I had one of the most lovely ‘last days’ in Dharamkot hiking up to Galu Waterfall, about a four hour leisurely hike, with three friends – pretty much my idea of heaven. We finished the day off in the Tibetan restaurant ‘Common Ground’ in McLeod Gang. It was such a delicious comfy safe space, leaving was more emotional than normal. I had to say goodbye to someone who has been a part of my travelling since the beginning, the first time we’ve said good bye to each other not knowing when we’ll meet again!
I was going from such comfort and good friends, to the complete unknown of three long bus rides through the mountains until I reached Leh in Ladakh, several days later. The weight of responsibility of being a ‘solo-traveller’ landing squarely on my shoulder again.
The journey started, you could say, ominously, with the lady next to me vomiting quietly into an old crisp packet for the first few hours. This was supposed to be the easy part of the journey! A comfortable Volvo night bus to Manali where I could expect an adequate nights sleep. Fortunately, things did gradually improve, with her managing to get to sleep after we made our first and only comfort break of the night, at 2am in the morning (we set off at 9:30pm). Then, half the people got off the bus at around 3:30 so I climbed over the seat and got an hour or two of good sleep laying across two seats.
I then spent more (₹200) than the subsequent 6 hour bus journey (₹132) on a 5 minute drive up the road from one bus station in Manali to another and arrived just in time to go to the loo and get a front seat on the Manali to Keylong bus that set off at 5:30am. We drove for about 20 minutes out of town and then stopped for breakfast, all the men got a Thali (there were mostly men on the bus) and I got a packet of crisps. Then we drove for another 10 minutes until we reached a huge queue of cars and the fun really started.
Our bus driver seemed to think the stationary cars lined up into the distance along one side of the narrow road was an invitation to use the other side to overtake them all. And he did. The closest thing I’d come to roads like this is in the highlands of Scotland, single track roads that did nonetheless did cater to two way traffic, by virtue of there being very little traffic on the road and some wider passing places. These roads were a similar size, but jam packed full of cars and going over the top of 3980 metre mountains rather than going around them.
Somehow, amazingly, our bus driver who I began viewing as some kind of mafia don of the area managed to get all the cars who were patiently waiting in line to move out of the way to let him, and the other government bus he cajoled into it, pass. Whenever we met policemen, they greeted him like an old friend and encouraged him on. People all along the route, right the way up to the checkpoint, saw what he was doing, laughed at the audacity, got the relevant cars to move out the way and encouraged him on.
We were right on the edge of the road for the entire duration and I took to staring fixedly out of the opposite window at the mountain side to avoid knowing how close to the edge we were. One of the most scariest moments of my life was towards the end of the initial climb when he seemed to get impatient and off roaded an entire corner to cut ahead and then continued to charge along the edge of the precipitous drop, sounding the horn loudly to get groups of pedestrians to move out the way.
It might of been the moment we were leaning at about a 45 degree angle away from the mountain, the outer wheels completely off the road that I started praying ‘please keep me safe, please keep me safe’ repeatedly, it might have been sooner. People beside me napped soundly, so presumably this is normal, but I was in a state of acute terror for the majority of the time. It got slightly better once we passed the checkpoint half way up the mountain. We’d left most of the cars behind so only had to worry about the occasional car coming in the opposite direction now.
Another fun moment happened when we reached the next large queue of people – thankfully we didn’t try to overtake them all this time! The issue was three large oil tankers were trying to pass us all on the way down and bizarrely this was quite hard on a hairpin bend with the road barely big enough for one…slowly, slowly they edged past us, cars, mini buses and buses manoeuvring to get closer to the mountain to let them pass. At one point, the conductor and his friends jumped out to remove stray boulders from the side of the road so we could get closer in.
All the time of course, we were going higher and higher, and when not scared for my life it was incredible to watch large imposing mountains turn into small foot hills, huge jaggerdy edges become tiny nuances of the landscape and the grass and trees slowly being replaced by barren rock and finally snow. They are landscapes truly unlike I’ve ever seen, and this is just the beginning of the Himalayas! I imagined the Dali Lama travelling over these mountains to flee Tibet. It’s one hell of a journey by bus, never mind foot or mule!
We went higher and higher for hours. The top of Rohtang pass, the highest point we’d reach today at 3980 metres, was marked by 100s of white taxis parks on both sides of the road and Indian people in salopettes getting out of their cars for photo opportunities. We edged our way through the middle, sounding the horn and shouting at people who were in our way.
Slowly, slowly we began to descend. The descent was in general less hair raising, there being much fewer cars on the road. The terrifying moments came when the tarmac road stopped, as it did every so often, and we were relying on heavily pot holed mud roads. We slowed right down and wobbled dramatically from side to side, which made me anxious but didn’t seem life threatening. We also drove through small rivers which flowed over the road and past people and machines laying new tarmac sections.
Once down the main mountain, at about 10:30, we careered into a roadside restaurant and again almost everyone ate Thali. I only realised what was going on half way through and so just snacked on peanuts and biscuits. Almost noone on the bus spoke English, only the conductor spoke a few words. It’s not a bad idea to have an empty stomach for these bus rides anyway!
From there it was fairly plain sailing. The driver speeded up dramatically and spent half the journey on his phone, driving with one hand, but there was very little traffic on the road and only a handful of sharp turns. He seemed bored more than anything else with this sort of driving. I’d hate to see him on an English motorway, he’d be doing 90.
