Hello everybody!
Hope you are fine! After a long period again a life sign from Mr. Coconutyoga. In the moment I am in Goa. Surprise, Surprise… I stayed already two months in India again. Unbelievable.
As expected it wasn`t easy to continue this travel one more time. I arrived in Delhi and just thaught what the hell I am doing there again. I didn`t wanted to stay, even just for some hours. I just took the local bus from the airport and after one hour driving through Delhi towards the Kashmiri gate (the bus-hub for the destinations in Himayal Pradesh, Kashmir and Punjab) I was done with these crazy town one more time. I think I will never get used to these chaotic cities, especially while travelling alone. I often think it would be a lot of fun to be with a friend in one of this city and just laughing about the confusion in his or her eyes, especially when (s)hes facing these chaos for the first time. And then share the experience. I think it’s a totally different feeling. Maybe one day!
So I decided to take the local bus to Manali at 3:30 in the afternoon without taking a real break after the overnight flight. There are more comfortable options to reach Manali, but the private buses are leaving much later, so I ended up to take the most uncomfortable option just to leave immediately.
And it was exhausting. I arrived in Manali the next morning and was just finished after 40 hours travelling without having more than a few hours of sleep in a very uncomfortable position.
I was happy to be again in the mountains. Very late in the season again, but I absolutely prefer these period. The last year I was in Manali alomost the same time.
Again I walked every day some hours in the mountains, enjoyed nice views and the amazing charras over there.
But I left Germany in a very bad mood and for sure my thouths didn`t changed completely only because changing the place.
So I stayed the first day almost totally alone, just talking to some few people. I couldn`t get used to be in India again and was asking myself if I did the right thing.
It just become better when I met Markus, another guy from Austria. We met up on a mountain and we did some more small treks the following days. Something it was just crazy. Climbing up extremely steep rocks where one fall down is your last or making our ways through bad thorns. Actually the same things that always happen if Mr. Coconutyoga decides to go for a walk. What to do? Often I just need this feeling. It is so good to calm the thoughts down through exercises. I feel so alife when I am facing dangers.
I had already decided not to go to Ladakh anymore but that changed as Markus had the same desire.
If Manali was already late it was crazy to go to Ladakh (another 600 miles north). The right thing for crazy people.
But it was even more crazy than I expected…
It started already in the very early morning at 5:00 when we started to wait for our minibus, which didn`t showed up at the appointed meeting point. At 6:00 we found an other driver who could bring us to “our” bus. In the beginning it was full, but most of the locals just wanted to head to Lahaul or Keylong on the half way.
We started in Manali (around 2000m), went up to the Rotang Pass what markes a totally and rapid change of the complete scenery. We came from apple gardens, uncountable trees and rocks and now we faced a much more wilder region. The Pass is already on 4200m and in should not getting lower for a while. Already last year I had been on this pass, it was already snowing (this time the pass was snowfree on that day) but head back to Manali again. Also I had an unforgotten paraglydejump from a place on the way up to the pass. Scary and beautiful at the same time. The following region is called Lahaul and has already like the close Spiti Valley a lot of tibetian influence. The last real “town” is Keylong, surrounded by mighty mountains, a lot of them between 6000 and 700nm. Keylong is in an narrow valley, almost the only place where we could see still trees in the colors of the autumn. What an amazing, stunning drive through these never ending beautiful valleys and never ending sceneries of uncredible high mountains. We have been exited the whole time, I had never seen such an intense respect of the beautiful pure nature around me. I enjoyed it so much.
