It's taken me 2years and a trip to the state of J&K to get back to blogging. The beauty I witnessed was so moving, I couldn't keep it to myself.
First thing to know, other than maybe train/flight travel,
there's not much that can be/needs to be planned because it is a road
trip for the most part. I, for one, met some friends in Delhi and we then took the
train to Jammu [the state of J&K is made up of three major
provinces/erstwhile kingdoms - Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh]. On the train,
we met some young Biharis who were going with their aunt to Vaishno
Devi (pilgrimage site). Meeting them was such a humbling experience.
They were so in awe of me and my friends because we were (supposedly)
well educated and studying in one of the premier institutes in the
country while we ourselves were trying our best to be as down to earth
as possible. We started playing a game of riddles where we would
exchange (mostly) mathematical riddles and see who came up with the
answer first; and they were so smart! They answered quite a few of the
riddles we posed and even in the cases where they couldn't, they were
still trying their very best and were using tactics of logical deduction
to try and answer them. I felt really bad and wished I could shake them
up and show them how smart they really were whenever they said "par hum
log zyada nahi padha hai aap jaise" ["but we haven't studied much like
you guys"]. Other than that, they were also so giving. They were so
ready to share their berths for the night with those who didn't have a
confirmed ticket. And while this trip made me realise countless times
about how the people with the least are the most ready to share, this
was my first taste of it.
We got to Jammu early the next morning and as
we were walking around trying to find a place to freshen up in, we
encountered what seemed to be India's answer to Texas - There were so
many shops selling fire arms of all kinds! You could even openly buy
guns without a license! (Thank God the shops weren't open, else I'd have
probably even seen live demos)
So we quickly got out of there and got
onto a bus to Srinagar which is in Kashmir. We had some very interesting
co-passengers who were all trying their best to scare us with visions
of what they termed as Pakistan and not India. Plus we had a sprightly
sardar for a bus driver who was driving like he owned the road, cutting
left and right at his will and was cursing those passengers who asked
him to slow down. We got to Srinagar about 12hrs later, caught a few
winks of sleep and set off for Ladakh the very next morning.
We hired a cab driven by a Ladakhi who, in order to
entice us, said in passing that he'd take us around Ladakh. Little did
he know that we'd later make him do good on his words :) We first
stopped for breakfast by the Jhelum river were we had hot paranthas and
tea while taking in our first sight of the snow capped mountains and
dipping our feet in the cold river.
We then drove to Sonamarg where we
had to wait for about 2hrs for the road to Ladakh to be opened. We saw
so many glaciers there, it was beautiful!
However, what really annoyed me was that so long as you looked above the horizon, it was all beauty but the minute you let your gaze drop, all you could see was filth. What does it take for Indian tourists to be more aware of their surroundings? Why would one much rather live in the midst of filth than to take the two extra steps to the nearest dustbin?
When the roads finally opened,
we set off on a nail biting, edge-of-the seat, edge-of-the-cliff drive
to Leh. There was especially one stretch called the Zoji La ("La" in
Ladakhi means mountain) pass which was super scary to drive through.
This pass is unmotorable for 9months in a year because it is covered
with snow and in the 3 months when it is motorable, the melted snow
mixes with the mud and turns into slush and so other than driving
through an actual mountain, you have to drive through mountains of piled
up slush.
So people who came in their Maruti 800s and Altos got stuck
and had to either be pushed out of the ruts by fellow drivers or had to
abandon their vehicles by the side of the road and hitch hike. Hats off
to the Border Roads Organization and the Indian army though for being
able to even carve out a pass through such inhospitable conditions. Also
hats off to people who traversed this on motor bikes. It is so bone
rattling!!!!
Coming out on the other side though, we got to see such
beauty, it was totally worth it. Ladakh is such a beautiful place.
There's snow, there are fast flowing rivers, cold deserts, sandy deserts
- everything in just that one province! It is amazing!
We stopped by at
the Kargil war memorial and man! we felt such pride! To actually be
able to see how close India was to losing its territory and how the
Indian troops gave back a hard fight to Pakistani insurgents, and under
super extreme weather conditions, was simply inspiring. It was much
better than just reading about it in the text books and newspapers.
