Darling I like you but not so fast

While walking around the main bazaar, a couple of days after reaching Leh, Dave says: "You know, with all these backpackers around, I wonder if we'll bump into anyone we know" ... well, this is the land where serendipity, fate and kismet actually work and about 5 minutes later, we bumped into Carlos, a Bulungula regular and Bridget, head of Eco-schools in South Africa. That was the beginning of many social lunches, teas and dinners we'd have in Leh during our 3 week stay. We used Leh as our base, stored most of our stuff at our guesthouse and explored the interesting and very beautiful mountainous region from there.

Hanging with other travellers at Shanti Stupa - the town of Leh is in the background

17th century Palace in Leh, modelled on the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet

After a lot of aaauummmms and sun salutations at our medidation course, our first adventure was on a 5 day homestay trek in the Sham valley area, just west of Leh. The homestays are organised by the Snow Leopard Conservancy who have turned this natural home of the snow leopard into a tourist attraction and money earner for the villagers who were exterminating the leopards because of the threat to their livestock. A portion of the homestay earnings goes into a conservancy fund that provides insurance for any livestock lost to the snow leopards. In the 6 years since the programme began, the attitude towards snow leopards has changed markedly and their numbers have been growing.

Ladakhi women in traditional dress at the Leh Festival

Our first homestay was in the village of Ulley which has only 7 households and is situated at about 4200 metres above sea level. We planned to do some walking the following day (Rejane's birthday) but it snowed all day and we ended up huddled in the kitchen with the family eating traditional Ladakhi food, drinking lots of tea, playing cards and fooling around with the kids. We decided to stick to English tea after experimenting briefly with Tibetan butter tea, which is not a tea at all but a rich, salty, buttery soup that congeals in your cup as soon as it starts to cool. Trying to do the polite thing and gulping it down quickly is not much of a solution as it is Tibetan custom to keep the visitor's cup constantly topped up...

Don't look down! - on the way to our homestay in Ulley

The kitchen, the warmest place in the homestead - Ulley Village

Stone-throwing competition - with a 5 year old...mmm

Wow! it's cold up there and it's still a way away from the winter months. All we had for washing was a basin of ice-cold water in the open courtyard and in the snow!

The following day was bright, although still chilly, while we hiked up to Tso Rangan - a holy lake at around 4500m above sea level. On the way back, we met the mama (ama-ley) of our house very busy in the fields getting her barley harvested - they only have a few more weeks before they get completely snowed in - bringing the short 3/4 months of growing and harvesting to an end before about 9 months of bitter cold sets in.

The holy lake, Tso Rangan, after a day of snow

After Ulley we had a much easier walk down to the village of Hemis - which is considerably larger (about the size of Nqileni village). There we met a group of travellers and walked with them onto our next homestay in the village of Ang where there was lots of chang, the local barley beer, being brewed. The walk to Ang turned out to be particularly challenging because we'd missed the path up the mountain slope and had to traverse a very slippery sand and skree slope on all fours! ...a bit of an adrenaline rush that makes you forget completely about how tiring the climbing is and makes you concentrate on just trying not to fall!!!

Rejane (2nd from the front) on all fours climbing the slippery skree slope...

Back at home base in Leh, we were pleasantly surprised by bumping into some more friends from home: Mike and Laura from Buccanneers - it was a real shock and such a treat - just what were chances of meeting up with some Wild Coast neighbours here in the Himalayas! After spending a couple of sociable days with the all new people we'd met around Leh and old friends from home, we headed to Nubra Valley - over Khardung La - the highest motorable road in the world at 5602 metres above sea level (18 380 feet). The drive was fantastic with more entertaining road signs dishing out good advice to motorists: "Darling, I like you but not so Fast", "Better to be Mr. Late than Late Mr.", " Love your Neighbour, but not while Driving" and some, sharing the philosophical musings of the state's authorities, like: " Without Geography, You Are Nowhere" (good point).

On the way to the top of Khardung La

On the top at Khardung La - highest motorable road in the world

There was lots of snow at the top of the mountain pass but that was no problem for Dave's new, finely honed biking skills. Having reached Nubra valley we headed for Hunder, a village surrounded by desert sand dunes, for a short two-humped camel safari.

Two-humped Camel Safari

Beautiful flower garden at our guest house in Hunder

After Hunder, we explored Panamik, another beautiful village in the valley and, having met some interesting people, decided to socialise and just chill for an extra day before heading back to base in Leh.

