Im now on my third full day in Leh and getting pretty used to traveling again. Life is still kinda funny due to the 12 hour and 30 minute time difference from good ole Colorado but plenty of food and sleep will make anyone feel pretty great, even if most of the grub looks like its already been digested once.
We are staying at a kayaker friendly hotel called the Oriental Guest House, comfortably outside of town and away from the horns, constant near misses between cars driving too fast, pedestrians wandering around in a cloud, tourists and locals eratically driving motorcycles throught the narrow streets and cows slowly meandering about. The Oriental is an amazing place. I was fairly shocked when they showed me my room, sure that they were showing me someone's room that is much more high class or important. My view overlooks the Indus valley and 20,000 foot plus mountains across the valley, capped in glaciers and very rugged. The view immediately out my window is the property garden full of veggies we eat for dinner daily that is surrounded with tons of flowers, butterflies and little birdies, who sing me awake every morning. It is kind of something out of a dream. Let me give you an idea:
We are staying at a kayaker friendly hotel called the Oriental Guest House, comfortably outside of town and away from the horns, constant near misses between cars driving too fast, pedestrians wandering around in a cloud, tourists and locals eratically driving motorcycles throught the narrow streets and cows slowly meandering about. The Oriental is an amazing place. I was fairly shocked when they showed me my room, sure that they were showing me someone's room that is much more high class or important. My view overlooks the Indus valley and 20,000 foot plus mountains across the valley, capped in glaciers and very rugged. The view immediately out my window is the property garden full of veggies we eat for dinner daily that is surrounded with tons of flowers, butterflies and little birdies, who sing me awake every morning. It is kind of something out of a dream. Let me give you an idea:
So needless to say, we have a pretty amazing sanctuary here. The people are incredibly friendly as well. This is a predominantly Buddhist part of India, which is kinda weird because its so close to China and Pakhistan but I guess there are a lot of Tibetan refugees here. Good for this area, it is really friendly and safe.
We've done some exploring the past few days around the valley, trying to aclimatize ourselves to the high altitude that will certainly make us breathe harder than we'd like when we start paddling tomorrow. Yesterday we started out on a journey to find the Donkey Sanctuary, not my first choice but porque no? We walked high up above Leh to another small village, mostly a farming community of very friendly people that live in both tents, small mud brick houses, and some in larger more ornate but still mud brick houses. On our loop, we visited an old palace, I think its called the Leh palace, and an active monastery that are high on a hilltop and dominate every view of the valley close to town.
You can see from town, the palace and monastery high up on the hill. Look close, through all those overhead wires. And a few more pics of downtown Leh from the Splash Adventures office. Splash hooked us up with a lot of good river info, since there's really not a lot of great info here.
Ok, my attention span has offically met its match. Im off to do my first yoga class in India. Then tomorrow we paddle. First we will head to the mighty upper Indus, then we will do the Zanskar multi day, then another 3 day trip. Apparently everything here takes at least a day to drive to so check back in a week or so, Ill give you an update of the adventures.
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