II. The Foothills of the Himalayas

Oct. 4 -- Still in Delhi airport waiting room being amused by a late night airport crowd watching a Bollywood movie. Watching the crowd gather was almost as much fun as the movie must have been. The whole waiting room, like a big family, gathered around this silly show with all kinds of unnecessary dancing and singing, and people slapping each other for no reason. At 3am we checked in, and at 5 we left for poopoo!!! Sorry everyone. I made the fatal mistake of letting Ayesha get near the keyboard. She says "hey this is my blog too". Ok, she's gone. I'm safe once more.

At 5 am we left for Leh, which is in the foothills of the Himalayas. I woke up mid-flight to see miles upon miles of snow-capped mountains jutting out of the earth. The contrast to Bombay's heat was so striking that I felt as if I had been taken to another world. The mountains were spectacular. Ancient, cold, untouched places on the map. They seemed to stretch on forever and I wondered how much of the scene before me had never been explored. The Himalayas! I thought. This is as "real" as mountains get, and though I wasn't near any of the real giants like K-2 or Everest, certain peaks made as real impression on me because of there jaggedness, their jutting, spindly summits, or their sheer size.

Looking out on the horizon and seeing a single peak towering above the rest is especially exhilarating in the Himalayas, where even lesser known mountains are grander than the highest mountain on any other continent. After so many miles of desolate snowfields I was taken by surprise when a snowless valley appeared between the high peaks. As we descended toward the lonely spot of brown earth the most improbable little towns began to show their faces below us. Roads appeared, connecting villages to one another and running along side the turquoise-blue Indus river. Finally we touched down in the little city of Leh at around 7.

The existence of Leh seemed impossible, given its location. How could there even be electricity in this remote location at over 3,000 meters (nearly 10,000 feet) elevation, nestled between the tallest mountains in the world? But Leh proved to be a bustling little city, with three or four major roads lined with shops and markets, and countless local vendors who were eager to eek a couple more sales out of the dying tourist season. Though eager, the locals were polite, and we immediately appreciated the laid-back feel of the place. The people of Leh were farmers, border soldiers, and small business owners whose closeness to the cold mountains seemed to endow them with a certain rural kindness and common sense. We were on our guard for slick characters in Leh, but we probably didn't need to be, and by the end of our time there we had benefited from more than one honest act of charity from a local.

We arrived at the $7 per night Glacier View Guest house to find a large, sunny, and relatively clean room in a simple but attractive concrete house, and a welcoming family that lived downstairs waiting to take our bags. Aside from the trick toilet seat which was not at all attached to the rest of the toilet and had a tendency to send me whooshing off into the shower when I shifted my weight, the accommodations were far better than I had expected, but it was the view that made me fall in love with the place. Eight or ten towering snowcaps were visible right from our window, the highest of which, Stok Glacier, was 6,800 meters. It's like looking out your bedroom window at the summit of Kilimanjaro and knowing that there are much higher, more majestic mountains somewhere in the distance behind it.

Oct. 5 -- Well, good thing I was in love with the place, because after sleeping all day and exploring Leh a bit I ate two chicken dishes at a rooftop restaurant, promptly acquired a case of traveler's diarrhea for myself, and stayed in my room for the next 24 hrs. To quote my friend Joey Prever "it was the kind of Diarrhea that Gabriel Garcia Marquez would have written about" and in addition there was impressive vomiting and a healthy dose of fever. After sipping water at a ridiculously slow rate for many hours, listening to Ayesha read "The Shack" (which is quite a good and unusual novel) and allowing her to nurse me back to health by running errands for me and singing me the Indian national anthem (which she will only do under great duress) I recovered enough to get a good night's sleep, which is easier with a view like this from your bedroom window.

Oct. 6 -- Then came our first day of exploration in Leh. We ate the most expensive and presumably safest dishes in the city (about a dollar, or maybe a dollar fifty with drink and soup), we climbed to the palace above the city, got shooed away from a mosque, we dodged cows and donkeys in the streets, and generally enjoyed Leh eating and shopping, haggling, talking, being stared at etc. I actually enjoy shopping in places like Leh because it is so personal, and much of what you buy is homemade, and all of it is dirt cheap. We began to get acclimatized, and to understand the dangers of dehydration and sunburn. Ayesha sat in the sun with her legs crossed, and after 5 minutes there was a clear line on one leg where her other leg had been.

Oct. 7 -- The next day was our day for monastery exploration. We hired a driver for about $20 to take us out for the whole day, to three different monasteries (called gompas and stupas) populated by Buddhist monks and located 10-15 miles outside Leh. Most monasteries were built high on hills or mountainsides, and though the breathtaking views from these locations may not have been the builder's motive, they were certainly a perk. The Monasteries consisted of a series of smaller buildings on a hillside topped with a large and often ornate main building on the summit, kind of reminiscent of the city of Minas Tirith in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies (feel free to take my lunch money and throw me in a locker). Inside these buildings were museums of Buddhist artifacts, rooms of meditating or debating monks, dark and almost spooky shrines, and my favorite: giant Buddha statues.

