The Manali-Leh road trip has lot of memories which will stay with me forever! The treacherous terrain, the breathtakingly beautiful La's, the majestic Himalayas, the adventurous journey which one should undertake at least once in a lifetime. Not to forget Border Road Organizations's interesting signboards - Don't be a gama in the land of Lama, The price of greatness is responsibility, et al.
We, however, had a false start at Leh. Hotel Snow Lion that we had reservations at, turned out to be quite unprofessional. The surprising thing about the hotel was that there more ladies as attendants than men. We luckily met Mr Lonchay next morning and he offered us to stay at his Lonchay residency. He was quite co-operative and even arranged for a cab for local sight seeing with a very experienced Mr Khunshuk (no he was not related to Phunsuk Wangdu!). Khunshuk had lots of stories from how he served the Indian army during Kargil war (carrying shells on his back) to how the Chinese regularly invade his village and the neighboring ones to threaten them, besides many PJ's. An interesting character, friendly guide/friend and enthusiast in general, straight off a travel book!
We had to drop our bullets at Leh market and Tashi was our contact person there - which so reminded me of the movie Kaminey. Tashi, though, didn't meet us in person (it actually felt like a scene from some gangster movie) and instead asked us to meet Tsetan - I guffawed when I first heard this name - isn't it Satan (the devil), with a twisted spelling! However I guess all our share of adventure had thankfully ended as soon as we had entered Leh and the entire episode of handing over the bulls and taking the refund went pretty smoothly. Tsetan was not Satan (quite unlike his name!), after all.
We stayed in Leh for a few days and visited the usual Pangong Lake and other tourist stops (honestly my trip had ended as soon as the road trip ended) then took the Leh-Srinagar road to reach Kargil, our next stop. Kargil is a small district which recently has come to prominence because of the Kargil War memorial (which actually is in Drass). We had a reservation at a hotel which was a pretty new one but was quite primitive with respect to the facilities. After we were shown our rooms (decent but not worth the money we had paid), I tried to check for wi-fi speed. To my surprise the closest ping server it detected was in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Kashmir is in complete contrast with Ladakh. As Nehru had mentioned once, Ladakh is a barren land (which it actually is) but which I would describe as raw beauty. Its difficult terrain teaches you to respect nature and even though it is a cold desert the beauty of Ladakh can be best put as pristine or untouched. Kashmir on the other hand is green, white and brown (there were a spectrum of colors there which I was later informed but my color blindness saved me from the color riot) and with equal measure. The hills, ridges in Ladakh are mostly brown or grey while Kashmir valley is mostly green (with white added by the snow). In Kargil, as suggested we took a trip to the local villages and the army cantonment (the last one before the Pakistan border starts).
On our way to the cantt, (the hotel had arranged for a Maruti Omni) I was surprised by an Ayatollah Khumeini poster near a village. The place seemed like stuck in a time warp. Khumeini in this age! And to add to that the "Pioneer" was playing a song which brought me another surge of nostalgia - "Zindagi ki dhoop ko saya kar gayi, aaj mere paas se wo guzar gayi...hawa hawa aye hawa!!". Villages of Kargil felt little different from other Indian villages which I have seen or may be it was just me. It was quite picturesque but cold (metaphorically speaking). Our hotel was on the banks of a river (later came to know it was Suru river) and there was even a hydro electric plant.
The lasting image that I have of Kargil is that of the "Top Gun" logo on one of the slopes of the hills guarding the cantt and of course the Ayatollah Khumeini poster!
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