Ladakh Chronicles, part 2 – Prologue

April 5th, 2009

From City to City, from City to Mountains

4th July
Above The Clouds - My First FlightExciting morning. Finally I was going to Ladakh. After years of dreams and wishes, finally I was going there. I did not sleep in the night. I was counting hours, minutes and seconds. It was all so overwhelming that I couldn’t feel any excitement for the fact that I was flying for first time in my life. I’ve always been impulsive traveler. When I felt like going away, I would pack by bags and catch a closest train to my destination. No reservations, no booking and no planning. As Maggi was in-charge of our travelling arrangements (for that matter all other arrangements) we had booked plane tickets and everything. So this was my first time flying and for some reason I wasn’t feeling anything amazing about it. I had much bigger excitement in my heart.

Our flight was to Delhi and from there we were taking a road. Prateek gave us a surprise and joined us on flight. He was initially supposed to leave a day earlier by train and join us directly in Manali. But due to some work he had to cancel train trip and take a flight next day. Incidentally he got booking on same flight as ours. We were taking a Himachal Tourism bus for overnight journey to Manali, but Prateek had booking on different bus which was two hours later from our departure. Boy, our bus was, in true sense international. Majority of seats (32 to be precise) were taken by group of Scottish students. Then it was us, Me, Maggi and Jaimin. Jaimin’s next seat was a German traveler. Behind us on last seats were 4 Japs.
We had to help the bus driver and his crew to communicate with Scotts while loading their bags in cargo. Jaimin’s co-passenger, the German guy was actually of Greek origin, was living in India for past 16 years and had actually taken up Indian name and diksha from some guru in Vrindavan. His real name was Robert, but now he was known as Jai Bihari Sharan. It was evident that he was living in India for long as he was speaking Hindi very fluently. A jolly chap, he clicked with us immediately and we had nice time talking and listening to his experiences. Scotts were resting nicely for some time, but an early morning tea break got their batteries recharged and after that they made racket big enough to keep us awake.

5th July
Resting in hotel room at ManaliWe reached Manali around 8:00 in the morning. Ashok, our driver for Manali-Leh trip received us with a broad smile and friendly shout. Prateek had told us about him and we found him even nicer in person. Besides being a nice guy, he was also one hell of a driver. He dropped us at our hotel. We unpacked our stuff and relaxed over hot cup of tea. By the time we finished taking bath, Prateek had arrived. We went out for a walk in Manali market at noon. We had our lunch at one small but nice dhaba. As soon as our stomachs were full, tiredness of travelling started making way for afternoon nap. We took long nap for almost 4 hours.

Around 5 in the evening, we again went out. While Prateek had some work to finish on net, we three decided to hit Hidimba Temple. We had fun there, taking shots with fluffy bunnies and yak. Maggi even agreed to dress up as a Himalayan woman and take pictures. Although she wouldn’t agree with me, she did look cute in that dress. After fooling around for an hour there, we decided to get back. We had to take early dinner and buy few things like water, juices and fruits before returning to the hotel. All preparations were made for the big journey next morning. The Manali-Leh route, two days of drive through mountains and valleys, visiting some of highest mountain passes in world. We needed to get good sleep, recharge our batteries for a long drive.

Hadimba temple at ManaliJaimin with the yak at Hadimba temple, ManaliMe riding the yak at Hadimba temple, Manali

Next : Ladakh Chronicles, part 3 – Manali-Leh Journey

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Travel | Comments (0)


Leave a Reply