The Way from Leh

Since we wanted to get back to the United States sooner rather than later, we decided to fly out of Leh instead of driving back to Mussoorie. We left early yesterday morning via Leh's dinky airport.

Unlike our three day drive from Mussoorie, the flight to Delhi took only one hour. We got some great views of the Himalayas as we flew over them.



After a night in our guesthouse in Delhi, we fly out to LA tonight. We're off to the US Embassy Club soon to kill some time.

Dave and Beth

People of Leh

These are some of our favorite pictures of the people of Leh.

(Monks at the monastery in Thiksey and some vegetable sellers in the main bazaar of Leh.)

(A Ladakhi women and her basket and a friendly butcher helping out a puppy.)

(A dusty road in Shey and a monk washing one of the monastery's cars.)

Dave and Beth

Leh-ing Around

Once we actually made it to Leh after our three day car ride, we mostly took it easy. It was a relaxing and restful trip. The first picture below is the view from our hotel. It was pretty amazing to stay right in the middle of the Himalayas rather than simply in the foothills.

Leh was also home to a lot Buddhist monuments and memorials, just like the rest of Ladakh. There were prayer wheels of all sizes scattered around the city. The first one here is a large and ornate one that was set in a rather out of the way street near our hotel. The second set is part of a larger group at one of the main gompas (Buddhist monasteries) in Leh.

The chortens (known as stupas in the rest of India) below may look like their kind of shabby and falling apart, but that is actually the point. The Buddhists build them as monuments and then let them fall apart over time. It is meant to show the impermanence of this life. The rocks on right are part of a long wall built with rocks that are all inscribed with Buddhist mantras in the Tibetan language.

This little monastery just looked cool with the mountains behind it.

We also visited a couple large monasteries on hills around Leh and saw some monumental statues of the Buddha.

We spent some time exploring old Ladakhi palaces and marketplaces, but the most enjoyable thing about Leh was the scenery and the slow pace at which to enjoy it.

It was great to be on vacation in India, but we're definitely ready to get back to the United States.

Dave and Beth

The Way to Leh (2)

Our third and final day of driving to Ladakh early. We left our hotel in Keylong at 4:00 am so that we'd be able to get to Leh while it was still light out. Unfortunately, our first few pictures were completely useless because it was too dark to see anything. After a bit of driving, though, we came across a herd of goats and sheep being led down the road. They got out of the way so that we could pass by.

The picture below shows one interesting aspect of traveling the Leh-Manali Highway. At several spots along the way, we were required to submit our passports for inspection. Most of these inspection points consisted of tents with one police officer checking passports and one or two police officers sleeping on cots nearby (usually under several heavy blankets to stay warm).

The rest of the trip was characterized by amazing scenery that changed markedly as we passed through Rohtang Pass (13,051 feet), Baralachala (the very snowy one shown below at 16,040 feet), and Taglangla (17,582 feet) which is purported to be the second highest motorable pass in the world. Parenthetical captions will have to suffice or this post will become far too long for our readers.

(These were some of the fantastic views on the way to Baralachala.)

(Baralachala displayed some huge walls of snow and a stuck truck.)

(These great landforms changed around every turn.)

(The views were great around every turn, as.)

(The valleys had lots of great landforms and we even drove through a random sandy, desert valley along the way.)

(The last part of the road up to Taglangla was amazing.)

(This sign was good for a laugh.)

(More interesting landforms along the way.)

(The beginnings of Buddhist landmarks in Ladakh.)

The last two pictures show a Buddhist stupa (which is actually called a chorten in Ladakhi) and a small Buddhist monastery on a hill. The state of Jammu and Kashmir is the home of the district of Ladakh. Some will know the name Kashmir as a place plagued by sectarian violence. The state is divided along religious lines to a large extent. Kashmir is predominantly Muslim, Jammu is mostly Hindu, and Ladakh has a majority population of Tibetan Buddhists. This has helped to spare it from the problems of Kashmir. It has also left the landscape covered with monuments to Buddhism such as these.

Now that we've arrived in Leh, the capital of Ladakh, we look forward to exploring and relaxing.

Dave and Beth

The Way to Leh (1)

After finishing our first year of working at Woodstock School, we decided to take a quick vacation north in India before heading home to the states to visit friends and family. Our destination was the area called Ladakh, a district in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (thankfully it is not affected by any of the sectarian fighting the has befallen Kashmir). The region has been called "Little Tibet" because it is cultural more similar to that autonomous region of China than it is to the rest of India. After our final meetings, we got into a taxi from Mussoorie to head into the Himalayas.

The trip took a total of three days of driving, and it started with a 12-hours drive to Manali in Himachal Pradesh. At this point, our taxi driver left us and we spent the night getting some rest before taking in the scenery the next morning.

Our hotel called us a jeep to take us the rest of the way through the mountains.

The second day of the journey was spent admiring some beautiful mountain views as we headed deeper and deeper into the Himalayas.

Some of the views of the valley even looked a bit like the Swiss Alps.

The landscape seemed to change to something new around every turn and over every pass.

One of the highlights of the trip, though, was seeing a couple of yaks grazing along the road.

We had traveled for two days by this point and made it to Keylong, but were excited about even more beautiful scenery on our third and final day driving to Leh in Ladakh.

Dave and Beth