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Leh to Srinagar – August 2009

Bryan — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:24:50 +0000

India is a very godly country with equally ungodly transportation schedules. While it doesn’t have the crazy early morning departure times of it’s Manali-Leh contemporary, the road through the Kashmir along the Line of Control with Pakistan is about as long and includes it’s very own set of peculiar oddities. Leaving at a more sane hour of around 3:30pm, I was lucky enough to take in some of the Ladakh valley scenery along the Indus river. Like most shared jeep/SUV packages, people are crammed into every available space with luggage attached to the roof. In my particular “scorpio” (some kind of Indian Land Cruiser knock-off) there was one traveler in the front, three in the back and four slammed into the extreme back, facing one another, two on each side. If the rear hatch opened, people would pop out like a jack-in-the-box. The cheaper the ticket, the less comfortable the ride. I foolishly opted for cheap. Being that this was not the first jeep trip I’ve taken through these kind of landscapes (high-altitude, single lane, twisty switch-back, crumbling asphalt/gravel roadbed) I should have known better.

Either way, the first few hours were quite scenic, albeit heavily militarized. This road probably has to be the most fortified public road in the world. Every second kilometre for about 100km outside of Leh found some kind of military installation, mostly logistic and infantry, but I noticed a few light mechanized units thrown into the mix

The road skirts the Indus for quite awhile. When I arrived in Srinagar, I found out that three Malaysian travelers had been killed that day when their SUV plunged into the Indus…two others were still missing. Drunk driving was suspected.

Traffic was mostly a mixture of heavy transport (fuel, goods) and assorted military vehicles. Tata attack.

Road conditions were mixed.

Dinner was a typical truck stop. Driver making sure everything is ship-shape. Indian jeeps, despite the passenger densities are quite comfortable from a suspension point of view…but this guys tires were balder than Patrick Stewart.

Pardon the light, as it was getting dark, but this is probably the best example of Indian single lane driving in the Himalayas.

Unlike the the Manali-Leh route, the military check points along this section were substantially different. Where that road the checks were simple and unobtrusive, this route the check points were actually stop-points where sections of the highway were closed. Security being the reason, possibly because they didn’t want anyone doing anything suspicious in the dark along this stretch of road. We spent several hours as two of these check points. One, called Drass (not much more than a tent) is apparently the coldest place on the planet after Antarctica and some place in Siberia.

When it got light again, I was officially in the Kashmir, which bears a striking resemblance to the Rockies. Trees, green rivers and pasture.

Truck stop for breakfast.

That was about the last image I shot of this stretch of the highway. The altitude dropped significantly after this picture as the military presence increase substantially. Unlike the Ladakh side, which was mostly installations, the Kashmir side saw full battle-rattle section-sized foot patrols along the road with heavily armed infantry posted almost every second kilometre. Despite being somewhat ‘safe’ for travelers, one glance at any local newspaper will confirm that there is still quite a bit of violence in the area. Trekking would is apparently awesome here, but I didn’t have the cash for another supported trek, especially something in the 7-10 day ranges…and solo might not have been the best option. I might have chanced it if I had a partner…one of the curses of traveling solo.

Technorati Tags: crazy roads, india, kargil, kashmir, ladakh, leh, line of control, pakistan, photography, photos, travel

Stok Kangri IV

Bryan — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:22:38 +0000

Morning on the final day.

Heading back down with the help of gravity.

Looking back.

Back to Stok.

6121m – a new altitude record for me.

Technorati Tags: ladakh, leh, mountaineering, photography, photos, stok kangri, tired, travel, trekking

Stok Kangri III

Bryan — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 10:03:27 +0000

Obvioulsy, no photos exist of the first 5 or six hours of the climb, but this one was taken at around 6:30am. Base Camp is behind the low cloud formation in the center of the photo. Our route took us over the glacier in the bottom of the photo and straight up a bowl on to a very rocky and steep ridge from which this photo was taken. I’ve climbed at strange hours before (Mt. Fuji) but this one was a particularly odd feeling because unlike Fuji, I didn’t have a clear image of the approach prior to sunrise. When the sun came out…whoa…I actually climbed up that?

Nearing the summit and looking back along the ridge.

