By now it’s clear I’m not a high altitude mountaineer. The sleeping issue is not improving with acclimatization. Everyone else’s problem seems so simple. They have a headache for a day. They’re cold at night – buy a better sleeping bag! Maybe it’s the tail end of the sickness, but even sleeping at Leh is hard now.
And Leh is dry – 10% humidity mid-day. For comparison – southern Algeria, in the middle of the Sahara desert is 14%! We are craving vegetation, water, and high quality rock like we have in the Canadian Rockies.
And those dogs…. Sleep all day in the streets, bark all night. Brutal to try to sleep through. Street dogs are endemic everywhere in India, but I’m ready for a different chorus of barking.
In the meantime, the Ladakh festival is in full swing!
Not sure how traditional this archery is, but it was free to watch and included endless refills of Chang – yes, that’s free beerIn the competitors wearing traditional garb, there was this guy wearing aviators and camo pants. Beware of civilians who walk around in camouflage pants all the time. (I did this for a decade)
Camo pants man, with 4 hours of practice in his life was the first score a bullseye. While watching the archery, I recognize a spectator from our Markha trek. Ben has sprung for a fancy guided tour of monasteries tomorrow so we join in.
Sunrise on the roof of the monastery Learned lots about Buddhism
The Cliff Notes – after the original Buddha died, there was a split. The purists wanted to focus 100% on the teachings of Buddha. No God. These guys dominate in Sri Lanka and southern India.
The other crowd said “we’ve already got thousands of gods and deities, why just throw them away?”. They founded Tibetan Buddhism. This is a huge difference – no god vs all the gods.
We got to watch their morning prayers. Clearly some monks are more into it than others. Felt like stepping back to the 15th century. Lots of details and meanings. They’ve been complicating this belief system for a long time. For some reason, we stopped for tea on an army base. Nice upcycling of these tires. India is super proud of its military. Americans are mild mannered compared to many Indians we met. We seen three monasteries. Most are about 350 years old. Lots of stuff we couldn’t take pictures of – meaning of life, how to be eternally happy, basic stuff. Hemis was the biggest and felt more serious – they administer 200 other monasteries. Average 5 monks per. Feels weird, seeing a monk with big hair. 8 hours of taking my lace-up hikers on/off every 10 minutes. We skip the last monastery to check out the final game of polo at the Ladakh festival. Serious game, impossible to film with a phone
We have some ideas for leaving Leh. The fastest and easiest would be to fly to New Delhi or Chandigarh. Since we may never come back, Marta wants to see more mountains. We could take a tourist bus to Manali, But a crazier plan is already in motion.
There is a new road being carved along the Zanskar river. Zanskar sounds almost mythical to my ears, and for centuries was incredibly isolated. If we show up very early in the morning, we can drive through the construction.
Leaving Leh at 4:30 AM for ChillingWaiting for the security checkpoint to open. We get the bad news that rockfall has made the road impossible. We will be forced to take “the boring road”The shortcut requires a several hour detour, but I’ve got a buddy
South of LamayuruAll the roads in Ladakh are under construction all the time.  It seems like half of India is working with cement at any one time. First mountain pass of the dayIn the middle of all this beauty, the highlight was learning that the nickname for Canada in India is “Little Punjab”. Still funny!And now down down down to rejoin the Zanskar river Now that we rejoined the big road, it should be smooth sailing. Nope.Lots of room
The section of road between us and Zanskar is being twinned. They punched a single lane through, opened the road, and then started adding a second lane.
No need for dump trucks when you have a powerful river to carry everything away.
Looks expensive, from Europe. Drills like this punch small holes into rock to allow explosives to be placed. It’s interesting how we still haven’t come up with a better way of removing rock than drilling and blowing it up.
More like it. This is the much much cheaper locally made rock drill at work
Vertical world. After the terrible rock around Leh, it was great to see good rock again.
Huge crew, mostly from Central India. I understand this type of work pays about $16 per day
The workers have been very diligent about not stopping traffic for too longAnd finally, we’re in the Zanskar valleyThe glacier and Himalayan mountain that feeds Padum. Tomorrow we are hoping to get a good view of the Himalayan range on the left.
There is so much backbreaking labour in India, I cheer any little clever optimization.
Marta and Chester's Maleficent Adventures 