From Leh to Vashicht

On Tuesday morning I joined Hannah, Denny, Marco, Roman and Mel in our three day Jeep journey down the road to Manali, the second highest road in the world. This was an incredible ride, and despite all of the scenery and landscapes that I have seen this year, the soaring mountains and winding hillside roads of the Himalayas tops them all. However, such views come at a price, and there were a few irksome moments as our Jeep teetered over the edge of huge drops, sometimes whilst overtaking slower moving vehicles over bumpy potholed roads. However, our driver seemed very safe, taking most corners at a comfortable speed and often using his horn on the uncountable number of high blind corners.

We arrived on Tuesday afternoon at lake Tsomoriri. The neighbouring village was rural and fascinating, but at 4595 metres above sea level, altitude was still a problem. After a walk around the farmland and a meal of quick-cook noodles and local sweet tea, we retired to bed. It was an uncomfortable night as our bodies got used to the thin air, but nevertheless I managed to get some sleep.

On Wednesday we began the long journey down to Jispa. Our driver seemed to attempt a shortcut, although all of the passengers seemed to agree that we seemed to simply drive in a huge circle for a few hours along barren landscape. Eventually though we were back on track, and the views continued to excel. As we climbed higher and higher, the only way to left to go was down again; a long nerve wracking descent down a windy mountain side road. Eventually we arrived in Jispa, and the relatively low altitude ensured a much more comfortable night's sleep.

The following morning we began the final leg of the journey. Very early on we were riding around a blind corner at a fairly slow speed, when a speeding motorcycle emerged around the bend at a scary pace. Our driver was able to casually apply the brakes and comfortably stop a couple of feet before the mountain edge, but the motorcyclist's options were not as positive. To avoid colliding with our Jeep, or a fate much worse, the only option he had was to fling his bike to the ground. Once he fell, our driver analysed the situation for a few seconds, concluded he was okay, and drove on. We were all just glad that it wasn't a larger vehicle speeding around the corner, for while our Jeep may have stopped the vehicle in it's tracks, our Jeep itself may have no longer been on the mountain. We could well have looked like the burnt out car we drove past near the bottom of one of the winding descents later in the day.

Our journey concluded with the Rohtang Pass, a section of the journey we had been joking about for the full three days. This was largely due to it's English translation; 'Pile Of Dead Bodies'. The long descent was chock-a-block with traffic, although when you see two large lorries crawling past each other on narrow mountain ledges, it kind of gives you confidence that your relatively small Jeep should have plenty of room to manoeuvre. The descent took a while though, partly due to a few traffic jams on ledges. However, after a lengthy but fully worthwhile journey, we eventually arrived in Vashicht, a small village just north of Manali. We had survived. That evening our group of six enjoyed a meal together, played a little Burmese Stroke, and went to bed.

My intentions today were to take things quite easy, but I ended up going on a walk with Denny that lasted longer than I expected. Firstly we walked to a small village. After some local kids tried there luck at trying to charge us for sitting on the wall of the local monastery, they seemed to enjoy playing with my camera and taking pictures, even if they couldn't see the results due to the smashed screen endured back in Thailand.

Me and Danny then continued to walk towards Manali, but what we stumbled across was a total surprise; a theme park! I'm sure Disneyland has nothing to worry about, but 'Club House' was extremely enjoyable, if only because it was so bad it was good. There are bumper cars (with a maximum of two cars ... although we saw just one car driving in circles), high speed go-karts (which appeared to travel at approximately jogging pace) and our personal highlight (and I quote): 'Dynamic Dinosaurs SPL King Kong' (Dragon fighting with dinosaur horror cage and another horror dinosaur). This involved a series of rooms displaying models of dinosaurs, gorillas and dragons. There was also a model of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, plus a stage with a couple of lights above it which we can only assume was for dancing on.

At one point I moved ahead of Denny into a particularly dull room including one sitting gorilla and one standing gorilla. There was a curtain in the corner which looked intriguing, so I peered through, but all that was there was some staff corridors. As I turned around, the sitting gorilla was now walking towards me, causing me to scream out loud and sprint halfway across the room before I once again composed myself. There is clearly no limit to the amount of fun a man dressed in a monkey costume can make, although we also felt sorry for the man who has to sit still in a gorilla costume all day, waiting for the very occasional tourist to walk in.

We are using Vashicht and Manali as a breathing point in our journey, but as of yet most of us haven't decided where to head to next.