סושיBaba

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After the long drive, we arrived in the main city of Ladakh - Leh. Being in the rain shadow of the Himalayas, Ladakh is a high altitude desert, and Leh lies at an altitude of 3,500 meters. The Ladakhi population consists mostly of Tibetan Buddhists, although there is also a minority Muslim community. The temperature changes drastically between the shade and in the sun. One morning the sun was shining and we stepped outside. Immediately we were hot and so removed our sweatshirts, took out the bottle of sunscreen and put in on. Not a minute later a cloud drifted to cover the sun, the temperature dropped by ten degrees and we put our sweatshirts back on over our sunscreen covered bodies (and two minutes later took them off again).
Leh is a very attractive town with many tradition Ladakhi-style houses, each surrounded by their own fields for growing wheat and vegetables. The fields provide a green oasis on a brown and white desert backdrop. Our time in Leh was spent visiting stuppas and monastaries that are perched on the top of small hills and provide great panoramic views of the area.
We also caught the annual “Hemis Festival” which celebrates the birthday of the man who introduced Buddhism to Tibet. The festival is held in a monastary in the village of Hemis during which monks dress in costume and adorn masks to dance and act out stories and legends. The festival could have been very nice if it weren’t for the hundreds of middle-aged Western tourists each carrying their own professional-sized camera with telefoto lens bombarding any innocent local who happened to be wearing traditional clothing. These tourists formed mobs of photographers and ruined the experience for us a bit. But we still managed to appreciate the festival and were able to snap a few shots from afar (without shoving our camera lens in the faces of the Ladakhi’s).
(Udi:) Another very interesting thing we did in Leh was to visit the local ‘Women’s Alliance and seeing a movie called “Ancient Futures” based on a book with the same name. The author came to Ladakh once it was opened to tourists in 1974 and almost every year since then. She witnessed in her own eyes the change that modern culture did to the traditional oasis of Ladakh, and the book talks about this change and about our own lives in the modern world, which were already changed many years ago. Highly recommended!

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At 3 am on June 14th, we waited in the dark for our jeep from Manali to Leh. The drive was to take 20 hours, with only short stops for food. Once the jeep finally arrived, we headed up the ascent to the first pass (Rohtang La) where two trucks got stuck in between walls of snow. That allowed an hour to pass and the sun to rise and we got to see the beautiful peaks surrounding us. The next 20 hours were filled with the most amazing landscapes I (Sarit) have ever seen, along the most gorgeous drive. We were breathless. The pictures were taken hastily out of the window of a moving car, and DO NOT do justice to the utter beauty of the place.
I strongly recommend this drive to everyone - even if you don’t have time to spend in Ladakh - just going on the drive is worth it.

It has been a while since we updated - so here go a string of updates of the places we have been in the last few weeks. After Dharamsala, we headed to Manali, the main town of the Kullu Valley. The Kullu Valley is a very green, beautiful place, with waterfalls and the usual backdrop of snow-capped mountains. We actually stayed in the smaller village of Vashisht nearby, but spent time walking around Old and New Manali. Our stay there was brief since we were anxious to reach the region of Ladakh (in the state of Jammu-Kashmir).
If we haven’t mentioned it before, India is overrun by Israelis. The picture above is just one example of the “Israeli occupation”, where we gave into the temptation and ate one of our favorites: Sabeech.

We are in amazing Ladakh. stop. Having excellent time. stop. Internet time is expensive so the real updates will come later when we arrive in Delhi, tommorow!

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We’ve just returned from our third trek - From Dharmsala to the Chamba Valley. The trek took only 5 days this time and was different from our other treks in that we needed camping and climbing equipment - no guesthouses this time. So we had to hire a trekking company to take us, which turned out to be even more luxurious than the other treks. We were assigned an experienced guide, Manu, and no less than 4 porters to carry our stuff. Each morning we were awoken with tea in bed (yummy chai masala), which was followed by a hearty breakfast, snacks, lunch, more tea, soup, dinner, more tea, desert and finally hot chocolate! Yummy!!
The first two days were relatively simple. We left Dharmsala in the morning and climbed 900 meters to a ridge called Triund that overlooks all of Dharmsala and the Kangra Valley and also hosts an uninterrupted view of the Dhaula Dhar Range. We arrived early in the afternoon and spent time looking at flowers, bird-watching (amazing vultures and the Himalayan Griffin), and laughing at the millions of goats grazing around our tent. The sheep and goats made the same climb as us from the Kangra Valley, and belong to Gaddi shepherds that lead them North every year in this season over the snowy passes of the mountains to greener pastures that are emerging from under the melting snow. The second day was pleasant, as we passed grazing pastures and tons of purple Irises and arrived at the snow line. We crossed the snow and climbed some boulders to reach our stopping point for the second night - Lahesh cave. The small and modest cave provided shelter from the hail storm that started blowing outside, and our guide and porters served us a nice hot meal. We craned our necks to see the pass that we were to climb to the next day that lay vertically above us, and were a bit apprehensive…
On the third day we were awoken with nice masala tea and the “baaa baaa” of dozens of sheep and goats heading up to pass. We got an early start and set off onto the snow. For our first time we used cramp-ons - metal spikes that you attach to the bottom of your shoes - which helped us traverse the steep (70 degree) slope. While the spikes kept us safely attached to the mountain, it took our minds time to get used to the fact that we were basically on a cliff. The ascent was slow and hard and when we finally reached the top, a snow storm began to stir, blocking our panoramic view.(If this sounds familiar, yes, it also happened on the pass of the Annapurna trek). We descended through beautiful snow fields on rolling hills and over an ice bridge that is formed above a running stream. After continuing down we reached large grazing meadows where we set up camp once the skies finally cleared up.
The last two days were pretty easy again, this time with views of two different mountain ranges, the Dhaula Dhar and Pir Pinjal. We hiked through coniferous forests of Cedar, Fir and Pine and over a few fresh landslides to the beautiful and remote village of Kuarsi. The two-storey, wooden, family-style houses of Kuarsi have slated roofs, that house a total of about 450 people. We stayed at the temple that is devoted to the snake god, and which also acts as a community center for the village. Not only do they celebrate things there, but also there is a drinking water source in the temple, and the women come to fill large golden jugs. That day they celebrated the purchase of two new drums for the village by making Halva for all the men in the village. It rained for much of the day, but when it stopped (marked by an amazing triple rainbow), we took a walk and visited some houses as well as the school where we played games and sang songs with the kids.
On the last day, we walked on a trail that had been blasted out of the steep canyon side to the road in the Chamba Valley. We said goodbye to our porters and guide as we headed to Bharmour - the ancient regional capital, where we rested for a day before returning to Dharamsala.
So - we really enjoyed the trek, much due to the great treatment we received from our superb team from ‘Summit Adventures’. We highly recommend the trek to anyone travelling in the region.