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Thats it .. I am back in Chennai.

Bought a lot of stuff for family and friends.

About why I did this trip and whether more are to come... watch out for this space.. will update soon indeed! :)

Another Insane Journey - To Srinagar via Drass

For the second time the same day, I am travelling via some really kooky blind corners atop sharp peaks. This is from Kargil to Drass.

So I am going to Srinagar... Dad called me up and said that there were some protests in Srinagar due to the fact that Afzal Guru, who attacked the Parliament was going to be hanged. I said Ok, I will take care of myself.

:D

Kargil to Srinagar... We travelled at 2am in the morning from Kargil. All transport generally starts at this time because they close the bridge at Meena (Nagar?) at around 5 in the morning. Also, the army convoys travel to Drass during the day and it is not allowed to overtake them. So in order to avoid getting stuck behind some very slow moving vehicles, you have to do this...

So here I was going from Kargil to Srinagar, via Drass starting at 2AM in the morning, going through some really treacherous mountain routes.... ah! the joys of travelling!

Went past zoji-la at around 5am... there is a tunnel being constructed here.. the height is around 11700ft... awesome mountains... for the first time i see the treeline in these hills... the pass is so wide i can imagine the afghans et al moving in... looking for bounty.... the roads wind up so far above the hills that you can see trucks on top of you about a km above...

Finally reach Srinagar... the army is there in every street leading up to Srinagar.. they dont seem intrusive... it is like the cops when the PM lands in your town... not like the British banging up the locals... though I cant be too sure that the Kashmiris dont feel that way... Sad..

In Srinagar! Here is a pic of the Dal Lake.

The Hazratbal Masjid - my first entry into a mosque with my Auto driver Sajad. He says that there was so much "bhaichara" here... which all but went away after the entry of gun culture in Kashmir...

BSF folks from Jhunjhunu, Kanyakumari and Kerala.

The Jama Masjid

Again - the Hazratbal

Army folk are everywhere - near the Dal Lake as well
South Indian eateries are there near famous places in Srinagar.. veg dhabas are also available.. mostly called Vaishno Dhaba or Sri Krishna Vaishno Dhaba...


The Moghul Gardens

The Shalimar
The Dal Lake

The Transport Office which was blown up when the peace bus was started..

The Dal Lake


I went to the Shankaracharya temple and got the prasad for home.. They wont let Digital Cameras in.. :((

The film roll ones are ok..

The spot where Adi Shankara meditated in Kashmir is still there... a small rock house, supposedly built by Bhim... according to the local priest... which makes it thousands of years old... from the Dwapura yuga...

Pictures of the Srinagar Airport... Security is very heavy.. I passed through six X-Ray machines before reaching the departure gate.

Onward to Drass

To see Tiger Hill, Tololing...

Drass is the second coldest inhabited place in the world, next to someplace in Siberia, a fact which the locals are proud of mentioning...

Picture of Drass Town.

The Tololing peak taken back from Pakistanis by Col Ravindranath


Tiger Hill - Remember Vikram Batra, taken back from the intruding Pakistanis.. It is really cold here at night.. And some of us can climb up while being fired upon by Pakis and then drive them away! Cool!

According to locals, this peak below still belongs to Pakistan, who used to fire on the same highway that I am travelling in, during the Kargil war, 1999. At some places, there are boards mentioning "Under the range of enemy artillery fire"... I was looking for the Pakis, but my zoom aint good enough.. :)

With Lt Modgil, Drass Sector, pic taken by Maj LS Tanwar, Ladakh Scouts

And then I met this man... who claims that he was a spy for India (CBI! I thought R&AW did the international work... anyway) and travelled widely in Pakistan.. Makes fantastic claims about his job.. and refused to believe that I was not a spy or had some dark secret.. kept probing, has taken my number.. I expect a call sometime in the future with some secret codewords etc.. what have I gotten myself into!!! just a cup of chai i hope.

Now to Srinagar... For some reason, I have to go back to Kargil, take the same route to Drass onward to Srinagar... I will be going via the Zojila Pass, made famous by the millions of plunderers that took this route for a taste of India, for millenia.....

