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