A few AAAaammmss on the river at Panicker Village to rebalance those chakras

Then, after more socialising and enjoying Leh's great restaurants, we decided to explore Pangong Lake on the Chinese border. It is the highest salt-water lake in the world that lies 25% in India and 75% in China. Because we'd already been over Khardung La, the highest motorable pass in the world, we figured that going to Pangong Lake, which was on the other side of only the third highest pass in the world, would be a piece of cake. It certainly didn't cross our minds that it could possibly be colder - big mistake! Well, before we had even reached the top of the pass, we were freezing and hungry - having left without having had any breakfast. There are no villages for miles on the way to the pass and nowhere to get a cup of tea or anything to eat. In desperation, we stopped at an army base, manning the sensitive India-China border, to ask how far the next village was and to our surprise the soldiers treated us to hot tea and snacks - they must have been concerned about losing a couple of tourists to hypothermia!

On the road to Pangong Lake

Pangong Lake

Pangong Lake was breathtakingly beautiful but cold, very cold and the following day, as we got ready to return to Leh, it starting snowing... and we'd thought the previous day's trip had been cold... The road over the pass was covered in ice, making the bike ride a slippery one and Rejane had to get off and walk the downhills while Daredevil Dave enjoyed the slip-and-slide.

Enjoying the icy slip-and-slide back down to Leh

Leh was starting to look like a ghost town when we got back, the buses and flights were chocoblock with tourists hightailing it out of there before it got completely snowed in. We started to make our own plans to leave but not before saying goodbye to all our new friends and enjoying our last Himalayan cuisine and fruit. In our 35 years on this earth, we have simply not tasted apples until we'd tasted the organic, homegrown apples of the small farmers of Ladakh and that's not an exaggeration - Woolies kan gaan slaap. So, finally we left Leh, Ladakh, our home for more than 3 weeks and headed south, via Tso Moriri, yet another stunning lake set in a cold and stark Himalayan rural village, the scenery taking over first place for the most beautiful we've seen on the trip so far.

VIDEO (press play!): Purple road on the way to Tso Moriri

The road from Leh, south to Manali, has a voracious reputation that didn't disappoint; our bike was duly ravished and it took three days, one flat tyre and two busted shock absorbers before we reached Manali. The road although beautiful was, once again, stark and devoid of any settled villages. We overnighted in a tented camp without any toilets and little privacy afforded by the desert landscape - challenging even for a couple of Transkei locals.

VIDEO: Snow Road on the Leh-Manali road




VIDEO: No river is wide enough...small river crossing

After 4 of our hardest travelling days yet, the landscape started to become greener and the air more moist. Our bodies were parched after the dry desert air in Ladakh where we'd had nosebleeds and skin rashes that only pure Vaseline petroleum jelly, applied twice a day (to our entire bodies) made any difference - we'd really tried everything and, yes, good old fashioned Vaseline was the only solution.

Back below the tree line

In Manali we had a good rest, watched lots of cricket and planned the way forward. We have to leave India at the end of October to renew our Indian visas. Tomorrow we start heading east to explore the region called Sikkim & Darjeeling before crossing over to Bangladesh to get new visas and to explore that country for about 6 weeks.

From a Backpacker's Paradise to Paradise on Earth

After a very relaxing time indulging in Shimla's good food and beautiful promenades, we headed off to Daramsala, the Dalai Lama's residence in exile. In Daramsala we stayed in the little town of Macleod Ganj, a backpacker's paradise. So far, our route has taken us on the Indian pilgrimage routes and to Indian holiday towns, like Shimla, so it was nice to experience the foreign backpacker circuit for a little while. Macleod Ganj has the typical backpacker chillout-type restaurants with Tibetan, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Korean, Italian, Thai and Israeli food, several German bakeries, English breakfasts (the real deal with all the works - not easy to find in India), Continental breakfasts with croissants and lots of the local bhang going around. So we did the backpacker thing and sat around for hours talking to Tibetan monks about China’s actions towards Tibet (Dave taking the provocative side of the argument, of course), the history of Tibet and all our past and future lives. It was a busy social calendar having met up with our friend Glynnis from back home and Anke, another lovely South African, who spoilt us with our first home-cooked meal in 2 months, introduced us to their local mates and to some lovely restaurants and hang-out spots.

Delicious dinner with Glynnis and Anke at a Korean Restaurant in Macleod Ganj

Having managed to finally escape from Daramsala (a couple of days later than originally planned) we were off to a whole new world in Kashmir - Paradise on Earth - as we were told by one of the thousands of army guys posted there, who stopped us to take all our details on the way in. There's no need to be nervous going to Kashmir, India has literally posted personnel every few 100 meters on the 250km road in - in full army gear. In Srinagar, the capital of Kashmir, we planned to find a houseboat on the lake - it's the thing to do there. There are hundreds on the lake (it's a big lake so there seems to be plenty of room for all) but with tourism still a little slow post the trouble between Pakistan and India, you have to be prepared to handle all the touts trying to get you stay on their houseboat (the first tout followed our motorbike - 8kms from the lake - shouting at us from his bike!).

