On A Tourist Bus to Shangri-La: My Journey to Ladakh
Ladakh, India
It was 4:45 in the morning and the streets of Manali, a resort town in the Himalayan foothills of India, were dark and still as I stumbled sleepily to the bus stop. My guesthouse was in the center of town, so sleeping had proved a challenge. First, the cacophony of car, truck and rickshaw horns kept me awake, then it was the large, extended family dominating my guesthouse. My requests for silence were met with quizzical, though not unkind, looks. I suppose people living in the second most populous country in the world don’t expect much peace and quiet.
I had also been kept up by my excitement at the fact that I would soon be traveling along the second-highest road in the world, the Manali to Leh Highway. I’m from New England, land of gently rolling green hills: I’d never seen so much as a snow-capped peak. For years, I had dreamed of traveling in the Himalayas, and now I was going to travel to one of the most beautiful areas of these mountains, via the most dramatic highway in the world.
My fellow passengers, gathered around the bus, seemed equally exhausted and excited. I was surprised to see that they were almost all foreigners, except for one wealthy family from Kashmir, and a fashionable Sri Lankan guy with his Austrian girlfriend. We departed on time, surprisingly, and spent the next four hours traveling through beautiful, almost constantly changing, scenery. We climbed sharply as the sun rose, but were still in a “middle” area, of green pastures grazed by yaks and sheep, idyllic-seeming villages and craggy mountains.
At about 10 or so, we stopped for what we thought was a bathroom break. It soon became apparent, though, that they were doing some kind of repair work on our bus. Uh-oh… “Thirty minutes,” the driver said, which in India apparently means, “This shouldn’t take all day.”
Luckily, there was a nice little chai (tea) shop next to the bus station that served great omelets and was shaded by trees, so we all gathered around there. Even more fortunately, my fellow passengers turned out to be a real cast of characters. There were Mel and Rob, a British couple in their third month of a two-year round-the-world trip; Tim and Parker, two hip American poets; their Dutch friend Marty, a good-natured 25-year-old socialist corporate lawyer, of all things. And, of course, there were the eccentrics: Dominique, 45 years old, who had spent the last 10 years traveling around Asia, and would talk to you at extreme and will-to-live-sapping length about her travels; “Jim,” the son of the wealthy Kashmiris and an American-type troublemaking imp; and, George (from Georgia), the man of a million tales. The trip would have been a lot more boring without this guy and his tales of everything from his experiences as a top-secret pilot for the State Department during the Vietnam War to his short time as the manager of the Indigo Girls. At first I thought his stories were mostly bullshit, but the more I heard them, the more I believed them – he had that sort of effect.
So as you might guess by my in-depth knowledge of the other travelers, our little “half-hour” stop turned out to be quite a bit longer. Finally the poets and the Dutch guy retired to a rock ledge above the chai shop – and I joined them – to play “shithead”, the international backpackers’ card game. This is a really simple, really addictive card game that seems to be played by travelers everywhere in Asia. Though I have to say, I don’t know if I’ve ever played the game in more beautiful surroundings. We were perched on the side of a hill that led to red-rock mountains cradling a perfectly picturesque green valley, allowing a few snow-capped peaks to peer around the corner, canopied by a clear blue sky.
However, the “half hours” gave way to “two hours,” an Indian admission that “well, yes, this actually could take all day.” It did. It turned out that oil tank had a leak. That was bad enough, but the situation became grave when, at about 3:00, we finished the chaiwalla’s supply of both milk and eggs! Finally at about 5:00, they fixed the problem and herded us hurriedly on the bus so that we could get to camp before it got too dark to drive. Because here’s the thing about the second-highest motorable road in the world: it’s not exactly the safest road in the world. In theory, that may seem to be a bit obvious, but it takes on a whole new meaning when your bus is trying to squeeeeeze by a truck going the other direction, and you look out your window to realize you can’t see any road between you and a 200 meter drop into oblivion. Luckily, our driver seemed to be the safest, most sensible bus driver in India, but it was still a little scary.
We pulled into a “tent camp” three hours later; basically a group of 4 or 5 tents with beds arranged around small restaurants that served – of course – omelets and chai. By this time it was dark and freezing cold and I thanked the gods of travel that I had, on a whim, bought a warm Tibetan sweater in Manali. After an uninspiring dinner and a quick few games of shithead, we retired, to be lulled to sleep by the strains of the Venga Boys coming from the proprietors’ tape player.
Sometime during the night, I stumbled outside to answer nature’s call, and was greeted by the most stunning night sky I had ever seen. At that altitude (4,000 meters) and with such a clear night, a million stars seemed to dance not more than ten feet above me, yet also unimaginably far away. Travelling can sometimes be a pain, especially in India. buses break down, people stare at the lone blonde American woman, you get homesick, or sick to your stomach. But that moment under the stars, I remembered how lucky I was. I had one of those wonderful, unfortunately rare, moments of being completely happy and content exactly where I was. I went back to bed and slept well.
The next morning we woke at the charmed hour of 3:45, our bus driver determined to push on and get us to Leh by dark. I slept through most of the dark hours and woke, when we stopped to pee communally behind rocks, to the most stunning sunrise I have ever seen. We found ourselves on a high road, surrounded by white mountains, overlooking the lower brown-rock cliffs, which hugged a perfect aquamarine lake. We were really in the high Himalaya now and it was difficult to believe that Delhi was on the same planet, much less the same country. Since we had left for our tent camp the night before, the only settlements we had seen were nomad or army camps, quite a feat for a country with over a billion people.
