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| view from the palace in Leh |
The first hotel we found in Leh was
extremely run-down and dirty, but we stayed anyways because they
promised a hot shower in the morning (guess what happened the next
morning – still in India). After that we looked for a nicer place
to stay to get rid of our cold and sore throat. Samrolee was one of
the guest houses still open in the end of the season, they had nice
and clean rooms with a view to the mountains and space to park
Kalimero in the garden. We spent 3 days in Leh, mostly with getting
better and walking the town a bit. As more and more clouds came into
the Ladakh valley and it grew very cold, we finally skipped any
hiking plans and started our way to Srinagar.
The upcoming passes
were, compared to the Manali-Leh-highway, a piece of cake, but we
figured it might be smart to plan ahead and know where we can spent
the nights: in the end we were still in a very disputed part of
Kashmir. The small town of Kargil, though beeing directly at the line
of control, offers some small hotels and restaurants, so we planned
our overnight stay there. Kalimero was feeling a bit more comfortable
at the maximum of a 4000m pass, and despite the cloudy weather ,we
had some impressive views of the Kashmiri mountains.
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| Stupas in Ladakh |
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| moonish landscape again, but water |
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| Yaks and Stupas |
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| Welcome to Kargil |
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| girls on their way to school in Kargil. |
In Kargil we found "our"
hotel in the city center and were allowed to stay within the
courtyard, but getting food was a more difficult task, very uncommon
in India. The next morning was sunny again and we enjoyed the last
stage of our mountain tour until we arrived in Srinagar. Here again,
we picked a place to stay in advance, the beautyful and quiet "Oasis
guesthouse" run by a charming Kashmiri family. There is no
secret that we had our problems getting warm with Indian cities and
the incredible noise and stress they spread. With "safe havens"
such as our guest house, it appeared more bearable. In Srinagar, we
even sat down in a park watching chilren playing cricket for the
first time after we strolled the streets of Hazeratbal (a quarter of
Srinagar north of lake Dal), where people were preparing for Eid.
Here for the first time we could see more people walking than riding
a motorbike and more voices than horns.
A very relaxing way to get around the
city and see some fishermen neighborhoods and vegetable plantations
on the lake is by taking a shikara. These are a bit like the venetian
gondles but thank god nobody sings.
We visited the "Pashmina museum"
which was recomended at wikitravel - but as somehow expected, we came
into the entirely dark show room and a young guy agreed when we asked
whether this is the museum. He did not explain anything and spoke no
english and just offered us some incredibly expensive shawls. As we
were not exactly well prepared for buying pashmina and did not know
the prices, we soon left again. We more and more came to the
conclusion that the open-source internet principle does not really
work out in India.
After climbing the fort in the middle
of the city (which is mainly used as a military outlook and you have
a very nice view over the city with its lake and mountains) we took a
rickshaw to Hazeratbal again to get some deep-fried street food (they
fry EVERYthing, we for example also had lotus roots).
Eid is of course celebrated in Kashmir
by most families and we even got invitations for the next day. The
recommendation to avoid certain cities during mayor islamic holidays
in mind, we left the next morning after getting only a few
impressions of THE biggest islamic holiday.
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| Srinaga-Leh highway: "very good road condition" |
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| After being questioned about his favourite Bollywood actor, Michi found three new best friends. Did the homework, "Shahrukh Khan"! |
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| Lining up the British way: Meat for Eid. |
The capital of the state "Jammu
and Kashmir" is moved from Srinagar to Jammu - which lays 300km
to the south - and back twice a year. We needed alomost 10 hours
driving for this distance, and the rest of the second day to get to
Amritsar. There we watched the border ceremony at exactly the border
we did not get to cross.
In the evening hours, we visited the
Golden Temple (Harmandir Sahib), the most prominent sanctuary of the
Sikh. Sikhism is the 5th biggest organized religion of the
world, with 30 million followers, most of them in Punjab, India. It
was founded by Guru Nanak in the 15th century and was from
that time on attacked by Hindus and Muslims likewise.
During our travels we learned to
respect and appreciate the benefits of a religious society, but now
in Amritsar for the first time we could witness pure altruism by a
whole community. In the Golden Temple they have a kitchen, where
random people volunteer to chop onions, wash dishes and serve food
for everyone. We also had some food there and left a small donation.
All kind of people, rich - poor, dark skin - light skin, men –
women – children, everyone was sitting on the ground site by site,
getting the same food. We thought this is a rare sight in India and
were sure that sikhism might be able to convey some important values
to this society. (as a note: the common Sikh last name "Singh"
exists for exactly this principle of equality: there is no
justification for a cast system, and so are no cast-defining family
names).
As we were, once again, the only
obvious non-Indians present, we were asked to take some pictures
again – we are ALL equal, but some are a little bit more equal!
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| a soldier (?) at the border |
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| Hindustan! |
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| Hindustan!!! |
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| Hindustaaaaaaan! |
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| the golden temple Harmandir Sahib |
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| "one photo please miss" |
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| "one foto please mister - possible one photo?" |
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| volunteers washing dishes for the kitchen |
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| impressive guy washing dishes |
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| "excuse me, can we take a picture with you?" |
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| When we left our shoes at the shoe counter they thanked us by touching our shoes to their forehead. They thank everybody, by the way. |
Another big advantage is the frequency
and appearance of the dhabas at the national highways: you are mostly
able to choose from different meals, and sometimes even get a menu in
English.
Short anecdote: near Bikaner, we
started early and at about 10:30am we tried to get a late breakfast.
We asked for parathas (or pranthas as they are sometimes called too)
at several dhabas (we did not want to have the plain Dal for
breakfast). At the third dhaba we were successful: "Yes Sir, we
have, come in!" We ordered two tea and two aloo parathas and sat
down. After a while two local guys next to us offered us some of
their dal. We rejected with thanks and told them that we will get
some parathas very soon. Another 10 minutes later the owner of the
dhaba came by and asked if we wanted to have some food at all? We
again asked for parathas, and now he told us it is "not
available". OK, we had some tea after all and relied on the
cookies we still had in the car later on. These kind of stories make
travelling even more interesting and of course we do not expect
everybody to read our minds or serve all our needs. It is just an
example that in India, where many people claim to speak English,
communication is even more complicated than in regions where people
do not speak English at all. "Yes Sir, no problem Sir, ok Sir"
is a just too common answer, regardless if the request is to buy two
teas or, which of the 2 roads to take to city XY.
Our next stop was Bikaner - one of the
three major desert towns in Rajasthan which is sayed not to be as
nice as Jaisalmeer, but accordig to our self imposed km-limit we
thought it might do. We called Vino, a guy offering desert safaris in
Bikaner if we could stay at his desert camp. He was very friendly and
generous and we were not only allowed to stay at his camp and use his
facilities, he also sent a coworker to show us the way and pick us up
at the "camel research center" we were just visiting.
Our guidebook said that the pilgrimage
site Pushkar is a "highlight" we shouldn't miss and it is
near our objected route south, so we went there. But after having a
snack amidst bulks of stoned and annoying pseudo hippie tourists and
some wandering around trying to aviod aggressive souvenir dealers, we
took our leave to Udaipur. Clearly we did not have enough shanti to
stay at the highlight any longer.
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| Pushkar |
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