We left Leh by taxi, feeling very spoilt. We justified this by there being four of us heading in the same direction after the Pangong Tso group disbanded, and there being lots of things we wanted to see along the way.
First we chose to see a holy holey boulder. This is a Sikh shrine so we were given very fetching orange headscarves to wear.
The boulder is very holy and apparently holey because a wicked demon decided to kill a meditating guru by pushing it down a hill on to him. You get to look at the hill too.
When the boulder reached the meditating guru it softened like warm wax and slowed on impact. The guru carried on meditating, unperturbed, while his aura left a man shaped dent in the boulder.
The angry demon stormed down the hill to see what had happened and kicked the boulder in a rage. The demon’s foot sunk into the boulder and left a foot shaped hole. He was so impressed he became a good demon and started being nice to people.
The nice Sikhs gave us food as well as letting us see their boulder and borrow their lovely orange headscarves. It was sort of like crushed digestives mixed with brown sugar.
After this we carried on towards Srinagar, very slowly, via the Indus and Zanskar rivers meeting point; this is cool because one is mud-coloured and the other is slightly less mud-coloured.
We stopped for lunch and some temple-ing in Alchi and acquired an Indian family. They took a lot of photos.
Finally we stopped for the night in Lamayuru.
Here we thought we could sleep at the monastery but apparently we couldn’t, according to the large Ladakhi lady we asked, who told us that instead we must stay at her guesthouse, got in the taxi with us and ordered our poor little driver up the hill.
Our poor little Leh driver had been getting more and more frantic all day, as we failed to acquire petrol; three petrol stations had been empty and closed and now he was stranded in Lamayuru, muttering moodily to himself about having to spend a night away from home. “I like Leh” he said, and ate his supper sulking and went to bed sulking.
The rest of us went to see the monastery and accidentally timed our visit perfectly for sunset.
The monastery was very, very lovely, but really it had a very easy time being very lovely because it was set in the most lovely of landscapes.
Behind it the rocks glowed yellow and bubbled up like the surface of the moon.
A nice monk showed us round and spun a lot of prayer wheels; I think he was a bit scared of me but he liked the boys.
Lamayuru looked very beautiful from above.
Leaving the monastery, Jonny and Robin played with a giant prayer wheel. A bit later we found another one and watched a baby monk playing with that; surreptitiously he drove a tiny toy car around and around the rim as it spun.
When we got back to the guesthouse we discovered the Dalai Lama would be in neighbouring Khalsi either the next day or in an unknown number of days time- our driver and guesthouse lady disagreed on which.
We couldn’t decide whether to stay an extra couple of days and backtrack to Khalsi or to continue on towards Srinagar. Eventually, with no definite idea of the day or if he was speaking or simply stopping to say hello, we decided, a little sadly, to continue on to Kargil.
The next morning Jonny and I intercepted the Leh-Kargil bus, which, despite carrying petrol sent all the way from Leh for our driver, tried to speed straight past us. There were no seats left so we sat on the floor- they tried to make Jonny go on the roof instead but I wouldn’t let him in case he fell off when we went over bumps.
Kargil was horrible, and there was only one seat out on the bus that night. There were also no day buses ever at all, which was annoying because we’d been told the journey from Kargil to Srinagar was along the most spectacular bit of road we’d cover, and to make sure we did it by daylight. As spectacular also tends to mean very, very dangerous we were particularly keen to do this.
Some nice Germans- Linda and Jacob- led us to a very grimey guesthouse and we went out to eat some very dirty food.
Kargil was the first muslim town we stopped in, outside of Buddhist Ladakh, and so it was a bit of a shock to see animals hanging by theire feet, partially dismembered, in every shop window.
That night, just as we decided to go to sleep, the guesthouse men- hundreds of whom lingered in all the corridors, outnumbering the guests and doing nothing ever (they still had to get a woman in to sweep the corridors each day)- decided to switch on the generator.
This appeared to be an old car engine, parked a few centimetres from our window. It roared as if about to explode and pumped petrol fumes into the room.
The next morning we found a jeep driver and argued for along time about when we should leave and how much we should pay; as it was already very expensive, and he wasn’t very nice, we were very stubborn and wanted to go straight away without waiting for more people or paying extra.
It took us a while to discover there was a second taxi stand that was much busier than the corner of the bus station we’d found our jeep in. Sick of negotiating round in circles we went to find a new jeep.
It took about five minutes of haggling with much nicer men to get seats at the price we wanted, leaving immediately and- just as our driver arrived and the whole carpark seemed to descend into a driver-fight- we were swept into a nice, cool jeep and left Kargil behind.
The journey to Srinagar was incredibly beautiful and definitely worth the money to travel by day.
Just outside the mid-way town of Pahalgam hundreds of pilgrims camped, waiting to trek to Amaranth cave-shrine. Their multi-coloured tents littered the valley, dancing in and out of view as we spun round and round down the mountainside.
We also went through the ‘second coldest inhabited place in the world’ (baring in mind my previous posts about India claims!), the tiny, rather horrid town of Drass, that recorded a freak temperature of -60 °C once and put up a big sign to commemorate this.
The only blight on an otherwise idyllic journey was our driver. He soon demonstrated the downside to paved roads by spinning down them at 100km an hour, apparently not disturbed by the precipice beside us. I would rather have bumped along the usual rocky ledge, consumed in a dust cloud and limited to 30.
Sitting in the back I tried quoting road signs at him- “if married divorce speed now!”… “drive don’t fly!”… “better late than never!” – but it made no difference!
On the way to Pangong Tso (lake) the bus driver decided to take a cross-country short cut; surprisingly the bus got stuck in the sand. When the bus started moving again the driver decided that, rather than letting us back in, he would drive away, leading us like his sheep-flock across the Himalayas.
It was a very beautiful journey, through bleak, expansive, magnified landscapes. In some places dragons would have fit so perfectly into the vast, swooping, sweeping, icecream-scooped, golden sand-scape of valleys, divided by jagged, towering, rocky peaks like aerial motorways with immense kerbs, that it seemed ridiculous they didn’t sometimes flit casually by.
We expected to go to Spangmik, a small village on the lake shore, but when we arrived at the lake we stopped immediately, at a small cluster of shops and restaurants.
8 of us bewildered travellers banded together to negotiate a taxi to Spangmik; 8 of us got one small van-car to share and piled uncomfortably inside, two in the boot, four in the middle and jonny and I on top of each other and the gear stick in the front.
In Spangmik we found a homestay with a western toilet…
and a big empty room, but unfortunately no one turned up to pay. We didn’t know the Indian laws on squatting so, rather than trespass, we found another house with another large empty room, at the top of a hill. 7 of us shared this room, making a big, loud dormitory.
Unfortunately, at this homestay, the owner-woman was completely mad. Sometimes we managed to deal with her husband-keeper but frequently only she appeared and it was very hard to make sense of anything.
Sometimes, when we asked for things, she shrieked with manic laughter and ran away, cackling across the fields.
Meanwhile the man agreed, with amiable certainty, to everything we asked, eg…
“Does your family migrate in the winter?”
“…OK”
“No, I mean, in the winter do you live here too?”
“…OK!”.
The mad woman was, however, a very good negotiator, haggling with her generally went something like…
mad woman: “200 rupees”
confused foreigner: “100 rupees?”
mw: “200 rupees”
cf: “150 rupees?”
mw: “200 rupees”
cf: “180 rupees?”
mw: “200 rupees”
etc, etc…
We considered stealing her and packing her away to produce when dealing with rickshaw drivers back in proper India, but worried she would run away shrieking instead of co-operating.