We finally got to Leh (capital of Ladakh) around 4a.m., again caught up on about 5hrs of sleep and set off to tour Leh and the few tourist attractions around it. We saw two palaces (the Tshe palace and Leh palace) and two Buddhist monasteries (Thiksey monastery and the Shanti stupa). Although the architecture of these buildings wasn't grand or even remarkable, its beauty lay in its simplicity. All the older buildings in Ladakh, be it a palace or a peasant's dwellings, were built with mud. Some of them were then white washed, some weren't. Against this base of an earthy brown or stark white, stood out the windows and doors. All the windows and doors in Ladakh are outlined with a thick coat of black paint, thus highlighting it and making for a very distinctive feature. To see them from afar therefore, was beautiful.
And
the views of the valley from the tops of these buildings were also
absolutely splendid. As such the Leh district is a desert in spite of
the river Sindhu passing through it. The locals and the government have
however built an intricate network of canals and therefore ensured that
at least some tracts of land are arable. What you can see from a bird's
eye view therefore are absolutely brown mountains surrounding dry,
barren land with tracts of greenery. The brown-ness of the land helps in
enhancing every bit of colour so that the skies look amazingly blue,
the fields look beautifully green and the clouds look whiter than white.
And it isn't even like they're all the same shade of brown! Simply
said, the place is much more beautiful in person than it is in pictures
and one felt like taking pictures every step of the way, even if they
were slightly breathless steps ;)
After a lunch of momos and thukpa (noodle soup), we went to
another Kargil war memorial. In addition to having exhibits from the
Kargil war, this museum had some more general information on the work
that the Indian army, navy and airforce do and some general information
on Ladakh (culture, flora and fauna).
The next morning we left for the Pangong Tso ("Tso" in Ladakhi means lake). The previous night it had snowed on the mountains so we were greeted by fresh, untouched snow as we climbed the mountains. We even stopped at one stretch for about 20 minutes and played in the snow. There were places where the ice had started to melt and there was a thin sheet of ice under which we could see the water flowing. It was lovely and at a height of about 17,500 ft above sea level!
On our way
down the mountains and closer to the lake, we passed some sandy deserts
where we saw wild horses, wild yak, wild donkeys and even some red
foxes! Our first glimpse of the lake from afar was amazing! The blue of
the water was so unnatural and not a blue I've seen before in water. As
we got closer, we could discern at least three different shades of blue
and the water was so amazingly clear. It was simply beautiful. The water
was super cold so I don't know what these hindi movies are showing when
the heroines jump in the lake in their swimming suits. They would
simply freeze. Also, the lake is a salt water lake, giving us proof of
the ocean bed origins of the Himalayas. We had lunch by the lake, spent
more time taking photographs and trudged all the way back to Leh with
more bone rattling.
We left for Srinagar the next morning and stopped at some
more monasteries on the way. The monastery at Alchin was by far the
most beautiful monastery. It is a more than 400yr old monastery and
actually reminded me of our temple structure. They had huge wooden
statues of the different kinds of Buddhas in their very own enclosures
just like we have for each of our Gods within one compound wall. The
walls of each enclosure were painted with hundreds of miniature Buddhas.
Each one was the same but with slight variations either in the angle of
the Buddha's hand or leg, or the colour of the flower he was holding.
And all of it was hand painted with vegetable dyes. Photography was
prohibited in the monastery so one could just concentrate on the beauty,
the silence and the sound of the river flowing nearby. It was magical.
We also saw the confluence of the Sindhu and Zanskar rivers. The two rivers are of distinctly different colours! It was superb.
That
night we also tasted the local Ladakhi brew, "chhang", along with some
home style Ladakhi food that our driver himself made for us in his
friend's restaurant.
After the exhilarating beauty of Ladakh, Srinagar paled
in comparison. Plus it was super hot. So we spent only one day there
during which we visited the Mughal gardens and the Botanical gardens.
While there, we got to see how normal the Kashmiris are. On the one hand
I could hear the sighs of young Kashmiri women who envied me for being
able to walk around in jeans and a t-shirt, and on the other I saw
scores of young, college-going couples walking around hand-in-hand and
being openly in love. It seemed like they lost all their inhibitions
once they were inside the gardens and they played with their friends,
teasing them with the water from the fountains, with such gay abandon.
It was such an interesting contrast to the general, uninformed image one
has of Kashmiri Muslims.
We also went for a shikhara ride on the Dal lake at sunset.
The water was like silk and the more we got away from the shores, the
less we could hear of the traffic. Once again, it was lovely.
We left back to the plains the next morning and two bus rides and 24hrs later, we got back to civilization and back to Delhi so happy and thankful for having been able to experience this "heaven on earth".
