I'm in the Himalayas!

The road to Leh is like the road to hell despite that it’s breathtakingly gorgeous. The travel conditions are terrible. The trip from Manali to Leh is usually done in 2 days, with an overnight camp or hotel stay in a small village along the way. We did it straight in 21 hours.

Twenty-one grueling hours of mostly unpaved, rocky mountain passes. The suspension on the minibus was virtually non-existent. And since there aren’t seat belts there were a lot of times when it was so bumpy I flew out of my seat and hit the roof of the car. The good thing is that the driver stopped when we had to pee, and we had a couple of opportunities to eat at roadside dhabas.

Poor Eva got extremely sick. She has a low blood pressure problem in general and is prone to fainting. She fainted and vomited so many times on the bus. The longer we were on the bus, the paler and paler she became. It got to the point where literally her face looked green and corpse-like. We all offered to switch seats with her, but she wouldn’t. She doesn’t like to burden other people so she stayed seat. She even took one of my Dramamine pills, but it didn’t help. Later we realized it wasn’t carsickness as much as it was altitude sickness.

Sitting in the very front also had its ‘perks’. Since the road is unpaved, other trucks or cars that passed us created huge dust and exhaust clouds that came into the car, even through the air vents. I blew my nose at one point and everything that came out was black. My face and all of my clothes were covered in dust and my hair was one step away from being dreadlocks. I was so exhausted. All I wanted was to sleep, even a little, but I couldn’t because the car ride was so bumpy the moment I put my head back it would slam back and forth against the headrest. It was like some medieval torture technique. Amazingly, the girl right behind me slept sitting straight up. We were meant to arrive in Leh by 5 or 6pm but the roads are at mercy to the elements and several of the bridges were barely there. There was one bridge that only the frame was left. All of us had to get out of the bus and walk across the narrow beams so the bus could be lighter when it crossed. I shot some video of that.

The climate in this part of India is extreme. In the day it gets up to 90+ degrees, and at night it can be as cold as 30 or 40 degrees. There were times I was scared the bus was going to get a flat tire or that it wouldn’t be able to handle the steep passes. . The road to Leh gets as high as 18,000 feet. And as the bus climbed higher and higher, I could feel the air get thinner and thinner to the point where it became really hard to breathe. By the middle of the trip everyone looked worn out.

In spite of all of these intense road conditions, the trip is equally as rewarding. I kept thinking to myself, ‘I’m in the Himalayas!’ Never in my life did I think I could or would come to see the Himalayas. It was a shitty drive for sure, but when I woke up at 6:30am in the car with my head bumping against the seat, I woke up to an utterly amazing view of towering mountains lined with beautiful mountain streams, and dotted with wild flowers and plants, And the views only got more and more beautiful. I’ve never seen anything so vast or bare, or untouched. Just looking at it I could begin to sense the depth of age and history that belong to this mountain range. There are parts of it that remind me of the mountains in Utah on a much larger scale.

It’s amazing how far Leh is from the rest of India. There’s not much civilization in that part. We passed three villages, and by village, I mean a small roadside camp of tents that sell the basics like instant noodles, bottled water, and tea. It’s amazing how these people live. They come down from Leh during their summer season (July to September) and set up these camps to sell food to tourist and trekkers. They’re true nomads. They live in the harshest conditions. It was sunset when I ate there and the sun had just fallen behind the mountain casting a huge shadow on the camp. The temperature instantly dropped. It made me wonder what these people do during their winter.

And when the sun finally left us and the sky became pitch black, I saw the sky as I’ve never seen before in my life. We happened to be on the part that’s elevated nearly 18,000 ft when we stopped for a bathroom break alongside the road. The sky was a deep midnight blue and revealing every single star living inside it. It was such a gift to see.

We finally made it to Leh a little before midnight. Eva and I found a nearby guesthouse and crashed for the night.

We had finally, and actually made it to Leh.