Leh Lowdown

We are departing tomorrow from Leh and heading back down into what I will call Normal India. Some quick thoughts on Leh:

FUN/INTERESTING EXPERIENCES - not including trekking

- Visiting Buddhist monasteries is always an interesting thing to do when you are in a mountain area such as this. They always kind of have this feeling of time standing still because you can never tell what is new and what is old, and often they have a lot of statues and paintings that are hundreds of years old just sitting in the inner rooms. That and the monks doing their chanting and drumming is pretty cool.

- Polo matches at the Leh polo ground are a really cool sports event. It is the yearly Ladakh Festival right now, so there is a Polo match just about every day. They take place at the polo ground, which is basically a giant sandlot with stone walls around about half of it and giant concrete steps around the other half that are used as bleachers. The goals are around 20 yards away from the end of the ground and there is an out of bounds area behind the goals, but other then that everything else is in play. This makes for interesting action because there are garbage cans, porta potties, a water truck, parked cars, scooters and a lot of the spectators on the playing field. So when the ball goes near the side walls there are usually people running for their lives, and then several horses gallop in to try to dig the ball out from under a parked car or whatever.

The first match that Nisha and I went to we were some of the people standing on the field, near the bathrooms, so for a while our plan was to run into the 3 foot wide space behind the bathroom every time the ball came near us. This plan fell apart when we ran back there to see the ball sitting at our feet. We proceeded to run like hell as a Ladakhi on a horse charged in behind the bathroom swinging a polo mallet. Needless to say next match we sat up on the concrete bleachers to watch the chaos from a safe distance.

The crowd is actually pretty big (about 1000 people I would say) and mostly locals, including quite a few monks in full dress. In the second match we saw, in addition to a close 4-3 game, an old monk and a dog nearly get trampled as they tried to cross the field, as well as numerous crowds of people running from a gang of horsemen. Quite entertaining.

- Today I rented one of the beater mountain bikes and decided to ride up the valley out of town. I looked at the map and saw that there was a high pass road back there, so just figured I would go uphill for as long as I could and then coast on back.

Little did I know that I had actually started riding up the worlds highest moterable road. I rode up this pristine ribbon of pavement for about one and a half hours, up to an elevation of 4300m and then coasted back in around 20 minutes. The road was a steady 5% grade (approx.), so the biking was not actually that difficult, but the views were incredible and there were only about 10 cars on it the whole time I was back there.

I was a little disappointed to have to turn around, but I was out of time and out of water. However, when I got back I found out that the pass is at 5600m, so I was only about half way there. Also, in a few KM up the road I would have had to show my inner line permit, since the pass is close to China, so I would have had to turn around anyway.

HIGHLIGHTS

- The landscape here is really incredible. The place is naturally a barren desert. But, in every valley a glacier fed stream runs, and these have been diverted to make the towns in the valleys appear like Tuscany. The towns have cute little fields with barley and livestock as well as tall skinny trees and well kept houses. Then at the edge of town, back to desert. The effect is stunning.

- This is one of the least congested and best kept parts of India. It is still India, but the problems of dirt, overcrowding and petty crime are as under control here as they will ever be.

- Food here has been quite good. Although every restaurant tries to serve at least 5 cuisines, from a list of Indian, Chinese, Tibetan, Italian, Continental and Israeli. They have been pretty good, but a little specialization would be in order. A lot of restaurants have rooftop terraces as well.

LOWLIGHTS

- It is pretty touristy. The center of Leh is crawling with tourists, mostly of the weird European variety. There is real stuff for the real people here, but in the center of town you would think that only stores are ones that sell pashminas and trinkets for tourists.

- This is a difficult place to see for a few days because of the altitude. Nisha and I are really only starting to feel normal up here, and we have been here a week. This is probably not that big a deal for people who slowly come up the road, but it is an issue when you fly in.

- It is a pain to get here. We were planning on taking buses and trains out, but it takes around 4 days of travel, not including stopping in the towns on the way to get back to Delhi. So in the end we ended up flying both ways, which was more then we wanted to spend.

So, overall I would recommend this as a place to go, for those with the time and the money. But it is really more on an adventure sport playground then the real India, for whatever that is worth.