Ladakh Valley below. The weather wasn’t perfect, but the clouds and mist provided an eerie atmosphere. While I wouldn’t get to see K2, I was lucky to have summited given that every group the previous day had been turned back by high winds.

From the summit. K2 would be in the background on a clear day.

Made the summit at around 7:30am

It is a 90 degree drop down about 1500m just over that edge…

Heading back down.

Glacier crossing.

About 11am looking back toward the cloud encrusted summit.

Base camp in the morning.

Too tired to stand.

A quick lunch and then a long sleep.

Technorati Tags: himalayas, india, kashmir, ladakh, leh, mountaineering, photography, photos, stok kangri, travel, traveling

Stok Kangri II

Bryan — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:52:42 +0000

Breakfast on day two.

Looking south toward Stok Kangri (top right) from camp one. Base camp is actually to the left of the ridge in the centre of the photos. The approach was somewhat different than I initially expected.

Camp one – looking north toward Stok Village.

Marmot boxing on the way to base camp.

About 4800m. The approach toward base camp is actually steeper than it appears in the photo. I acclimatize quite well, but I begin to feel the effects when I push 4000m. I’m not tired, but I slow down, begin to lose appetite and get crazy dreams.

Our Nepali guide chatting with the donkey wrangler.

Base camp at 5100m. We arrived at around 3pm and had dinner a few hours later, followed by a quick nap given that we would be up at 1am.

Technorati Tags: himalayans, india, kashmir, ladakh, leh, mountaineering, photography, photos, stok kangri, travel, traveling

Leh – August 2009

Bryan — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:51:57 +0000

Having officially been declared H1N1 clear and suitable for transit, our convoy moved into the Ladakh region of Jammu-Kashmir province, India. Sharing and uncanning resemblance to the TAR plateau in both landscape, architecture, and culture (it is an extension of the plateaus, being on the ‘Chinook’ side of the Himalayas) Ladakh is the trekking/outdoor enthusiast capital of India. The two day jeep/bus journey creates a nice buffer between the lost, do-nothing, hippie culture of Manali (or “little Tel-Aviv” as it is known as in India) shielding Leh from those types…although clown pants and travelers in ‘local-dress’ continue to saturate the landscape. Leh/Ladakh is far more of a Bryan travel town.

Dry and dusty are good words used to describe Leh but it is also a good example of how I would have expected Lhasa to look if the Chinese had not entered into the city. Very organic in nature. Tight, dense, old, bizarre street networks combined with heavy modern nuisances like massive traffic, severe white pollution and overcrowding. I’ve decided that cities in India can be summed up as what happens when you place a physically medieval city into the 21st century.

Tourism is massive in Leh, with countless trekking agencies, stores, restaurants, and guesthouse permeating the fabric. Old-timer visitors will lament to one about how the tourism industry has opened and changed this once very isolated area for the worse. I would argue that it was never tourism that opened this area up – that honour goes to the HUGE military presence in the valley and their associated infrastructure projects. Tourism followed. Despite the lament regarding the typical arguments against tourism there are some interesting initiatives regarding bottle less drinking water, women’s employment and indigenous craft/food/music. Such things are often absent in many other places I have travelled.

Still even with the the tourism and associated revenue, it disheartening to see such terrible infrastructure deficiencies in simple things such as refuse collection. Infrastructure and cleanliness leans strongly in China’s favour in a comparison of the two rising powers.

Leh is predominantly Ladahki, a culture which is very Tibetan but not, and I couldn’t tell you the subtitles. A strong Tibetan refugee population exists as well as an assortment of other subcontinent ethnicities.

Numerous mosques can be found through out Leh.

Leh from the hills above. The Indus Valley runs left to right (East to West) and Stok Kangri can be seen as the highest peak in the distance.

A close view of the tight nature of the town fabric.

Restored Buddhist temple above the city.

While the central and inner city of Leh is rough and ready, the suburbs are gorgeous. Each plot appears to be at least a hectare in nature and centred around a traditional Ladakhi-Tibetan two story mud-brick-wood home.

