ladakh-2

Jaigurudev!

day -2

Woke up to a beautiful sunny morning, after a quick breakfast we were on our way to the srinagar city.. passed the dal lake when it was probably in its most picturesque light .. took some pgraphs .. mostly just stood there and gazed .. and knew what those poets had been going on and on about for the past few centuries .. it really cannot be described ..








We pulled ourselves away because a long day lay ahead .. the road ahead was the view we see in postcards .. lush green, spring creeping in shyly from every branch , behind rocks in sprays of fern ...and the river sindh kept us company all the way to sonemarg which we reached by around noon.

Sonemarg is where the kashmir district ends and ladakh begins ..the himalayas begin to display their true might .. my first impression of them was of weathered warriors.. guarding the nation for centuries .. relentless in their commitment ..

As we reached the transit camp , the OIC there told us that there had been a landslide on the leh highway and the road would be closed for 2 hrs .. he invited us for lunch and took us to this local place where people come to ski ( or pretend ) ..now it was so amazing how temp drops by almost 7 degrees between places which are hardly 700 metres away as the crow flies.. the camp being on the leeward side of the mountain was balmy and very comfortable but this ski place was sooper cold ..




When we got the thumbs up from the BRO (Border Roads Organization) we started with a prayer in our hearts as first half of the route from sonemarg to leh is supposed to be a very treacherous road .. and in spring when the snow is melting this patch is wrought with snowslides that sometimes bring in tonnes of snow onto the road .. as we traversed the first range and gained height .. the roads became more gravelly hence more prone to skidding .. i, for lack of foresight ended up sitting on the side that faces the downslope and one look out had me saying a 108 om namah shivayas .. there was a steep unmitigated drop.. papa pointed out that we could see the campsite for the amarnath yatra, baltal down below .. but i wasnt in any mood for sight -seeing ; my concern being staying alive till the end of the day ..

now i looked around to check if anyone else was as freaking frightened as i was .. nandini (my lil sis) was loving it ..she was craning her neck out and pointing to a 100 things .. papa was telling her bout some trivia about the place and didnt even seem to notice anything scary .. and then i looked at mamma and i knew i had company .. she was sitting there all bundled up in her shawl with her eyes shut and quite hastily chanting the hanuman chalisa under her breath .. It seems really funny now :) but i still remember how absolute that fear had been for me .. because it wasnt a place where my logic could step in and say " look come on , what are the odds of dying here ? " coz the answer would probably be "very high" ..i remember making a mental list of things i d definitely do if i got out of here alive.. i didnt take a single picture in those four hours ..

and well guess what , we did get out of there alive :) this whole really scary stretch is called the Zoji-la pass and my mum calls it the godzilla pass though ( for obvious reasons). The rest of the route to Drass where we were styaing for the night was very calm and solitary .. very few vehicles on the road ..

Now this day was very important for me for two reasons -

1) This whole 'frightened that i was going to die that day' thing was very amusing later..

2) I discovered that there are so many unsung heroes in these terrians .. the BRO people who were clearing the landslides and snowslides so that the highway would be functional were doing so risking their lives every single day..

When you come down the mountains and are on your way to drass you notice army posts every few kms..The jawans who man them sit there the whole day .. always alert and watchful .. in a radius of miles there is no inhabitation..not even birds ..the silence in these stretches is so loud you have to cover your ears ..

You cant help but be oveerwhelmed with patriotism ..with a feeling of belongingness to our country ..a pride..

When my dad was tucking us in our very warm comfortable beds that night , i said a prayer to guruji .. in gratitude for the sheer abundance that he has blessed us with .. and said a prayer for all these real life heroes who silently work everyday in these harsh conditions ..

jai hind

love
tanu

ladakh - 1

jaigurudev !


last year i went back home for a holiday in april (my dad is in the army and was posted in udhampur that time). Now, Udhampur is this place in J&K which sits at the foothills of the himalayas ..Jammu is a three hour drive away and srinagar takes about six hours ..
this explanation was to give a basic geographic locus to the name i doubt any of the readers would have heard of before this ( presuming there are any readers) .. :)

so, you remember dil se .. the moment i saw that song 'satrangi re'.. vast unending desert with the azure blue lakes and the bluest of blue skies .. i knew that i was going to go there :)

I have travelled to almost every state in the country thanks to my father's profession and the fact that he and I have always been bitten by the travel bug ..my earliest memories are of sitting in front of him on his yezdi on our rajasthan road trip ..i was 4 or 5 i think :)

and eversince, whenever i have had the desire to see any place or any kind of terrain i usually end up being there quite soon :)

now i only had to mention to papa that ladakh would be a nice place to spend some time in since we are already in j&k.. and he being the darling that he is :) instantly said, "sure , lets go"

before i knew it we were on our way out of the dust and grime that is udhampur (why do all these foothilly places have the knack of being very dusty) .. and started picking up altitude towards patnitop which is a very typical tourist spot and us being us are instantly repelled by such made up lawns and fountains and stuff .. so all that got from us was a cursory glance

papa was posted in the valley during the nineties and knows this route almost by heart so we had some very intersting stories on our way .. we stopped at a dhaba for some garam chai :) and proceeded to the jawahar tunnel .. this 2.2km long tunnel ia a marvel of enginnering which transformed a longer and more difficult cart road through Banihal Pass into an all-weather highway in order to link Jammu with the Vale of Kashmir, which at the time of its completion in 1959 was one of the longest in Asia.

As we emerged from the tunnel we were blessed with the first glimpse of the valley of kashmir ;
agar firdaus bur roi zamin ast, hemi usto, hemi usto , hemi usto .. literally translated means; if there is heaven on earth, it is here, it is here :)

the view suddenly opens up into this beautiful lush canvass of green fields , interspersed with winding country roads and the majestic highway running right across with sentinel chinar trees guarding its edges ..

and after the tunnel the road dips as we descend the mountains and step into the district of srinagar .. it was a very uneventful trip to our halt for the night .. a dear friend of papa's hosted us in the brigade x where we were put up in this fantastic guest house.. a very cool thing that ppl have begun to use are these electric blankets .. i know it sounds scary but you turn the thing on and before you know it the mattress is toasty warm and if you dont turn it to the right temperature mode pretty soon you start feeling like a toast as well .. and he had called all the officers of the unit for the dinner and so mostly it was yawn yawn hidden under polite pleasantries :)

but truth be told im not a big fan of greenery and i really was waiting for that dry , moonlike terrain to start but the path to that was hardly a breeze .. all that in the next post :)


lots of love
tanu

ps- dont have any pictures of that day which do justice to the view.. but from here on there ll be tons of pics :)

lots to write about

Jaigurudev!

I wonder if the blog sees any visitors at all .. I havent been writing much as well .. hopefully the latter is going to change .. But about people reading the blog; I havent told anyone ive been writing coz i think i write more honestly and dont pander when very few people are reading .. lame ; i know . So I am committed to being more courageous and invite people to read and also write more consistently. So there!

here are a few things that have been on my mind recently, each of these thinigs are going to turn into future posts.

- my ladakh trip last year (april 2008)
- my bali trip this year (april 2009)
- JD and devang's singapore trip (april 2009) and some snippets of knowledge that they shared
- some ( hold your breath ) recipes!!!! ( yes, they are tried and tested. no, i wasnt hospitalised after eating them)
- movie reviews for a couple of really awesome jap movies i saw recently ( kabei our mother , gake no ue no ponyo and Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (spirited away )..

thats all for now :)

lots of love
tanu