To give you some idea of the size the largest one was 14 meters high. They were eerie and otherworldly in their giant golden placidness, and I highly enjoyed gazing at them for a long time. At one of the monasteries we struck up a conversation with an older couple from California and really hit it off, talking about life, careers, travel etc. This couple has been everywhere, and they write books together about the death penalty in the U.S. We gave them a lift back to Leh in our car, and later that evening they took us out to dinner. It was great to make friends on the road, and we exchanged email addresses. I also took a run up to the gorgeous Shanti Stupa, built by the Japanese, which looks out over Leh. Shanti means peace in Hindi.

Oct. 8 -- Our big expenditure in Leh was the trip to Pangong Tso, and inland sea at almost 14,000 feet. It's an all day journey in a rented jeep, and you have to have a special permit to get near it because it is so close to the Chinese border. Despite the hassle it draws a lot of tourists because it is so big and beautiful: 83 miles of frigid salty water high up in the Himalayas. As we wound our way up the one-lane mountain road we became more and more aware of the dangerous drop to the valley below on our left, and as we gained elevation we learned to trust our driver more and more as he honked his way around sharp, blind corners, trusting anyone on their way down to be alert enough to hear us coming. The organization in charge of roads was extremely imaginative. Here is a sample of the hilarious road signs we saw along the way: "Peep Peep Don't Sleep", "Better Mr. Late than Late Mr.", "Darling I like you but not so fast", "Drive like hell you will be there", "I am curvaceous be slow", and "It's a highway not a runway".

Just as we were beginning to get comfortable with this situation, at around 15,000 feet in the mountain pass, the roads got icy. As a northerner I thought I was quite tough about things like snow and ice, but it turns out I'm a total wimp in comparison to these Leh locals (don't tell Ayesha, she still thinks I wasn't scared). Our driver, Jimmy, seemed to have no problem spinning the all season tires and fishtailing around hairpin turns with a thousand foot drop six feet to the left. I don't think that's an exaggeration. Those numbers are actually my best guess at the truth. And yet we proceeded, telling ourselves stories about how he does this all the time and nobody ever gets hurt, but secretly imagining how fast we would fall, how many times we would flip, and what exact injury would end our lives if we were to take flight from the side of the mountain. I was reminded of the Shel Silverstein poem: "I am falling off a mountain, I am plummeting through space, you can see this does not please me by the frown upon my face."

We were both a bit shaken by the time we reached the checkpoint at 15,200 feet or so, and got out to use the outhouses. It was very cold, snow and ice coated the ground, and we were still climbing, less than halfway to the lake. We met some travelers coming down the mountain, and they couldn't get up even with chains on their tires. Military vehicles were also turning back, and the driver asked us what we wanted to do. As much as we wanted to see the lake, we wanted to stay alive even more, but we asked him "what would you do?" "As you wish" was all he would say. Impressed by his willingness to press on but still very much attached to the idea of becoming 25 someday, we decided that we wished to turn around. We made it down safely, went to a cool monastery built into the side of a mountain, so that the ceiling was natural rock, and then spent the rest of the day in Leh being thankful for our continued existence. We got half our money back from the travel agent, and went home for the night unsure as to whether we had been ripped off. After all we didn't make it to the lake.

Oct 9 -- We woke in the dark and cold at 5am for our departure. Having paid the night before and said goodbye to our hostess, who refused our tip graciously, we were ready to say goodbye to Leh. This rural town with its golden foliage and mountainous backdrop was the closest I would come to NH in the fall, and I was sad to leave, but excited for what lay ahead. SCOOTERS! Sorry folks. Every time Ayesha gets within 5 feet of the keyboard something like this happens. So anyway, we woke up very early, hurriedly dressed, and walked to the road to wait for our taxi. After 5 minutes Ayesha started to get anxious, after 10 minutes so did I, and after about 11 minutes we ran out into the middle of the street and started flagging down any car we could see and asking for a ride to the airport. There aren't many cars on the road in Leh at 5:30 in the morning, but after a while we finally got lucky.

It just so happened that the very same travel agent who organized our failed trip to Pangong Tso was toodling along in a Scorpio (jeep-like vehicle) and was kind enough to take us to the airport. What a relief that was, because we would otherwise have been stranded. He dropped us off and refused our money, saying that he was headed there anyway, and this kindness belied any worry that we had had about him ripping us off the previous day. The event left us both with a very good taste in our mouths, and a very good impression of Leh.