We were nearly there when randomly we overtook another bus, parked up and then everyone got off and transferred. I spent 10 mins jammed in with my rucksack, appreciating more than ever my window seat at the front I’d been enjoying for the rest of the journey as I quickly became a bit sick and watched the lady next to me throw up out the window. And we were there! I tried not to look too much like a deer in headlights as I tried to buy a ticket to Leh (come back at 6pm) and a room for the night. Luckily the first one a strolled into had a room available for ₹600 and the search was over. I dropped off my stuff and headed out for lunch.
I started to develop a slight headache during lunch and also I found out Keylong was at 3350 metres, not at 3000 as the Internet had assured me. It got worse after I had a nap and I began feeling a bit sick so I decided to stay an extra night and book the bus for Friday. My appetite reducing to almost nothing over dinner I began to feel quite alone and worried, doing things like searching where the local hospital was in case things got worse. I’d eaten at my guesthouse so took my barely touched food back to my room to eat later, put on a Harry Potter audio book (my audio comfort food) and began to nap. Happily, I felt better after a few hours of sleep, could finish my dinner and felt almost normal, in the morning.
I had a lovely chill day in Keylong, spending half the day in bed but also heading down to the Main Street for lunch. I found a lovely local place where a young lady was rolling out paranthas (thicker type of chapatti bread) as I walked in. There was no menu but when I asked if she served Thukpa (Tibetan noodle soup) she served me up some from a big vat of soup she had bubbling away in the corner. It wasn’t until the third mouthful I realised the weird brown chunks in it were meat but it was such a lovely local experience slurping Thukpa in that place that I decided to eat it anyway, the first meat I’ve had since I finished someone’s fish off in a restaurant in February. I’ve only ever had vegetarian Thukpa so I didn’t even think so ask! It felt a bit weird, but it was delicious! I could have predicted the momo’s I subsequently ordered would be meat but overall it was a heartwarming experience munching away on homemade Tibetan food, as a tiny child ran around the shop and learnt to ‘type’ on my iPad and Mum, Dad and Grandma dropped in and out of the shop.
I chilled out for the rest of the afternoon arriving right on time, at 6pm, to buy my ticket for the bus to Leh tomorrow, only to discover there was quite a long queue and they’d clearly started selling tickets early – such a different story than the day before when I’d waited half an hour before someone even came down! The person two people in front of me took the last ticket but fortunately I bumped into a friendly Canadian couple who told me about another bus that might be going tomorrow morning. It turned out to be fictitious but it was enough to get me out of bed at 4am and in the bus station 40 minutes later, hopeful that I would in fact be going to Leh that day as planned. There was another lady who’d been just in front of me in the queue who also didn’t get a ticket and planned to stand the whole way there instead. The tickets (₹483) they sell the night before are just the reservations for the seats, an almost unlimited amount of people can choose to travel the 14 high altitude hair pin bend hours to Leh without a seat if they’re crazy enough. I was.
It was a bargain that paid off. I sat for most of the journey on a backpack jammed in the front of the bus, so got an excellent panoramic view and a far less bumpy sick-inducing ride than those at the back. Also, because I’m female and white (I can only presume – they certainly didn’t offer their seats to the young Indian gentlemen who was standing nearby) two men offered me their seats at various different points so I did end up sitting on a seat for a fair few hours.
The journey started very well. Keylong is already fairly remote and up in the mountains, so from the word go we had amazing mountain views to sustain us. Within the first half hour we’d passed three sheep heards being herded up the road by wizened men wearing lots of scarves. It didn’t take long until we were winding up the snowy path to our first pass of the day: Baralacha at 4893 metres. We passed walls of snow on both sides as we drove through a huge snow drift that had been chiselled into to let us pass, and granite grey mountains with such a light dusting of snow it looked like they been draw with charcoal on paper.
Our driver, who in general I much preferred for not driving like a manic with a death wish, was famous for driving past several places to pee and eat, while we were all quietly desperate, before stopping. We stopped a total of 5 times over the 14 hours, three times for passport checks, once for breakfast and once for lunch. One of the great things about this bus journey though, over the previous, was that there were other foreigners so rather than being a bit clueless when we stopped for food, worrying about being left behind and eating a packet of crisps instead, I sat with two nice Americans, ordered a parantha and ate it with a rather delicious pickle.
After breakfast, things got higher. We went over Lachulung pass at 5065 metres, had lunch and then continued to meander up until we reached a desert like plateau. Similar to a desert with small mountains to either side, just the whole thing is up 4500 metres. It was wide, open, flat, hot and dry, the snowy mountains of a few hours ago a forgotten memory. After an hour or so we did begin to slowly climb, but Tanglang pass, at 5360 metres, was almost a none event, we were so high anyway.
Descending felt good. Easier to breath, and the beginning of the end of a long journey. The amazing sights weren’t over though, the jagged sheets of rock forming a brutal barrier on the mountain side of the road and just the sheer amount of mountains rolling into the distance, hundreds of them as far as the eye could see, were awe inspiring. Even lower down, there were fantastic purple and green striped mountains, although at this point I was starting to have slightly less energy to enjoy them. The end of the route was marked by following and overtaking huge long lines of army trucks and going through an army base.
When we arrived, I said a heartfelt goodbye to my fellow travellers and shared a taxi with some of them to my guesthouse. We were astounded – the taxi driver gave us a fair price for the taxi (₹200) without bargaining and then carried my bag right into my guesthouse with apparent pleasure at helping me out. The famed Ladakhi hospitality didn’t end there though. Once I’d dropped off my bag I was ushered upstairs and given delicious herbal tea and invited to eat dinner. I was probably functioning on about 20% of brain capacity by then and gratefully accepted their delicious food before collapsing into bed. Made it 😊
Travelling Inside and Out 