Ladakh and its principal town, Leh, are in the far north of India so it’s a journey (to get there) and a destination sort of an OE. I was visiting a special school out in the countryside, but would have some time to explore, but first… deep breath… because the only flights into Leh are from Delhi, which is a buzzing, electric, aromatic storm for the senses, exotic and beautiful. No wait, it wasn’t. The buzzing is the flies and the seething, filthy mass is maggots on the rotting food waste, and beggars, and scammers and stray dogs, and a bazillion people. No, Delhi is not on my favourite places list.
I took the metro out to the end of the line and looked out into the countryside, decorated as it was in scooters, plastic bags and rotting food being scrounged through by stray dogs and children. I took the metro back into the city centre to be confronted by a shoe-cleaning scammer, a free tour guide scammer and an oh-my-friend,-how can-I-help-you? scammer. And a pushy dirty nasty woman pushing her nasty dirty beggy child at me, hand outstretched. Sorry kid, I’m about to slap this shoe cleaning crook.
Which left just enough time to catch Delhi-Belly and then the flight up to Leh. It’s high altitude, about three and a half kilometres above sea level, almost the same as the peak of Mt Cook. There’s not as much oxygen in the air here as in Delhi, but a lot less filth. The plane has to jink and weave and dodge between some spectacular mountain peaks to get a decent go at a landing. I’m OK for motion sickness, but my seat-neighbour required three bags.
I walked very slowly from my guest house up to the Leh’s main street, stopping several times to catch my breath and say Namaste to the locals who walked up that same hill like it was downhill. It was winter and cold and all the leaves had left. I had the pounding altitude headache so I paused at a little shop to buy some local medicine: Cadburys Dairy Milk (palm oil hadn’t been invented yet) and Schweppes ginger beer, which turned out to be the perfect treatment for mild altitude sickness and All-Night-Long-Delhi-Belly. Imagine… at the breakfast buffet, a still-delicate puku, to stare into a big basin of boiled eggs in poo-brown curry sauce.
I visited the school and was immediately offered milky tea with a big gob of yak butter floating in it. You know when you’ve recovered from All-Night-Long-Delhi-Belly when such um…, treats like yak butter stay um…, down and in, you know.
Leh’s population is mostly ‘Tibetan’ rather than Indian, with the border being not too far to the north and most spoke better English than me (or I) and way better English than the driver I hired to drive me in a 4WD down the road that followed the Indus River stopping in several towns and visiting several monasteries along the way. The landscape: moon-esque, not a tree and often not a person or yak to be seen. The sky: vast and fluorescent-blue. The food: meaty and beany, questionable, risky but tasty and compatible with Pepsi and my new bellyful of bacteria. The people: smiley and cheerful, busy tending to apricot orchards, sheepy-looking goaty animals, maize crops and potholes.
Back in Scammy Filthy Delhi, I remained in the airport, watched a rat running back and forth behind the stove-top of an ‘authentic’ restaurant while my tea and meal went cold and waited eagerly for the first economy class meal on the long journey back to eN-Zed.
eN-Zed 