled us during the trip was the entry of a Caucasian male in the bus, who when chased by hawkers retorted in chaste Hindi "Nahi main Gora hoon sirf isliye tum mujhe double rate bata rahey ho! "

- "You're charging me double the rate just because i'm White"

Soon the bus became virtually empty and it was just Me, Hari and Mr. Gora left, who came closer to our seat to start some chitchat.(Apparently he realised we were tourists)

We got to know he was an Austrian who was so impressed with the Asian culture that he's married a Thai woman and settled down in Manali! He was working as a tour operator in Manali which explained why he learnt Hindi too.

So the remaining journey was spent discussing the finer differences in the Orient and the Occident, and why he chose the former over the latter; while millions of Indians choose the other way around every year.

According to him the Western society had become too individualistic in their pursuit of wealth and thus had drifted away from the basic family structure which was ingrained in

the whole social fabric of the East. He said he hadn't got a word from his siblings for more than a decade now, and so he wanted at least his own children to grow up in an environment where they could know what having a family meant.

It's not for nothing that they say travelling makes you wiser - it does show you new ways of looking at things - this incident in particular did leave me with a lot of thoughts running across my mind - but to dwell on them would require a seperate post!

Anyways we reached Manali at 10 pm at night when the shops at the Mall were about to close for the day - luckily there was a restaurant open and we treated ourself to some lip smacking Punjabi fare - my evergreen Shahi Paneer as usual holding that oh-so-special place in the menu.

It was quite cold here since though we were at an altitude of 6,500 ft, we were in the lap of snow clad mountains around us - still the cold was Nothing compared to what we would encounter further down the trip!

We found the hotel my dad had made a reservation for us in( he had some friends here) very close to the Mall, checked in and took a well deserved sleep !