“Main Street” in Leh on a quiet day. Like most street systems in India, it was never designed for what it is now expected to deal with and unlike medieval cities in Europe, demand management is obviously not used – the result be pure chaos, although there is somewhat of a functional feel regarding the chaos, that is from an outside perspective and if you asked me if I would want to live that everyday, I would probably say no.

I spent a few days here organizing my micro-expedition up Stok Kangri. After returning from that climb I was sitting at a cafe on a street not unlike the one above with my gear waiting for my jeep to Srinagar. I knew the Dalai Lama was visiting the area, but I wasn’t expecting to see him. All of a sudden everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) ran out of their shops and lined the road. A couple army jeeps raced by followed by several SUV’s. Staring out the window of one of the trailing SUV was His Holiness the Dalai Lama (I would see him a second time as my jeep fuelled at a petrol station and his motorcade went by again). I don’t pretend to know anything about Buddhism and I am hardly the first person I know who has seen the Dalai Lama…but I though the context of seeing him in an landscape that is probably the closest he will ever get to Tibet was very special.

Technorati Tags: cities, culture, india, ladakh, leh, photography, photos, tibet, travel, urban planning

Manali to Leh, India – August 2009

Bryan — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:47:05 +0000

Into the Ladakh.

Only on the highest highway in the world does ones jeep depart at the silly hour of 2am. Actually, that is when I arrived at the local bus station. The ride didn’t actually begin until around 4:30am.

Unfortunately, the early morning start meant that I would miss the opportunity to shoot Rohtang Pass, which is an unbelievable ascent from the coniferous forests of the vanguard of the Himalayans into the high altitude deserts of the plateau. Night ascents have their own advantages. Once above the clouds one is able to look down on the ascending vehicles fog lights dancing through the mists underneath a pure starry sky.

I woke up to breakfast here, about 100km and 6 hours into the 23 hour journey.

The view from the breakfast table.

Given the proximity to the monsoons (gentle this year), the landscape was quite green. This is in start contrast to what we would soon be driving into.

Moving up into the plateaus. It was once switch-back intensive ascent after the another. I lost count.

Tata trucks were not the only users of the highway. The single lane road created some interesting, if not downright freaky encounters with oncoming traffic.

Apparently, despite a jeep full of travelers, we were on some kind of timetable, so opportunities for photo stops were very limited. Most of these photos I shot from the window. My poor Pentax camera needs a serious professional cleaning after this trip.

Road conditions were mixed with some sections receiving a new asphalt make-over, with some being pure dusty gravel, and others a combination of decaying 30 year old asphalt/concrete and gravel. I used to think that the UAZ jeep from Mongolia represented the toughest jeep I’d would ever travel in…that was until I met the Tata “Mini-Deluxe”. The killer suspension system more than made up for the skinny and balding tires. That thing navigated the road ruins like BMW tank. We picked up a couple of Brits who have been trekking in the surrounding hills – our driver was loading their gear on to the top. My poor, trusty North Face pack got dusted like it had never been dusted before.

Blasting through a glacial mess.

Reaching a high point…and then…

…tearing through a desert at 90 km/hr.

We went through about five police check points along the highway. Nothing major. There is a substantial military presence in the area though, mostly engineering units delegated to road maintenance and repair.

The majority of traffic was the venerable and colourful Tata transport/utility vehicle…and the occasional crazy 4-cylinder Suzuki hatchback.

Making the final descent down into Leh. Ah…Himalayan blue :-)

Road slicing and dicing.

Taking a short cut down into the valley to avoid some serious road-construction.

Final ‘pit-stop’ before Leh.

Upon entering Leh, we were all promptly checked for H1N1. The fourth time for me in 4 months.

Technorati Tags: himachal pradesh, india, jeep, kashmir, leh, manali, photo, photography, travel

Windows Live Writer

Bryan — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:05:08 +0000

Windows Live Writer can no longer connect with my blog, at least from Leh, where I am now (something to do with using a satellite connection? Probably not, but the writer worked fine in Delhi). I use WLW because it is good offline blog publisher with stellar photo integration options. Internet, being satellite, is expensive in Kashmir, thus I don’t like to spend too much time on it. Currently experimenting with WLW replacements so I can easily insert images at low net bar costs. Until then…posts are more interesting with images.

Technorati Tags: blog, india, leh, travel