In the night we woke up several times to find her lurking in the doorway, watching us, and in the morning this increased in frequency until she appeared at ten minute intervals. We took this as a sign we should get up, pay her and leave.
Pangong Tso was really spectacular, even in the gloom. (My pictures don’t do it justice at all).
The clouds and rain made beautiful light and we even found a small rainbow.
At the other end of the lake is Tibet. It was tempting to swim in, but the water was very cold.
In the morning the tiny van was supposed to collect us again and to deposit us back at the bus stop. It did this, very late, after we’d spent half an hour in a panic, trying to negotiate another lift back.
This drive was actually one of our most terrifying, despite its brevity; for some reason, perhaps because he realised how late he was, the driver decided to take the steep, sharp high road rather than meandering comfortably along by the coast.
For twenty minutes the vehicle, which had demonstrated its very bad brakes by rolling backwards as we tried to get out the previous day, dragged its massive overload along very narrow, zigzag roads, hacked out of the mountainside.
Every time we rolled forwards, towards a drop, I expected the car not to stop or turn in time and closed my eyes. I wished we weren’t in the front, envying the others their obscured views.
We made the bus, alive and even with time for a runny egg breakfast, just.
The driver decided to take the road, rather than desert, this time, however the ‘road’ was too precarious for the bus to pass along with us inside; it had collapsed so badly in some places that, although it looked like wide enough for us, it was actually just a wide surface with an empty, cavernous underside waiting to gobble up anything too heavy that rolled foolishly over it.
This meant that, again, we got a lovely desert walk while the driver eased the bus slowly through at its minimum possible weight.
This is a Ladhaki baby and a lamb.
After not stopping at Khardung La- the “highest pass in the world”- which the public bus wobbled coolly past- we descended rapidly into Nubra valley where our sicky, headachey altitude induced grumpinesses began to subside.
As we trundled through the plains- with things occasionally trundling off the roof- marmots began to pop up around us. (Marmots look like this http://www.google.co.in/search?sugexp=chrome,mod%3D19&q=marmot&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hl=en&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=Fv0QUKivL4XYrQfzl4DoCA&biw=1024&bih=677&sei=Hv0QUOX4EMvRrQfspIHIAw)
Most of the time, we think, marmots are very industrious creatures but for the benefit of tourists they freeze in amusing poses as buses pass by, spread across rocks, or sometimes the road.
At first I thought Jonny looked a bit like a scrawny marmot but then in Pangong Tso we met a boy who looked truly like one and slept in an orange sleeping bag with the hood up and I realised the true meaning of looking like a marmot.
Our bus was headed down the wrong fork in the road, but it was the only bus that day and it went past Siachen glacier- the highest battle field in the world, with the highest helipad- so we decided to take it anyway. Conveniently, at the road fork junction one of the wheels broke. If this wasn’t enough of a sign another large one informed us that we were only 15km from Diskit, where we had originally wanted to be, and so we decided to walk.
I was the most dubious of this plan; during the descent from Khardung La the scenery had turned from snow and mountain to vast, flat, sandy desert; although this made for spectacularly beautiful, contrasting scenery it didn’t fill me with enthusiasm for a 15km walk.
We asked in the junction shop- the last remnant of civilisation for 15kms- how long it would take to get to Diskit. We were told ‘too long; it is too far’.
Instead of giving up we decided to put bets on it- I guessed it would take four and a half hours, I think. Jonny said a bit longer while everyone else (there were six of us, intending to walk to our desert deaths: Me, Jonny, Isa and Doina, Jimmy and Akshay) was far too optimistic.
After half an hour we had managed one kilometre- we were on course to take 7 and a half hours. Then it started to look rainy, got very windy and we began to be whipped in the face with sand.
I started to be a bit worried about walking 14km in a desert sandstorm.
Just as I began to moan a jeep pulled up, going the wrong way, and asked if we wanted a lift; apparently they had driven ahead, reached the sandstorm proper (although this seemed to disperse so quickly we never really saw it) and then turned around to rescue us.
The first three of us- Jonny, Doina and I- climbed in the back, while the jeep guys sent back their friends for the other three.
In the back there was a lot luggage, so we were very squashed, Jonny and Doina managed to sit up but I got in first so I sort of draped awkwardly across everything.
Once in the boot Jonny and Doina had a fight over who had won the bet; Doina, who had guessed the shortest time, or Jonny, who had guessed the longest (because we’d get to Diskit very quickly but none of us would actually step into it at all).
The jeeps were going on to Hunder- where we wanted to go most of all-so we decided to stay in the back and hoped the others wouldn’t get out and be left behind.
We were also offered a lift to Turtuk- the last village before Pakistan starts- the following day, but foolishly remained non-committal until we’d consulted the others.
In Hunder we went straight to the sand dunes, which were really beautiful (although Jonny said he’d seen better ones in Vietnam and so I said I’d seen better ones in Norfolk).
Isa and Doina and I rolled down them while Jonny drew pictures and Jimmy took lots and lots and lots of photos of us all. The jeep men drove over them very fast. I would have liked to have had a jeep.
For Indian tourists it seems that the top attraction in Hunder is riding funny, droopy two-humped camels (we think that maybe they only fill up their humps when they need to store water for a long time; they were very near a stream and as a result their humps looked like empty camel-leather satchels dangling off their backs), so we decided we should do this too, as long as the camels looked reasonably happy.
We went to see, and for India and for camels they seemed very healthy, wholesome and cheerful, spitting merrily at each other and occasionally rolling over on an Indian.
The camel men talked to them quite affectionately, and so soon my only reservation was terror; little Indian two-humped camels look more like bizarre land birds than horsey things, with really weird feet, and all appeared typically temperamental and bitey; whilst I approve of this rebellious camel spirit, from a distance, I didn’t want to be thrown off and rolled on.
Unsurprisingly, I got the dodgy camel.
I screamed when it stood joltingly upright and then clung on nervously as it dribbled and spat, shook its head continually and wobbled along, leaning sideways; I wondered if it had had a stroke because it was lopsided and a bit mad, just like our rat that fell in the bath and had a fit.
Jimmy decided not to go on a camel, because he’d done it before, so when we stopped for a photo he took hold of mine to join in, ignoring my protests that the proper man had to have it and not to take it away from the camel man and to PLEASE STOP NOW IT’S GOING TO KILL ME.
When we got off I almost fell over its neck and screamed some more.
After this we decided we definitely wanted to go to Turktuk the next day, but we couldn’t find anything we needed to find: a guesthouse with room for us, a photocopier for our travel permits or the jeep men.
Eventually- very far out in the middle of nowhere- Jonny, Isa, Doina and I found somewhere to sleep, that was completely empty while everywhere else was full.
We ordered food, very slowly (‘can we order now please’, ‘no’… ‘now?’ ‘no’… ‘now?’), in the empty guesthouse and waited two hours for it to arrive.
After one hour, just as we began to expect our food, the man came back to check with Akshay what we actually wanted, and to ask desperately what he should start making first.
We got very hungry.
Akshay and Jimmy laughed a lot at us, and then went back to their own supper, leaving us poor non-Hindi speakers to fend for ourselves.
Eventually th
e food came, and, to my delight, for the first time in India, I actually got sag. This made me very happy because I think sag is by far the best Indian food in the world ever and, ridiculously, it doesn’t exist in India mostly. Instead everywhere they have Palak- a nasty, artificial, green, slime spinach puree. Although not as good as English-Indian food, my sag was very nice.
