Day 95, 96, 97

From Manali, I took a 2o hour jeep trip to Leh. Some of my seat mates suffered on that trip, but since such things are becoming rather routine for me, I fared rather well. Some of the high passes reached altitudes of more than 5000 meters, and I didn't suffer from alitude sickness either - clearly I am becoming some sort of Superman.

Leh is wonderful. The tourist crowd is a little less obnoxious than in Manali (and a bit older) and the backpacker ghetto encompasses only a portion of the town, unlike in Manali where it now covers the entire fucking place (I exaggerate). The city has a population of only 25,000, so it is nice that it has been able to resist that sort of takeover.

Leh's most noteworthy visual aspect is a collection of Gompas and Stopas that ring the city, all of the built on high hills and on the sides of mountains. I visited some of these places with C, a young German woman whom I have been travelling with since the jeep ride here.

The most fun that C and I had was visiting "Leh Palace," an old fort built on a high hill south of the town. It's a crumbling, ramshackle affair, once the seat of this region's "king," but now long empty and stripped of its treasures. While some basic restoration work has been done, it looks a lot like what Lhasa's Potala would look like if it has been left to rot for a century.

Sharing a room with C, each morning we have woken up around nine and taken a wonderful laissez faire approach to each day - the hours are filled with trips through the old town, unnecessary errands, trips to the post office, eating....

Truly these have been idle days, but idle in a relaxing way that was impossible in Manali, with it's horrible, horrible "scene."

Unable to get a jeep to Srinagar as planned (the road is closed to civilians today) I am spending tonight at a hotel in Thiska with C. Thiska is a small village just south of Leh, home to a stunning (and large) monastery... and precious little else.

I must describe C in more detail tomorrow.