At about 8:00,we stopped in Sarchu, the tent camp we had been meant to sleep at the night before. The bus driver told us we were stopping for breakfast, so we piled into the kitchen tent where we were fed breakfasts of … omelets and chai! At least it was warm in the tent, though. We were now at 4500 meters and despite the strong desert sun, it was cold.
After awhile, one of the guys went to ask when we were leaving and came back, informing us gravely that the Engine Was Open Again. Bad news. As it turned out, the oil leak was going to take all day for them to fix, which meant we wouldn’t be able to leave until the next day. Half an hour later, we actually found out that the bus was fatally injured and we would be getting a new bus that night. To which several people muttered, “Yeah right…”
Some of us were less than confident in the prospect of another bus actually coming and were eager to get moving. We sat by the road for a while, perched on our backpacks, drinking chai and scanning the horizon for vehicles. Then, almost like a vision, four trucks appeared over the horizon. Using a nearby soldier as an interpreter, we got the truck drivers to agree to take two people per truck for 200 rupees (about $5) apiece.
We had arranged ourselves in boy-girl pairs for safety, but I think we were all feeling a little apprehensive about the whole thing, though it would have been an adventure. The road from here to Leh was almost uninhabited and there would have been nothing to stop the drivers from stopping in the middle of nowhere and demanding a lot more money. If we had tried to refuse, they could have just left us there. In addition, Dominique, Miss Well-Travelled-Asia was arguing heatedly with George, yelling, “Chinese truck drivers don’t rape, Indian truck drivers rape!”
We all seemed to be equivocating between the prospect of adventure and the very real danger it presented. All in all, I don’t think any of us was too upset when we looked up from our debate to see that the truck-drivers, sick of waiting for us to decide, were are all driving off without so much as a goodbye. I was secretly relieved to have the decision made for me.
Actually, it was a pretty nice place to be stranded for a day. The sky-blue creek running alongside the highway must have at some point been a large river, because it formed a canyon that ran through the valley. The valley itself was carpeted with scrub and grass and was surrounded by red rock mountains, which seemed to be streaked with all sorts of other colors that changed constantly as the sun moved across the sky. And that sky – wow. At this altitude the few clouds seemed to hang so low that you could grab them and use them as pillows.
So we spent the day in Sarchu; we went for a flat but very challenging (at almost 4700 meters above sea level) hike and saw a herd of yaks; played lots of games of shithead; and drank ridiculous amounts of chai. The stars that night were really beautiful again, but it was so cold in our tents, and we all suffered from the altitude, so we had trouble sleeping. I kept waking up, feeling like I’d forgotten to breathe. At one point I woke up having to pee. This was a problem for a few reasons: it was damned cold and my bed was sort of hemmed in by the beds of Tim and Parker, the American poets, and Marty, the Dutch guy. I finally decided to bite the bullet and climbed over everyone, to discover that they were all lying as sleepless as I was.
The bus was supposed to have arrived in the middle of the night, and we were told to be ready to leave at 6:00. At 5:45, all four of us sat on our beds, desperately wanting there to be a bus outside, but afraid to look. finally, Tim and Parker ventured out. I could hear them cursing under their breath. Marty and I sighed and headed out for breakfast. But as we were walking to the kitchen tent, our new bus miraculously pulled up, one of the most welcome sights I could have imagined.
We clambered onto the bus and spent the next 6 hours travelling through stunningly beautiful wilderness. Today the only settlements were military camps. There were actually quite a few of these, as we had just entered Kashmir, which has been the site of war for the last 25 years between India and Pakistan. Ladakh, the region we were in, has been mostly peaceful, but since it is bordered by both Pakistan and China, it’s a “sensitive” area. At one point we stopped at a military camp to go to the bathroom, and we were told not to talk with any of the soldiers or take any pictures!
We traveled through a valley where the sides of the mountains seemed to have castles and other intricately designed buildings carved into the sides; it was actually erosion, of course, but it was hard not to feel like we were driving through the cradle of some ancient, lost civilization.
However, as we climbed out of this valley we could see that there were clouds settling at the tops of the mountains towards which we were heading. Climbing further and further up, the fog became so thick that visibility was down to a few meters and it began to snow. On top of this, our bus had been backfiring for hours. By the time we got to the top of the Tang Lang La pass, the second highest motorable pass in the world (5600 meters), the snow was coming down sideways and everyone was terrified. We stopped at the top of the pass, and I thought we were stopping to wait out the storm, but it was only a bathroom stop. It was actually probably better to keep going, so that we wouldn’t get stranded (this pass is sometimes closed for weeks in the middle of the summer!). I could now see why this road is only open four months of the year! It took hours for us to descend, a descent filled with sickening hairpin turns and despair-inducing attempts to pass other trucks. By the time we got to Leh Valley, where, of course, it was sunny and warm, we were all very happy to be alive.
Leh Valley was welcoming enough in and of itself, the first population center in three days. It’s a shockingly verdant valley, fed by ancient and extensive irrigation systems, lined by purple-, then red-, then brown-stone mountains. The highway became a pleasant street lined with trees and walls, behind which were barley fields and white-washed Tibetan-style stone houses. I could see why some people claim Leh as the lost city of Shangri-La.
Unfortunately, we found out the next day that we were right in being glad to be alive after that snowstorm. About 50 km north of Leh, on the highest motorable pass in the world (these mountains are big), a bus went over a ledge in that snowstorm, killing 30 people. So when the time came to leave Shangri-La, two weeks later, I flew back to Delhi.