In the guesthouse, me and Jonny got the haunted room; while I went to brush my teeth, and Jonny, Isa and Doina sat in the hallway, in sight of the door, footprints appeared across our carpet. They were a different size to our feet, definitely not there before and a lot dirtier than any I could make, despite many attempts!
In the morning we gave up, sadly, on finding the jeeps and heading to Turktuk.
Instead the others decided to climb a mountain. I got a bit fainty so I waited at the bottom. Everyone else disappeared and didn’t come back for hours and hours. I got increasingly panicked, wondering how long I should wait to call search and rescue! and then Doina came back and said they had gone further, on to another peak and Jimmy was taking lots of photos. Now less worried, and bored of waiting, we decided to leave them behind and go to Diskit.
We wrote lots of notes (in case they missed one) and left them scattered around the path up to the mountain, and began walking along the road looking for likely vehicles to flag down.
Soon we got picked up by four Indian men in a very small car. They were very insistent and very nice and so somehow we squeezed in.
When we arrived in Diskit they offered to take us to the monastery with them, and so we went up there too. It was very beautiful with an incredible view over the entire desert valley, a giant buddha in the foreground and snow capped mountains in the behind.
We got shown into special rooms, because the indian boys asked, and fed sugar coated puffed rice by the monks.
The Indian boys were very sweet and good buddhists who spun all the prayer wheels, always went clockwise round everything and had prayer flags hanging across their car, but in one room there was rice but no monk and the temptation was too great; one boy decided to be the monk and dolled out rice himself. We walked out eating it past the returning monk who looked very disapproving.
When we got back to Diskit, at the earliest appointed meeting time, all the others were waiting, irritably, spread along the road.
That night in our guesthouse I got sag again. I was very happy.
The next day we got a shared jeep back to Leh. When we arrived- very tired and altitudey- Doina stumbled out and left her passport and money behind in it.
We had a brilliant search and rescue mission around Leh to find it and miraculously it was retrieved. We showed one blurred photograph of the driver and the car (with the number plate obscured) to all the other taxi drivers on the off-chance of someone knowing him, but no one did. Then, half an hour after we’d given up hope, the passport and money belt were returned by an anonymous Leh taxi driver, who drew up beside me and Jonny in the street shouting excitedly that he had it.
In the last five weeks I have learnt that, along with ‘India time’, there is ‘India true’.
According to our estimates exactly 84% of statements made in this country are false.
For example claims often end in the phrase ‘…in the world’; this can be more accurately translated to ‘…in India’ or, to be on the safe side, to ”… right here, in this very small part of India’.
The three ‘highest’ passes in the world brilliantly illustrate this phenomenon.
On the way to Nubra Valley we went over Khardung La.
(Above right: brilliantly maintained public toilet at the “highest pass in the world”)
A big sign and a lot of propaganda proclaim this to be the highest motorable pass in the world, at 5600m; actually it has been more accurately measured as being at 5359m making it about 200m lower than a couple of motorable passes in Tibet. India is probably completely aware of this, but the “highest pass in the world” is a brilliant tourist attraction. (For more information see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khardung_La.)
Although we haven’t actually been overthe highest motorable pass in the world, Khardung La was very, very high and snowy and magnificent, and we all felt pretty impressively ill from the altitude. Akshay, who we were travelling with, had never played in the snow before, so him and Jonny got very, very cold throwing snowballs.
A few days later we went to Pangong Tso and on the way things got even more confusing highest-pass-in-the-world-wise, when we went over the (perhaps even more spectacular) Chang La pass.
.
The official sign here declares it the third highest pass in the world, presumably after Khardung La and Taglang La (quite actually called Tanglang, as most of the internet thinks, and misspelled on the sign (wouldn’t be surprised)).
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however it also claims to be at 5360m, while Taglang La, the ‘second highest pass in the world’ is supposedly at 5328m.
It seems that either the army are not very good at counting, converting and comparing their facts even within comparatively small regions; in the same small corner of a country they have failed to reach a consensus about what is higher than what, and no one seems to have noticed that 5360m is higher than 5328m!
To make matters worse Chang La and Khardung La both have the “World’s Highest Cafeteria”:
Chang La
Khardung La
In the end I gave up! We decided to just appreciate some indefinable large amount of altitude and interpret the signs as simply suggesting that things may be among the highest passes/ souvenir shops/ cafeterias/ oil plants etc in the world- the Indian highest-sign madness is impossible to unravel!
Unfortunately I was restricted in this enjoyment, at Chang La, by my very bad choice of footwear:
I was offered some socks but didn’t want to get them soggy so I got very, very cold feet.
Juley! (hello, goodbye and thank you in Ladhaki).
Be blessed and please visit again.
Leh
We stayed in Leh far too long, blaming the the altitude for making us lazy; as I struggled to walk along upwards tilted streets (they didn’t even need to qualify as hills before I got out of breath) this was a somewhat valid excuse, however it was also just very nice and we didn’t want to leave.
In Leh itself we didn’t do very much. We went to see some donkeys, purely for the novelty of an any sort of animal sanctuary in India, but unfortunately we forgot to bring carrots. I think the donkeys were angry because they tried to eat Jonny’s hoodie instead.
It was a very long walk to this 
sanctuary. Signs directed us from the centre of town, implying it was just up the road, but then it never actually appeared until when it finally did we thought it must be a mirage.
As we got further and further out, and increasingly red, the locals become more and more amused, and pointed the way while giggling at more stupid tourists walking 3km up-hill in the very hot and high altitude to visit some ill donkeys.
Jonny was very tired on the walk- just like a sick or in-need of retiring donkey. To save him the walk back we tried to deposit him at the sanctuary but I think he was a bit shy of the other donkeys so we had to take him back again.
Also in Leh we went to the Women’s Alliance centre.
Once, and according to the guide book, this was a bustling place with a cafe and daily screenings of a documentary about Ladakhi culture, but now the office in Leh is pretty much just a building with some women in it. This actually turned out to be much more fun and interesting because we met Drishti there, who was volunteering at the Women’s Alliance in order to entertain herself while in Leh, with her family, for the summer.
Drishti actually seemed to be pretty indispensable to the Ladakhi ladies as a translator because they spoke limited Hindi and almost no English. She explained that at a recent meeting she had to translate English into Hindi and then someone else had to translate Hindi into Ladakhi and so on and back again.
We talked for a very long time about everything- from London Universities to the caste system in India versus the class system in the UK- and she explained that the Women’s Alliance is much quieter and documentary free now because- according to the Women’s Alliance ladies- the Western-run partner charity, who made the documentary, stole all the proceeds from the film. The Ladakhi ladies responded by trying to beat up the founder, kicking her out and telling her not to come back and to take her film with her. A representative still comes to their meetings but the Ladakhi ladies hate him and won’t have anything to do with him.
Three of these Ladakhi ladies watched our conversation and fed us raw turnips and mint tea, while gossiping cheerfully about us and Drishti in Ladakhi. It was easy to believe that, despite being very sweet to us, they were bloody terrifying enemies and I thought the English man representative- whether or not he helped steal their money- was very brave to keep coming back.
When we came back from Pangong Tso we went for dinner with Drishti and the three of the Ladhaki ladies. They held hands, kept pointing out ‘handsome’ Ladakhi men for poor Drishti and ate only mutton momos, refusing, with great suspicion, to touch anything else offered. However they were also very sweet, asked us lots of questions and ran away with Drishti at the end to help her pay for everything and not let us contribute at all.