Kargil

Left Leh this morning by the early morning bus.

Riding past the Indus.. she is growing in proportion as she gets further from Sindhughat... where it was just a little stream...

Visited Asghar's family yesterday.. beautiful 1yr old kid Zain ul Hassan.

BTW All 1yr olds look alike. Adithri, Manaal, I remember you.

Asghar with 1yr old son

Zain Al Hassan

Asghar with Mom and Sister


Grandmom!


No messages from my sisters...?? Kaithrin livantha ga...

I am in Kargil now.

Almost everything is closed now due to Ramzan, everybody's going home after Roza, which is very important to the folk here. Nice.

I am going to Drass tomorrow to see Tiger Hill, Tololing etc.. Evening I will be back and take the night bus to Srinagar.

There is no militancy problem here. Everybody is friendly.


People do watch PTV. Musharaff was getting a lot of free press for his new book.

The town of Lamayuru and the river by the same name.

On the way to Kargil..

Some views of Leh town

I have shrunk the pics from Mega mega pixels to 16kb worth.. :) Will put the rest in a fileserver...

Here are some views of Leh town from the surrounding hill tops.

Leh town with the Shia Imam Barga mosque in center.



Pretty much the center of the town.

The tsemo castle and the palace taken from the Shanti Stupa.

Some more pics later. It is 8pm now and it is 12C or so outside. I am going for dinner now.

The Kali Mandir

The Kali Mandir is claimed by the local priest (I believe him) to be around 900 years old. There are Buddhist and possibly Hindu pictures on the wall. Quite entertaining.

Now, you have got to see Her!!! the verisome Kali Matha!!

She is really the Kali that anything evil will fear to the core. Her face is open for display only in January. The whole visage is terrifying and inspiring. They have bottles of rum that they offer Her as prasad.

View of the valley from Kali Mandir...



The entrance to the Kali mandir... "Inside photography strictly prohibited"


The priests have an archery competition in the next two days.

When it snows, there is an ice skating rink being made, which will be used for ice hockey competitions as well.. which do happen in winter. The Ladakh Scouts are pretty good at it as well.

The Indian Army

There is visible presence of the Indian Army here. The trucks moving in every direction, the officer jeeps and soldiers walking around.

I visited the Hall of Fame of the Indian Army. The famous names of Zorawar Singh, Bana Singh, Col Thapa (forgot the first name) are showered with explanations of their deeds in battle.

The army has won a lot of goodwill here after "Operation Sadbavana" where the army teaches the children, runs the General Hospital, takes locals on trips to Chandigarh, Delhi etc.. inculcates several skills... The local public is also very enterprising and a lot of them recall how they went up to the front lines to help the Indian Army with lugging up everything as porters, and the dangers that they faced.. most of this stuff had to be done in the nighttime as well...

And what a coincidence.. The jawan to the left of me is from Mylapore and the one to my right from Pilani.. both places where I have lived!

There is an airfield here used by both civil and defence.

Still in Leh

Yesterday I met this bunch of folks... an australian, a couple of germans who are teaching english in local school here... they have been here for a few months and will be around till the end of the school term... cool..

Slept off through the morning... Sunday a day of rest... hehe.

Then went to the Shanti Stupa. It is built by the Japanese and there is a Japanese monk who still lives here.

It is tough to climb the steps more than 10 at a time. Then pant for a few seconds and go at it again.

Took some pics and breathed in the landscape. It feels good. :)

The Shanti Stupa built by Japanese.


The Buddha inside the Shanti Stupa. The Japanese monk (not in picture) sits to the left.

Thats the Shanti Stupa.

The Palace and The Castle

And then I took off on a walk to the nearby palace... Instead of taking the beaten path, I climbed up on one of the rocky faces... par for the course!!!

There is nobody in the palace, the ASI is trying to revive it...

The Leh Palace

The Leh Palace

On top of the world!!

The Stok Glacier from a distance, tomorrow I get just a little closer to it...

The entrance to the Leh Palace...