Flipping through Satellite TV channels in the luxury of our houseboat

With Dave's tough negotiating skills we managed to find a great houseboat at a ridiculously low price - 100ft long, very luxuriously decorated with a personal butler at your service 24/7 - all for about R250 per day for both of us including fantastic Kashmiri meals! It was strange having the butler, Rajah, ready to get us anything we needed – all we had to do was shout (like the manager of the boat did) at the top of our lungs: “RaaaaJAAAAAHHHH” and tea or laundry or dinner would appear but - being boring South Africans - we’d wait around until he happened to walk by and then, having caught his eye, we’d politely enquire whether or not a cup of tea was at all possible…

Dal Lake at sunset from the veranda of our houseboat

The houseboat thing on the lakes in Srinagar was started by the British because the Maharaja of Kashmir wouldn't allow them to buy property there - and they really decked them out well: our houseboat was lavishly decorated with hand-embroidered Kashmiri curtains and bedspreads, hand-carved walnut-wood furniture, hand-painted vases and lamps, thick maroon carpets, fine china tea-sets and satellite TV.

Lillies on Dal Lake

The lake is peaceful and beautiful - especially at sunset although you do get bugged a lot by salesmen coming around to the boats selling vegetables, flowers, saffron, Kashmiri shawls and fabrics, painted artwork and all sorts of other things. They're really tough businessmen and you have to have your negotiating skills finely tuned - it can be pretty hard work - Dave's really good at it but Rejane just gets skinned!

Boat tour on the lake

After enjoying days on boat tours around the lakes and being thoroughly spoilt by Rajah and the family who manages the houseboat, we headed off to the eastern half of Kashmir, following the ancient silk route that crossed through Asia to Europe, passing wild looking mountain nomads with their huge herds of goats – tough looking people who traverse mountains thousands of meters above sea level to graze their animals in the short summer months and who you probably wouldn’t want to challenge to a game of Survivor!

Herdsmen and their goats on the old silk road

After a tough day of bike-riding, we reached the town of Kargil, an important town during the time when the silk route was the main trading road through Asia. It’s largely populated with very devout Shia muslims – girls as young as 3 years old are covered up in burkhas. The next day, we took a detour south to the Suru valley and got our first puncture. Being a little inexperienced at motorbike tyre changes, it took a couple of hours to get it done, surrounded by curious, snot-nosed kids and very helpful local guys.

Changing the flat tyre on the Suru Valley Road

In the morning we took the first shot at our mission in the Suru valley – to see the majestic snow-capped Nun-Kun peaks and glacier fields. We got very lost and had to try it all again the following day – but it was worth it! The views of the peaks and the valley below were just breathtaking. The villages during these summer months are just idyllic with families very busy harvesting barley and wheat crops in a breathtakingly beautiful setting. The winter months are tough, though, with the villages under snow 6 feet deep for 9 months of the year and the only way in and out is to walk on the frozen river.

Views of the Valley from the mountain top

The Nun-Kun Peaks

We planned to carry on further into the remote Zanskar Valley, to see its ancient Buddhist monasteries but we busted a shock absorber on the motorbike and given the atrocious state of the roads, it was best to head back to Kargil to get it fixed. Despite its claim to fame as having been a major town on the old silk route, there isn’t much to see in Kargil itself so, having fixed the shocks, we headed to our next big destination –Leh, Ladakh, in the eastern, undisputed, half of Kashmir.

Dry desert stretch on the Kargil-Leh Road

Breathtaking views of the desert Himalaya mountains

On the 234kms stretch of road, the towns became less Muslim and more Buddhist, with pure white Stupas (Buddhist shrines) gleaming against the stark desert landscape. We were well above tree-line now and crossed a mountain pass 4019 meters (13479 feet) above sea level. The views were undoubtedly some of the most beautiful we’ve ever seen. We were lucky to have just missed a landslide and managed to wind our way cheekily through the traffic jam of hundreds buses and trucks, backed up while the landslide was being cleared – one of the biggest advantages of being on a bike! The mountain pass is so narrow that the huge trucks had to pass each other literally inches from the edge of the pass in order to clear the traffic jam.

Psychedelic trucks passing each other with inches away from a tumble down the mountain pass!


Dave on the mountain pass at 4019m (13479ft) above sea level

Having arrived in Leh, gob-smacked by the spectacular drive, we were further impressed by the fantastic value of the accommodation – lovely, bright rooms with beautiful flower and veggie gardens and views of the snow-capped peaks in the distance. Leh is also teeming with environmental, cultural, womens’ rights and other NGO’s that have managed to ban plastic in the town and who have made interesting documentaries about the changes (good and bad) that tourism has brought to the region. We participated in some fascinating and thought-provoking discussion groups before heading to relaxing meditation classes...