Our first day in Spiti Valley was also Jonny’s birthday. To celebrate this we decided to visit a 600 year old self-mummified monk in the tiny Indian-Tibetan village of Gue.
(Disclaimer: We gleaned most of the story of this monk from locals in fragmentary English and some of it from Atlas Obscura (http://atlasobscura.com/place/the-mummy-of-sangha-tenzin), so I can’t guarantee it’s absolutely accurate!)
As far as we gathered, 600 years ago the area where the (then un-mummified) monk lived, near to Gue village in the Indian Himalayas, suffered a plague of scorpions. Nothing would get rid of these scorpions, and so, in a last attempt to banish the plague, the monk began the long process of mummifying himself.
He did this by starving himself in stages, in order to achieve the minimum possible amount of body fat, and by drying his skin out with candles.
He eventually starved to death in a sitting position, and is possibly the only mummy in the world in this pose; he is also one of only about 30 self-mummified monks anywhere (most are in Japan) and is one of the best preserved, and probably least visited.
When he was dead other monks put him in a cellar for two years and the dry, high-altitude climate helped to finish the process. Apparently the scorpions all went away and a rainbow appeared over his village, but then unfortunately everyone must have forgotten about the monk in the basement and he got lost.
Several hundred years later the villagers in Gue began digging a road out of isolation (according to Atlas Obscura this was after an earthquake in 1975) and in the process they dug up the mummified monk. For years he was left in his partially revealed underground tomb, but since 2004 he has been on display above the tiny Gue village in a big, glass in a small, white building beside a work-in-progress monastery.
However- despite being on display and so theoretically easy to see- the monk is very hard to reach and even to research- I could only find mention of him three times online and nowhere did it tell us how to get to Gue.
Part One: An Abortive Attempt
Although not on any of our real maps, or anyone else’s, I found Gue on google maps and worked out it was 70km east of Kaza, off the main road and very near the Tibetan border. This meant we might need permits to travel to it, further complicating our plan.
Our first problem was making anyone understand where we wanted to go; as we had only seen Gue written we had no idea how to pronounce it, and hardly anyone we asked could read English. We tried many variations: Gee? Gu-eh? Goo? Gu-ay? and finally someone understood- we wanted to go to G-you.
Once we could say it everything became a lot easier, there was a bus at 2pm and we were assured there were many homestays in the village- so we could go and come back the next morning-and also that we didn’t need inner-line permits because it was still in the local area, and didn’t necessitate crossing over into neighbouring Kinnaur. This all seemed too good to be true but, with no way of checking anything, we had little choice but to believe it and headed to the bus station at half past one.
For 45km the bus was packed, but then we stopped in Tabo- the only other town in Spiti valley- and almost everyone got off, looking at us expectantly when we didn’t do the same.
After this the bus crept over increasingly unbelievable terrain. Spiti valley looks like the Grand Canyon, with strange giant stalagmite style-rocks creeping up the steep walls and dust coating the occasional vehicle that rattles along the narrow, unpaved road shadowing the violent, brown river gushing through the centre. Strangely this desert landscape is set against distant towering peaks, capped with snow.
As we travelled further from the towns the utter remoteness of the place became almost oppressive. Transport links began to comprise seats and baskets on metal threads, stretching across the rapids or up into the looming peaks, and it was almost unbelievable that a clumsy, town bus could weave from tiny village to tiny village.
We scuttled across shaking bridges, did three point turns around sharp junctions to take tiny paths wiggling off the main road and at times persisted on under a hail of loose stones.
Finally we passed under a bright, buddhist bridge and began the ascent to Gue, 9km off the main road.
Here the landscape became its most oppressive, the cliff-face folded over us and Jonny slammed the window shut as stones began to rain in. We hung over the edge and only the river below us seemed to be alive- eveything else was eerily still and felt frighteningly isolated from the outside world. It seemed as if even the weather stopped here as the breeze ceased and we passed out of the sun into heavy shadow.
Gue is at the end of the road, above the valley, without the animated Spiti river running through. It is so close to Tibet it is hardly in India at all and it feels like a place forgotten.
We trundled into this tiny, silent green place, far away from everywhere, and every person we passed stopped to stare. It was 6.30 and the sky was beginning to darken as the driver waved us off.
Immediately, one of very few other passengers leaving the bus approached us, asking where we intended to stay in a strange, panicked way.
We told him we didn’t know- ‘anywhere!’ and he told us there was nowhere- we couldn’t stay the night, we could only come in the day and now we had to get back on the bus: ‘Last bus! Last bus!’.
We looked around at the scattering of tiny houses and we believed him, and so, catching his panic, we did as he said and got back on the bus. We were told we could get off at the next town, stay the night there and come back in the morning.
And so we trundled back down the road, and this time, in the evening gloom, it was especially frightening. The breaks squeaked and the bus seemed to struggle with going down hill. Many rocks rained on us and at one point this distracted the concerned driver, as he looked up we bumped over a lump in the road and shook as if we were about to fall over.
A while later, as we began to worry about how far away we would end up, we rolled into an army check point and hoped desperately that they just wanted to see our passports.
No such luck. ‘Where are your permits?’ The army-man demanded, in his dark office, waving away our passports impatiently. It seemed that we were trying, accidentally, to cross into Kinnaur without them.
We tried to explain but he chose only to understand that we didn’t have them, flying into a rage as if nothing so outrageous had ever happened before.
Refusing to acknowledge any explanations the army-men ordered us off the bus. We were in the middle of nowhere with nothing going in the other direction and so we pleaded with the driver and the ticket man to explain, but still the army-men refused to listen, seeming to enjoy being angry.
At this point, for the first time in India, I saw people in positions of authority act with great efficiency- a jeep was cornered on the other side of the road and ordered to make space for us.
“This taxi goes to Kaza, you must go to Kaza” they ordered, herding us angrily in.
Inside four large Indian men sat on top of each other, smiling pleasantly. It wasn’t a taxi at all but a very lovely group of archaelogy students from Punjab who had decided to hire a jeep and check out the area, until they too had been ordered back the other way by the army. They were very nice about giving us a lift and drove very fast, playing loud English music and taking photos out of the window.
Largely in protest, we decided not to go back to Kaza, miles and miles away, and instead asked them to leave us in Tabo, where they worried we wouldn’t find a guesthouse, made sure we were very sure, and waved a lot as they sped on to Kaza.
In Tabo we realised that we’d almost bypassed an extremely lovely, tiny town, far superior to dusty, heartless Kaza, and where happy to stay the night.
We found a cheerful guesthouse where the very kind, very long-suffering and very tired Tibetan lady- who seemed to do everything from dawn to late at night every day without breaks- quickly offered to arrange a car to take us back to Gue the next day.
Happi
ly we drank honey-ginger-lemon tea and ate thentuk (flat Tibetan noodles) and then chocolate momos (a very delicious abomination, in most peoples opinion- we just thought they were great)- to celebrate Jonny’s birthday some more.
The moon was full, and so bright, and the sky so clear, that it had a halo of light encircling it after a stretch of darkness.
That night we frightened ourselves a bit, processing what we’d seen of Spiti Valley that day. In the dark and the quiet it felt like we were in a giant’s trench, filled with ghosts, and cut off from the outside world by pile-of-dead-bodies pass in one direction and the angry army in the other.
Part Two: Success!
