Ladakh Chronicles, part 4 – Settling down in Leh

April 5th, 2009

New people, new place and new experience.

8th July
Our room at Bharat guest house, LehAfter a long and lazy sleep, I got up at around 10:30. Jaimin was already awake, but still in bed lazing around. I freshened up and went to Maggi’s room. She too was up and already freshened up. Girls had already taken their breakfast, and went back to their room to rest. We had our breakfast and went around hotel, taking shots and exploring. After an hour we were really hungry and went back to hotel restaurant for lunch. All of us in group met each other and formal introductions were conducted. We have had some background info of each other prior via Prateek. Nupoor was practicing doctor while Neerja was doing her MBBS (She turned out be actually a 19 year old kiddo).

Me, Neerja, Nupoor and JaiminShanti stupa from far groundsAfter food, we hung around in hotel front yard and chatted. According to plan, today we were going to trek to Shanti Stupa. As it was our first day in Leh, we were all kinda slightly out of breath climbing up the stairs at Shanti Stupa. But I was worst affected, being a smoker. Maggi was still doing better than me. Being a mountaineer, it was cakewalk for Prateek. But Jaimin, Nupoor and Neerja were doing absolutely great. I think I seriously need to stop smoking and get back to some serious workout, if I ever want to go to Leh again on a bike trip.

Leh town as seen from Shanti stupaOn the steps of Shanti stupa, Jaimin, Maggi, Me and NeerjaThough I took my sweet time climbing up, taking small halts to catch my breath… once we reached on top, the view was worth every step I climbed. You could see almost whole of the leh town from top. It was simply beautiful. It was like small green patch in middle of gray and brown, dry mountains. The peak of Stok Kangri looked even marvelous in orange evening light. The only sad part in this whole thing was that I realized that I had lost my Tamron 55-200 lens. No idea how did it happen, but it was gone from my messenger bag. It was really sad as I was looking forward to take a close shot of Leh palace from up top. Anyway, I resorted to shooting video instead… handing my camera to Maggi for photography.

Steps from bottom to top, Shanti stupaShanti stupaGolden Buddha at Shanti stupaNeerja, Me and Nupoor at Shanti stupa

After coming down, we decided to take another route back to hotel. We hit the Changspa lane (famous for shopping, cheap accommodations and other “smoky” pleasures). Although the plan to have some food at some Tibeti restaurant Prateek had known, but Maggi was very tired and didn’t want to have anything heavy. Even I wasn’t too hot about a heavy meal, so both of us decided to hit back to the hotel and have some light soup or something. We had a nice and hot mix-veggie soup, and instantly realized what a smart choice we had made. As I was hanging around in front yard, puffing away to glory… rest of the guys returned. Apparently their food adventure didn’t go as expected. Turned out the Tibeti resto wasn’t that great and food (they had some Pancakes and something) was rather very oily and spicy. Jaimin, especially was very ticked off (being a Gujjubhai hes not much into spicy food). So I fueled their fire bit more, describing what amazing mix-veggie soup our cook had made and how much fun it was. Jaimin had bit of tiff with our cook (Zombi, the nickname that Jaimin had bestowed on him), when he was denied for glass of milk as it was late and kitchen was closed. Ultimately Prateek interfered and settled things down.

We all returned to our rooms and packed our stuff to next morning’s journey, to Nubra valley.

Related videos from Maggi’s youtube channel:

Next : Ladakh Chronicles, part 5 – Nubra Valley

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Posted in Travel | Comments (1)

One Response to “Ladakh Chronicles, part 4 – Settling down in Leh”

  1. kunstharz Says:
    March 19th, 2010 at 07:04 PM

    I found your Blog when I was searching for mountaineer and I need to say, you do a really good job. You article helps me a lot! Thanks.



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