But then the things changed completely. We came to a bridge, what wasn`t crossable anymore after a truck broke into the bridge. Another truck driver had tried to pass the river, but wasn`t successful and couldn`t be moved neither any more. On each side of the bridge waited around 15-20 trucks. It was already starting to get dark. Some people tried to get the second truck out of the river bad failt. Our drivers (it was a convoy of 5 Minibuses finally) watched the situation and discussed if they could cross the river anymore. That was only crazy. But also they decided there is no choice and decided to get drunk. Perfect! They started to drink a bottle of whiskey and wanted to sleep there and wait for the army the next day to solve the problem. I couldn`t believed it. And they have been not the onöy one. Npbody tried anymore the improve the situation, started drinking and some made a fire in there truck. It was getting freezing cold. Markus was very very uncomfortable with the situation and was realy desperate.
But for sure it wasn` t a nice sitation. Stucked on 4600m after ascending more than 2500 meters is not meant fore a proper acclimtisation. For sure not! After a while some few people started to unload the truck, most of them affected, because being Worker on these truck. The truck was loaded with almost 70 barrels of tar, each of them between 70 and 100 kilogram. There was a young guy who tried hios best to get the barrelas out from the bridge and up the hill. He was just wearing sandals and a shirt and was freezing extremely. I just couldn`t see that. SO ended up helping to get the barrels out from the bridge. Especially turning them upright was heavy shit. But almost nobody else then these eight people came to help. I was realy a little bit angry about the attitude of the most people who didn`t care about some poor people working hard. But whatever. After two hours we finished to unload it. I was really fucked, my stomach had began to hurt and I got headache. Often it was black in front of my eyes. But I also couldn`t stop it. I will never forget this. Finally another truck was able to pull the broken one away from the bridge and the problem was almost solved. The bridge was still damged, but nobody felt responsible to show the drivers, where the had to cross the bridge. SO I ended up to do this job for a while. Crazy! Then we continued our drive through the night. Our driver was drunk, it was almost dark but through the moonshine it was still possible to get mystical views of the surrounding mountains. As it was late already we stopped at a place with three bigger tents, where it is possible to eat, drink and sleep. Still on 4600m. We stayed there overnight. In the night it started snowing and the next morning everything around us was snow covered.
We left in the morning after this cold night. The views have been now even more impressive. After another hour we finally lost our wheel. It was clear already when we started that the wheel wouldn`t survive this journey as it had a bump from the beginning. Lucky enough i5t didn`t disappeared in the night in one of this crazy ascends or descends. Often the road was in an miserable state. I think this must be the craziest and most dangerous road in the world. After a shorter break we headed towards the highest pass on this journey on 5300m. As it was snowing we only met one other vehicle coming down from the pass. And that was a jeep, with much more useful wheels than ours without any profile, small and for sure without chains (why the hell they aren`t taking any with them?). The driver of the car warned us to cross the pass. And there was another option. 4 of the 5 drivers (even our who became more crazy the longer the yourney lasted) decided to drive around the pass. But the fith one didn`t care at all and just headed towards the pass. SO the other drivers followed. And already after 20 minutes we got stucked for the first time. At least we needed hours to get over the pass, especially on the parts in the shadow, where it was freezing cold. We almost went mad with our drivers, becaquse they didn`t cared about us one second. Even the only remaining local told us, they are mad and was full of sorrow. For Markus and me it was just getting more and more dangerous. We even had to walk up the pass and I felt almost like dying. And it is serious very dangerous not to descend after so fast ascending before. Finally we mad it and our drivers started to drive down into lower regions like maniacs. I was lucky to feel more and more air in my lunghts and the landscape became different again. It looked like a moon landscape. And then green and violet mountains appeared (probably because of the minerals). Beatiful! And then the first (very small) village after so many hours through totally deserted landscapes without any humans instead of some very small army posts. And we had seen the very hostile side of this phantastic nature.
After some more hours we finally reached the Indus valley and we have been back into civilization.
The first trees after a long time. The Indus valley is a very wide open one, often more than three cilometres from one side to the other and surrounded by mountains. The average high of this valley is 3500m. We went through this valley and could see beautiful monastiries, small villages and the mighty Indus. Finally we arrived in Leh, the capitol of Ladakh.
To be continued…