At breakfast we talked to Efrat and Dror, who’d been on the bus with us as far as Tabo the day before, and had been sitting- relaxed and clean- outside the restaurant when we’d come in- sent back by the army, covered in dust and exhausted.
We told them about the monk and the quickly decided to join us.
We expected taxi to mean jeep but actually we got a small, lime green car, with a nice, smiley driver. We all squashed in and headed for Gue, the poor car seeming completely unfit for the steep, bumpy roads but somehow pulling through, dragging us up the mountainside.
Just outside Gue an enormous vulture swooped past and we all leapt out to watch.
As we drew into Gue our driver beckoned a monk, handed him a bag of food, some incense and 100 rupees, and told us he was asking for the key. We felt bad for not having brought anything but it seemed ok- the driver had anticipated this for us and factored it into his fee.
We drove through town and again everyone stared as we passed, as if they’d never seen an outsider before, which seemed strange as they must have a small but existing trickle of visitors to the monk, despite his lack of publicity.
We wondered how much they resented us being there- the day before people had smiled and been friendly as well as shocked by us, but the lack of homestays and, as we later discovered, even places to eat, in the village seemed a deliberate move to keep people away. It seems that, while the occasional day tripper is tolerated, Gue has a very small, insular (slightly sinister) community who don’t want visitors for any amount of time.
Objectively I think this is commendable, to a degree (although, also, it is good to share and I don’t believe they own this monk who died 550 years before any of them were born, any more than the rest of the world does)- it is definitely admirable that they want to stay separate and private and not to live off tourism and become the sort of place that seems to make you- and they have done a good job of clinging on to the monk that they think is theirs- but also, on a more emotional level, it makes for a frightening, isolated, anything could be happening sort of place.
The monk’s house is above the village, 1 km along a curved road, over-looking the spattering of square Tibetan houses and the valley below. Beside it every man in the village and more seemed to be working on a comparatively vast monastery, which they’ve been in the process of building since 2006.
It seems that the whole village revolves around the monk- they really love their ‘lama mummy’.
Our driver unlocked the door of the small, white building for us, and ushered us in.
Inside the monk sat, draped in pristine white and orange robes (later I showed pictures to our guesthouse lady and she said the orange robe was put on him especially because it was a full moon; apparently the villagers like to play dress-up the monk on special occasions) in a big glass tank. a line of plastic flower lay before him and inside hundreds of rupees were scattered around. Our driver dropped in another hundred and watched it drift gracefully down, landing gently beside the monk’s shrivelled hand.
Pictures fail to capture just how lifelike the mummified-monk appears. Descriptions stating that he still has hair and teeth attempt it but nothing demonstrates how sympathetically human he seems in reality. His face is so perfectly preserved that you can see exactly what he would have looked like when living, his expression- despite being twisted with pain- is so subtle and natural that it is almost instinctive to begin a conversation with him.
All four of us sat on the floor before the monk for a very long time, examining him. Everything was perfect and frightening, he hunched on the ground with his thin legs neatly folded and tucked under his chin, and the shape of his knee and shoulder bones clearly visible.
I am pretty sure I was the worst of the four of us at this, but it was still nice to try just because when you draw things you have to spend a long time really looking at them.
Jonny
Efrat
Dror
Me
We wanted to explore the village afterwards but our driver insisted there was nowhere to eat noodles, and almost laughed at the suggestion, so instead we elected to stop 15km away in another village, feeling that we’d be invading if we just roamed around the place. However the cafe here was closed so we drove all the way to Tabo, thinking.
Although I liked Spiti Valley a lot- especially Tabo which was very beautiful- and although I was sad to leave, it was a relief too; after visiting the monk, especially, the place seemed slightly sinister and increasingly claustrophobic. Sometimes it was hard to breath there, something attributable to the dust and the high altitude, but perhaps also the oppressive atmosphere of the place. Emerging at Gramphu junction a few days later was like breaking the sea-surface after diving too deep.
Manali to Kaza
In Manali we began to go mad.
Manali is a very nice place, with nothing to do and many (many, many) tourists. For a while this was a welcome reprieve from ‘proper India’, but soon we tired of walking between cafes, refusing weed and trying, in vain, to leave.
Having said this, Manali is very beautiful, it has incredible stars and wasn’t too hot- apparently we were in Delhi during India’s hottest summer for 33 years, so this made a nice change.
In Manali we stayed in Anand guesthouse. Mr Anand was very nice, and very honest about how much he really, really liked money a lot, and so we promised to recommend his guesthouse- so here’s some recommending.
Mr Anand has a moustache and a stick (because he fell off a motorbike and hurt his leg- maybe) to smash jeeps with (more on this later). He has travelled all over the area- “like snake”.
We couldn’t leave Manali because the local buses always start tomorrow and tomorrow is never today.
Eventually we tried to leave by shared jeep (at vast expense) but we couldn’t do that either because the jeep never arrived.
From 2.30am we sat, sleep deprived and very cold, on Old Manali bridge waiting. An old drunk man told us: “it is because you are English- you are very gentle, mild people- if you were Israeli men you would not be waiting”. He was very wise.
Several other helpful people phoned the driver for us; he was always coming, but, like tomorrow, he never came. 4 hours later- having befriended all of Old Manali’s stray dogs- we gave up.
By the time Mr Anand had been woken, and had called our jeep, it was 30 km away and not coming back.
Mr Anand explained the situation to us in his calm, business-like way- he had told the driver to come to the bridge, the driver had said for us to go to town, the driver had agreed, eventually, to come to the bridge, the driver hadn’t come to the bridge, and had said we were meant to have been in town, and then the driver had said he had come to the bridge and that we hadn’t been there, so he wanted his money anyway. Mr Anand had told him “fuck you”, that he knew his jeep number, and that if he came into town again he would smash his windows- apparently this is the proper way to conduct business in India.
Mr Anand then explained, with refreshing honesty, that we needn’t be grateful for this- it was purely because of the inconvenience it had caused him. I approved.
The following night we tried again. This time Mr Anand saw us into the jeep and at last we left Manali.
Jonny and I sat on benches in the boot facing sideways and looking backwards. We went very steeply uphill and twisted around many bends. We felt a bit sick, but- surprisingly- it turned out that we weren’t dying from altitude sickness, just mild car-sickness.
50km from Manali we crossed Rohtang La (a La is an very high pass on a long windey mountain road). We were told that Tibetans built the road out of Spiti Valley when they first arrived in India and needed work, but they hadn’t been used to this side of the Himalayas and hadn’t known how to survive. They had tried eating raw lentils and Indian food but they didn’t know how to cook anything and so many had died from starvation while working on the road. Eventually the Dalai Lama had come to Spiti and shown them how to cook and most stopped dying, but the pass was named because of all the deaths- Rohtang means ‘dead place’ or ‘pile of dead bodies’ in Tibetan.
Soon we turned off the main road and headed towards Spiti valley. At the junction we acquired two companions in the boot- a tiny weathered Indian man with a very tragic face, who we accidentally shadowed in buses and towns for miles and miles down Spiti Valley, and a tiny Tibetan lady who Jonny made a pillow for when she fell asleep and kept banging her head on the jeep walls.
The road quickly deteriorated to the point that we couldn’t believe they’d ever get a bus through at any time of year. The jeep struggled not to be swept over the sheer drop- into the deep valley below- by rivers of melted glacier gushing across the road, and in many places- where parts of the road had fallen away- we had to mount the slope and crawl through angled over the drop.
All the way we were tailed and then over taken and then, after rest stops, shoved along again, by a psychopathic minibus who whirled round the bends and through the rivers looking like it would topple over.
