Bryan Crosby Dot Ca

Nice to see hear of folks who still carry compasses around with them when they travel.  Moscow Times: Far East border guards have detained a Chinese man who said he was traveling to New York from China by foot, RIA-Novosti reported Thursday. The traveler, a young man who was not identified, was expensively dressed and [...]

From the Globe: Russian officials opened a terror investigation Saturday, saying that a homemade bomb planted on the tracks of the high-speed Moscow-to-St. Petersburg route caused a derailment that killed at least 26 people and injured dozens more. I never rode that particular line to St. Petersburg.  I exited Russia via the Moscow-Riga (Lativa) line. [...]

Situated below the the Dhauladhar mountains (outer Himalaya range), the former British colonial outpost of Mcleod Ganj is now more famously known as the seat of the Dalai Lama and home to the Tibetan government in exile.  It is also somewhat of a must-see destination on the Northern India circuit.  Full of westerners seeking enlightenment [...]

I placed this into a separate entry because I’ve never been inside a Mosque before and the mosque that I choose happens to be the largest in Asia and in the Kashmir (I visited the day before I helped polish off a bottle of whisky…I don’t know what that means).  I was hesitant about entering [...]

Srinagar is in the north-western corner of the Indian Kashmir and that special geography creates another kind of fortress city with check-points and armed troops everywhere.  Srinagar is substantially larger that other cities in Jammu-Kashmir (clocking in at around one million) and is situated in a depression surrounded by Himalayan foothills.  This, of course, creates [...]

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 [...]

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

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]