In places lots of the rocks sparkled silver and gold, and we drove through dramatic, lunar desert.
I had forgotten how mountains breath- looming over you as you trundle towards or away from them- they seem to pulsate- expanding and contracting as if exhaling and inhaling, or throbbing to a heart beat.
Far into Spiti valley we stopped for lunch and a flock of sheep was herded by. Three big, burly sheep dogs wore thick, spiked metal collars that looked painful and cruel. Someone translated an explanation for this- they were to protect the dogs from predatory snow leopards that grab prey by the throat.
We stopped again at another pass and Jonny swayed around- dizzy from the altitude and lack of sleep- “I can’t talk my words” he said, and skipped off to wee behind a rock.
When we arrived in Kaza, on a Sundays evening, nothing was open so we had a picnic of Indian sweets and crisps in our room. All the sweets tasted the same- like floury condensed milk that had gone a bit off, but they were very pretty.
No Nose
Walking around Kaza I met a dog without a nose. Instead it just had a raw, pink gaping hole. We were following some other people somewhere and rushed by.
We returned to Kaza after three days away and, walking the same way around town, I remembered the poor noseless dog and wanted desperately to help it. I looked a bit, half-heartedly, and then gave up sadly assuming he was dead already.
Later, in another part of town, we met him again, by chance, and I said hello and he wagged his tail and followed us a bit with the sweetest, appreciative, expectant expression. He looked cheerful, despite his noselessness, and very big and old and wise.
I told him I’d get him som
e food and he wagged his tail a bit more, but then didn’t understand when we walked off and looked a bit sad.
We went to a tiny shop and scoured it for meat. Eventually I climbed up to the top shelf and retrieved a massive can of tuna. It cost the same as a couple of human, restaurant meals.
We went back, navigating the tiny, dusty maze of streets and found No Nose asleep. He heard us and woke up, wagging his tail. I tipped out the entire can and he hoovered it up in minutes. This was my favourite thing I’ve done in India.
Later we gave him some pizza, and he was so enthusiastic that I thought he might eat me too (out of love, obviously). I wanted to take him away with us but as he was very big, and surprisingly energetic after his meals, so I had to leave him behind, but everyone should go to Kaza and visit and feed him tuna because he doesn’t have a nose (or proper eyes) and is very lovely.
Kaza to Keylong to Leh
After our brief sojourn in Spiti valley we left by the road we had taken in. In the days we spent there tomorrow had finally arrived and the local buses had started running again, and so (perhaps foolishly) we braved one out. We walked to the bus station at 4am, fighting off the dogs (but it was ok because they’re all my friends now) and left (late) at dawn.
As we trundled through the steep valley the bus hung over the edge, frequently attached by only three wheels and fighting against fast flowing icy water. A long way down below the river thrashed by in a tumult of brown rapids.
Several times the roads were also flooded by sheep.
The bus didn’t go all the way to Keylong so at the main road junction we got off and waited for a bus going the other way. For a long time no traffic came through because Rohtang la (pile of dead bodies pass) was so blocked.
Eventually, after three hours a torrent of traffic was unleashed.
A convoy of strange, battered private buses passed by, and the second one stopped for us. Inside was as worn as outside- everything was very damp and it was full of flies. It was completely empty, despite having come from Manali, and so was the one in front. The driver was very smiley and very bad. Jonny was scared, but then I pointed out that he was driving frighteningly fast because he was actually Michael Schumacher- his jacket said so- and so it was ok. After several hours of speeding forwards and braking violently just before a precipice, we arrived on the outskirts of Keylong and got cheerfully tipped out without being asked for money.
Keylong is very beautiful and green, it is nestled in the Himalayas, and unfortunately the buses leaving for Leh are always full because they come from Manali, filling up there and stopping for the night in Keylong. We discovered this at 4.30am, because the ticket office was closed when we arrived.
As we hovered around, trying to get on the days only bus, a small, grumpy man told us to go away- we couldn’t buy tickets because the bus was full. As he said this he was helping his Indian friends- who had arrived later than us- buy tickets. I asked the ticket man, as he sold them tickets, if we could just sit on the floor and he said no, we could go tomorrow, before walking rudely away. Annoyed, we didn’t leave- getting up at 4am for the third day in a row would have been intolerable- we had to get on that bus.
Eventually an Indian man spoke to the ticket man for us, in magic Hindi he said that him and his friends would share their seats and finally we were allowed on.
We expected to have to sit on the floor for 14 hours but as we left an empty seat appeared right beside us. Initially this seemed to just be luck- perhaps someone hadn’t turned up- but then we saw the signs above the windows and realised it had been saved especially for us:
The bus journey was very dusty, very long and very high. The landscape was mostly bleak and arid and a bit frightening- for miles and miles no one seemed to survive there. Several times we went over 5000 metres and we both felt a bit rough. We stopped for lunch in a tiny tent village.
They were very advanced there- rather than an ‘open toilet’ they had this:
At one point our driver seemed to tire of roads- straying off and taking the bus weaving through the sand of a big, bleak desert plain.
Soon before Leh we stopped at what claims to be the second highest motorable pass in the world- Tanglang la at 5328m (although I think this is a contentious title due to debates about what counts as motorable etc etc).
Along the route they had brilliant big, yellow road signs, ranging from moutain driving advice- “drive don’t fly!”– to general life advice- “think!”– “passion leads to excellence!”– to cryptic warnings and reminders, as we approached Leh (very fast, and mostly on the wrong side of the road)- “if you sleep your family will weep”- “daring like you but not so fast“- and… “I am curveceous, be slow“.
Paharganj, where we stayed (and everyone else stays) in Delhi is pretty horrible. It is dusty and polluted and has no pavement so you have to weave between cars to move along the streets. Stray men lurk everywhere- like the dogs, but with less redeeming features.
As usual a rickshaw driver took us to a hotel where he tried to force us to stay. We left and were hounded down the street by touts (I got a bit scary in retaliation- poor Jonny).
Because of this the idea of leaving for Manali on a long, winding, mountainous road was lovely, but it seems that in India very little is lovely for us at the moment.
The beginning of the bus journey was so flat and dusty that when I cleaned my face at lunch time the facewipe turned black. Probably we shouldn’t have washed- we would benefit from being a bit less white here.
For a while we spread across three seats but then a man got on swaying precariously, and so I moved over to make space for him to sit too.
A fat, grumpy old woman behind us tapped violently on our shoulders and mimed that Jonny and I should swap places, so that I wasn’t sitting beside a man. After a week in India I sympathise greatly with aggressive, bra-burning, shoulder-padded feminism. I wish the women here would do that. I didn’t move because if men can’t cope with sitting next to me they can sit on the ground, or walk.
This man was quite nice anyway, but also very drunk. As nice and as drunk as he was, he remembered to lean over me and address all his ramblings to Jonny because, after all, I’m only a girl, not a real person.
He told us, very insightfully, that India has many problems- many problems with culture. Also that we were European and that he was Asian but that we were his sister and his cousinnephewbrother, and that he was a farmer and a tour guide and a science teacher going to Chandigarh, Shimla and Manali, and then that the world was 5000 years old and would end in 50 years. This was about 10% of what he said, the rest was a jabber of slurred Hindi. After saying this he repeated it all… again and again and again.
In front of us there was a small boy eating popcorn. He caught my eye and smiled shy sympathy. For a while he looked deeply thoughtful, and then he shoved his popcorn towards the drunk man- I think to help sober him up for us. The drunk man rejected this but it seemed a good idea, so we offered him water; he took a big gulp and then, charmingly, dribbled it back into the bottle, because it was too warm.
Finally he stood up, swaying violently around, and whistled loudly at the driver to stop the bus. He stumbled gingerly down the stairs, and dangled precariously from the doorway. From here he turned to give one final speech, ending grandly in “Hello! Welcome!” and a little salute. At this point the bus driver assumed he had got off and drove away, leaving the man hanging out of the bus, trying uselessly to swing to the ground. Eventually we stopped again, and he slid out, to stumble gracelessly off into the city.
In the mirror I watched our driver laugh hysterically at this. He had a bright pink shirt and a big black moustache, and he laughed in the same manic way as he overtook around blind bends.
We expected the journey to take 12-14 hours, in which case we would have arrived at about 8- just after dark. At 7.30 we were 188km south of Manali and changed drivers in a cold, empty bus station.
The new driver was as alarming as his predecessor, but we lacked the faith in him that we’d acquired from 12 hours of surviving with the old one.
It was now completely dark, the dramatic green valleys we’d driven through that evening had turned into galaxies of lit windows dotting the hillsides and blurring into the real stars.
It seemed that every ten minutes we almost had a head on collision with a large truck- closing our eyes in the dazzle of head lights and opening them surprised to be alive. The new driver never beeped when going around bends and drove half the time on the wrong side of the road, tilting us over sheer drops as he overtook every other vehicle we encountered.
We arrived in Manali a while after midnight, becoming submerged in a sea of goats and sheep as we entered the city. They bleated pitifully on all sides as we bobbed along, the bus growling in the wrong gear as the driver forced our way through, thumping mercilessly on the horn. Hundreds of terrified sheep faces flowed by until eventually they blurred together into a single fluffy mass.
Eventually we arrived in new Manali bus station. We wanted to stay in Old Manali, on the other side of the river, but they are about 2.5km apart and we had no idea of the way.
In the bus station there was one lingering rickshaw driver, but he didn’t look keen to go anywhere; reluctantly he agreed to take us to Old Manali, but not for less than 500 rupees- ten times the usual price. We weren’t sure if anything would still be open in Old Manali anyway.
An old Indian-Tibetan man in a cylindrical hat, with few teeth, hovered around, insisting it was very expensive to go anywhere at night, that all the guesthouses were full and that we wouldn’t find anything for less than four times our budget anywhere- unless, of course, we went with him to his guesthouse.
He offered to take us there free, and promised it was close to Old Manali, so we could walk easily across the next morning.
I don’t trust India, especially not at night and at bus stations, were touts prey on disorientated new arrivals, so we walked away- with him in pursuit- across the bus station and towards some hotels.
They were all closed and shuttered-up. Packs of rather savage, rabid-looking dogs roamed the car-park.
Another man arrived, predictably to back up his friend. Pretending to be helpful he explained, condescendingly, that as it was high season we wouldn’t find anywhere to stay for less than 1000 rupees. I said that I knew he was lying ( just like everyone else) but he wasn’t brave enough to concede, despite the fact that we had little choice, in the middle of the night with no transport and no map and everywhere closed, but to go with the first man anyway.
Dubiously we surrendered and the old man conjured up a rickshaw.
We drove further and further out of town, up hill and into the suburbs, guesthouses getting fewer and further between, and the darkness getting heavier and heavier. The roads were so steep and twisted that the rickshaw struggled to heave the four of us and our rucksacks upwards and forwards.
Jonny pointed out that it was illogical to be going so violently up hill- if the guesthouse was near Old Manali we should have been heading into the valley.
The further out of town we went- and the less frequently the darkness was broken- the more scared I became, but the prospect of getting out in the middle of nowhere and walking back into a town of dogs, locked up hotels and Indian men in league against us, was equally, hopelessly frightening.
The streets became increasingly narrow and thick forest began to seep in among the houses. It seemed that every time we reached a junction we took the smaller, darker path.
Eventually we turned down a street churned up to little more than a dirt track. One side was flanked with woods, the other with the occasional building. It was just populated enough that if we screamed we’d probably be heard.
Finally we passed the last house and ahead all was dark. We drove a little further and stopped in this emptiness. We couldn’t see anything, let alone a guesthouse. The old man climbed out of the rickshaw, paused for a second and pulled out his phone, ignoring us entirely. Suddenly I was certain that he was calling for reinforcements, intending to rob us or kill us, the guesthouse, with pretty, little printed cards was just an elaborate lie to lure us out of town.
I climbed quickly out of the rickshaw, grabbed my bag, shouted at Jonny to follow and started walking very fast back towards the last house.
Reaching the light of this building I paused to listen to the old mans imploring reassurances- his house was just off the road, outside lights disturbed other guests etc. Quickly he produced a torch and illuminated a shadowy building, set back among the trees. On close inspection a dirty sign in the garden read ‘Nice View Cottages’.
Cold and tired we followed him, very cautiously, through overgrown orchard towards a dingy, white building. Maybe a murder barn. He knocked and another man came out. Great- reinforcements, I thought. After a quick conversation, during which we were poised to run, the old man led us around the back and up some stairs.
On the top floor he opened a door into a large, worn room, painted a peeling turquoise and full of moths and daddy long legs. The bathroom had taps instead of a shower and a strange shadowy room adjoined the main one.
A book of banking statements, the hotel log book and several electricity bills were stuffed under the dirty mattress, along with a woolly hat that I assumed belonged to some long dead previous victim.
The old man brandished the log book, rather pitiably, showing us proudly that real other guests had stayed there. It was true, they had, in 2006.
Severely shaken, I nearly threw 500 rupees at the man, before driving him out, insisting we needed to sleep right away and double bolting the door behind him. Five minutes later his small fingers appeared eagerly beneath the door, he shoved through another card and instructions to call him if anything was wrong. A further five minutes later he popped up at the window, tapping loudly and wanting to know if the hot water was working. It wasn’t but I didn’t care.
The next morning- after a surprisingly deep sleep under fetid blankets- when we had stepped outside to panoramic mountain views, and I’d begun to believe that we really weren’t going to be murdered, I began to feel a little more sympathy towards the old man; he quickly appeared as we attempted to make a break for it, demanding why we were leaving if the room was ok, and if all was ok, and promising to change anything that wasn’t, with more than a hint of desperation in his harrying. It seemed, in daylight, that he simply owned a rundown guesthouse far from town on the wrong side of the river to attract the backpacker crowd. The only way he could entice in guests was to trawl the bus station late at night.
However it is hard to forgive someone who has caused you to be convinced you are about to die horribly, and at the moment I’m struggling to forgive India, a bit, for the number of horrible experiences we’ve had.
The train to Agra was excessively luxurious- air-conditioned and gave us food like a plane. We squashed samosas into Jonny’s guitar case and fed them to a tiny, ravenous child with a tattoo on his arm, on the train to Delhi.
In Agra we saw the Taj Mahal and felt sorry for a rickshaw driver. We agreed to let him take us round the city; he proceeded to take us to shops which gave him free petrol as commission, without even offering us a discount.
The Taj Mahal is a bit small and not very white.
A bit like Brighton Pavilion. This is what Jonny thought:
It had nice gardens and gates and smaller buildings around it, and green birds.
The Red Fort is quite brilliant, and much cheaper and easier to see. It was relatively empty and much more interesting to me, but it does have the advantage of being under rather than over hyped.
It is a bit of a maze of ornate carved rock, and you can see the Taj Mahal from the windows. The guy who built the Taj was locked up in the red fort by his son, for 8 years, only able to see the Taj from the window- I wouldn’t have minded that; empty it would have been the most beautiful, ever-intriguing playground.
We left for Delhi that evening. The ladies queue at Agra station was vicious, someone tried to push in and the ‘ladies’ behind shoved me forwards to block her out- none of the men’s queues looked as violent.
We 
almost missed the train to Delhi and stowaway-ed in sleeper class rather than the impossibly packed general carriage, mostly by mistake because we didn’t have time to work out were we should be and because a group of Indian friends implored us to sit with them, in a way that didn’t really leave us any choice. Jonny felt guilty but when we considered moving we couldn’t fit in where we should have been. In sleeper class we had a doorway to ourselves, it was a lovely stolen luxury.
(P.S. You should read Jonny’s blog too: www.jonnygetslost.wordpress.com; he draws pictures.)
It was my (very bad) idea to go to Bhopal because it is halfway between Mumbai and Agra, and appeared to perfectly break up the 22 hour journey. I was also fascinated with it because I had heard of it so many times in reference to the blown up union carbide factory… and the internet said it was nice.
On our train every one else was going to Delhi. We were lucky with our sleeper compartment, which comprised passengers from three continents- me, Jonny, a brilliant Indian family and a rather lost, silent Nigerian man.
The Indian family had a big tub of fresh vegetable curry, a pile of chapatis and a strange, sweet gloopy pudding that tasted of condensed milk and had raisins in but was otherwise impossible to identify. They insisted on feeding us vast amounts and were altogether incredibly sweet; when the Nigerian man bought a bottle of water the Indian family man was very concerned that there might be something wrong with it and made a big fuss that we didn’t understand to make sure that the clueless Nigerian man wasn’t being ripped off or poisoned.
The Indian family also had the sweetest tiny girl who cried when Jonny made faces at her and liked me best. She had a very American Apparel gold dress on, I was quite jealous and wanted a giant version of it.
Me and Jonny had two bunks above one another so we didn’t have to put the upper one down for a long time and looked out of the window instead. When we did go to bed I lay on my stomach with my face pressed against a slither or window and watched India go past. However the window was just a barred hole so I woke up scared I was sliding out.
The Indian family woman didn’t speak very much but jingled her jewellery all night, so loudly that Jonny couldn’t sleep. The little girl banged the wall and the Nigerian man, after hours of slightly sullen silence suddenly became very extrovert when a nasty, sleazy ticket man woke him up to move beds. I was woken up, in a very bad mood, on the pretense of him checking our tickets and then told, every time I tried to get them out and drive the ticket man away, that it was ok, I didn’t need them, while he leaned into my bed and on my hand and asked pointless loud questions about where I was from. The Nigerian man found this all very hilarious in a mad hysterical way that seems to frequently result from over exposure to India, especially that I sleepily, grumpily failed completely to understand anything the ticket man said.
Despite disturbed sleep we were sad to leave, when, after a morning of drinking chai and eating crisps and looking out of the window,we arrived in Bhopal.
We stepped out of the train into an onslaught of rip-off rickshaw drivers. We found one who told us that the hotel we wanted didn’t exist anymore, we didn’t believe this but knew that lots of hotels are on the same road so went with him on the condition he took us there. We paid very little and so, predictably, he took us to a specific hotel and loomed threateningly around trying to pressure us in. We stormed off and took great satisfaction in having paid very little and deprived him of commission. This satisfaction lasted very little time as every other hotel we tried told us it was ‘full’ despite keys hanging behind them on the wall.
Everywhere we walked people looked at us nastily or hassled us to let them take us to a hotel of their choice; the street was dusty, bleak and the atmosphere generally intimidating and horrible. It took us about five minutes to decide to leave and to go see some cave paintings in a small place out of town and return the next day only to leave for Agra.
We went back to the station to buy tickets out and joined a queue. I was told I didn’t have to do this- I could join the ‘ladies queue’, and as there were no ladies this just meant pushing to the front. I was very dubious but everyone seemed to accept this system and in a country were lifts are labelled as ‘for the use of the disabled, senior citizens and ladies’ it seemed plausible, so I pushed in.
There were no tickets available that day, the next day or the one after that. I went back twice in desperation and eventually we were offered two waiting-list special ‘taktal’ tickets for the following afternoon, but at vast expense- almost three times the price of sleeper tickets from Mumbai to Bhopal, which is twice the distance. We decided to try and get a bus.
Outside the bus station we walked past all the rickshaw drivers and went to eat thali. By this point we were going a bit mad, like the Nigerian man.
This worsened and turned more to despair when we discovered there were no buses to Agra. We went to an internet cafe in a strange, dingy, half derelict, shopping centre style building were nasty men lingered in all the dark corners, and seriously considered the possibility of being stabbed; it seemed pretty likely to happen, and, as the whole town seemed to be colluding against us, there would be nothing we could do.
We found train seats online but all the booking sites were broken. We had no choice but to go back to the station. I lady-queued and was told none of the trains we’d found existed. We were told we should have bought the expensive waiting list tickets earlier and had to come back the next morning at 8am to buy them for the next day. So we were stranded for the night.
Another nasty rickshaw driver overcharged us and the hotel we had planned to stay in, despite definitely existing, was also ‘full’. I tried to demand why it was full, out of season and pretty early in the day, in an angry hysterical way, but everyone ignored me. The rickshaw driver took us to the middle of nowhere and deposited us at a very strange hotel with an internal carpark, several floors connected by strange fenced off stairwells splattered with blood-like paan spit, and an empty, ghostly restaurant.
Our room and bathroom were filthy, the hotel man took our passports and for a long time we again expected to be stabbed in the night; it felt like the whole town was conspiring against us and something bad was going to happen; the few normal people we had met had told us to be careful, ‘Bhopal is full of cheaters’, but although we knew this there was absolutely nothing we could do because we were stranded with no one on our side.
We went for a walk and found a nice mosque and nice sky and felt a bit better.
It was an incredible relief to drive out of Bhopal and to be dropped an hour and a half away by the side of the road.
At the junction there was one expensive guesthouse and we went in for lunch. Jonny practiced his newly acquired Hindi on the staff and they fell in love with us a bit. One man became excessively, comically helpful, asking us every few seconds if we wanted anything else.
Soon we decided to stay there because we didn’t want to go back to Bhopal so much, and nice people seemed such a rarity by that point.
The helpful man was delighted, taking us to our room and asking us repeatedly if everything was ok and if there was anything else he could do.
The caves were really cool. The walk there was a very long 3km through arid desert style countryside and the caves and rock shelters themselves stretched out across a further kilometre. They stones were speckled with 30,000 year old paintings, and big red and black lizards.
I found a little rock bed in one and began to wish that, rather than paying for the hotel, we’d just taken hoodies and deet with us and slept there.
On the way back we took a short cut. We trekked through shrubby desert and climbed a big tower of rocks, cutting out a bend in the road.
Back at the hotel the helpful man rushed to offer us water, told us repeatedly when supper was and followed us into our room to check that all was ok.
That night we slept among thousands of insects and a few small mice. We wondered if mice ever carry rabies but otherwise shared the room reasonably companionably, watching them scurry in and out through a crack in the door.
The helpful man woke us up the next morning banging on our door repeatedly to offer us coffee and tea, I imagined he had been pacing outside for hours desperate for us to wake up and he just couldn’t wait any longer.
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