India - Manali to Leh

Our last of three nights in Manali was lovely, we'd had such a relaxing time there and this really capped it off. As we mentioned earlier, Rhona has gone off all Indian food in her mis-timed 'pregnancy sick', and has been particularly missing a bit of a taste of home. The night before, Sam and Becky had us over for macaroni cheese, yey! But we'd heard about a total British hang-out, and the fanciest restaurant in town, that apparently even had roast lamb with mint sauce on the menu! we decided to treat ourselves; we arrived and it was just spectacular - It looked like the nicest poshest place you could go to in the most beautiful part of Scotland. The specials board was full of classic British pub favorite's like roasts and baked trout. We enjoyed it greatly and it was just what we needed, we went back to the van very satisfied! It struck us that we would never be able to go to somewhere like that in Britain as it would be far too expensive, which made it all the more enjoyable!

Our plan was to head north over four enourmous Himalayan mountain passes to the town of Leh right in the middle of old Tibet, and only accessable during summer when the passes are able to be cleared of snow. After that, if the security situation is all clear, we will continue the loop around to Srinagar and Jammu before returning past Delhi. If not we'll go back the way we came!
The next morning we arose at 4 to tackle the Rohtang pass early before the weather came in, but found to our dismay that half of Manali seemed to have the same idea. The road (bad, narrow, steep, muddy) was completely choka with Indian tourists in guided tour jeeps (big business in Manali) taking day trips up to the pass to see the snow. They all wanted to drive way faster than us and would come up right behind us blaring their horn as if we should just drive off the edge to get out of their way. It was a shame because the scenery was so beautiful. After just 1/2 an hour driving we were in a traffic jam - complete standstill for 1 1/2 hours! The cause seemed to be a patch of slippery steep mud that people kept getting stuck on. Don't know what the problem was though, we just drove up it. The drops would be severe on the one side with no barrier or anything, and on the other side would often be a sheer cliff of rock overhanging over the road. A lot of the way it was just one lane, which made passing a truck coming the other way quite interesting! How close to the edge do you go?! Another 2 hours and we were at the top, which was an absolutly hilarious tourist camp! There was basically a small patch of dirty old snow with about 1000 indians running in it, kissing it, making snowmen in it, and having Yak rides across it? It was quite funny because they were all in massive thermal arctic survival suits which they had been sold on the way up, but it was about 18 degrees! We jumped out in t-shirts and found it quite pleasant!

We quickly moved on down the other side and the change was instantaneous; almost devoid of all vehicles, the clouds, humidity and day trippers vanished, and we were surrounded by big lonely mountains, and blue skies. Averaging 10mph, down an incredibly steep slope with countless switchbacks, we arrived in Keylong, our destination for that day. We filled up at a fuel station that had a sign saying 'next fuel - 365km', and we found that despite being 3300 meters high, it was rediculously hot. It may be raging monsoon on the other side of the pass, but on this side it is as dry as a bone, with a very strong sun. We soon realised how easy it is to get sunburnt at this altitude when we went for a walk the next day, and were slapping on suncream every 1/2 hour.

Rhona has still been struggling with feeling sick every day, and we were beginning to wonder if all this was a good idea, and if we should just pack it in if we're not having a chance to enjoy it properly. The walk we went for was meant to be a short two hour trek up to a Buddist monastry on the hillside, but after 4 hours we had still not made it due to tiredness, so we just went back. Real shame as two things that Rhona loves is Indian food, and walking, and she's unable to do either. Well the altitude seems ok, so we'll continue slowly up the valley and stop another night before going for the big passes which is just going to be so cool!! As long as Rhona can enjoy the views, and Simon can enjoy the driving we're ok!

When we headed off up the valley, the road seemed better than what we had been on so far, and we reached our designated camp spot, the village of Darcha - the last permanent settlement for the next 200 miles by 11am. We (well Simon coz Rhona can't stomache it) got a big slap up Indian lunch from one of the many tent 'dhabas', which cook up cheap nosh for truckers and travellers, then we got a cup of chai...after that we realised that there really was nothing else to do there so we said "sod it, lets just go over the first pass and sleep on the other side!". So we did! This pass takes you up to just under 5000m which is very high, and we were glad of our 5 days acclimatising in Manali and Keylong. At about 4500m there was a tiny remote mountain lake with a man with a single pedal boat thing for hire which we thought was quite hilarious, and were very temped to go on it just because of the bizarreness of it! It was like the one's you get in the boating lake in Alexandra park in Hastings! Continuing onwards the road would be absolutely horrendous one moment allowing us to only crawl along at around 5mph, and then there would be an amazing wide, new tarmac road for a while. There seemed to be teams of men and women all the way along the road just continually fixing it. They would stir their huge pots of tar over great black fires, and chip away at rocks to fill the holes. At one point one of the many rickety river bridges that consist of a couple of steel girders with sheets of steel or wood laid across them had collapsed. They are quite hair-raising at the best of times, and the noise driving across them as the unfixed steel plates clatter and move about is quite undescribable. At some points the sheets would have shifted revealing large gaps that had to be driven over. well with this particular one, the only option was to drive over the deep cascading river at a 'fording point' next to it. We had done this before, but this river looked very deep and very fast compared to any of the other ones. We concluded that other vehicles (albeit mostly 4x4's or trucks) had made it, so we would be able to. I (Simon obviously) knew the engine air intake should be ok as that is halfway up the side of the van by the drivers door, but I was a little concerned about the exhaust going too deep under water and choking the engine. That would be awkward - stuck in the middle of a raging torrent with a flooded engine...hmmm... Well there was nothing for it but to take the plunge, and after a bit of encouraging advice from a motorcyclist (who incedentally, being on a motorbike was able to ride straight over the bridge) we did. I just kept it in first and kept the revs and speed up and hoped for the best. The first section was OK at around 50cm deep, but then we just dropped down a big step and water started pouring over the front of the van up to the windscreen! I knew that the exhaust pipe would be underwater, so I floored it and hoped that the pressure of the gases would overcome the weight of the water. The rear wheels bounced and scrambled over the slippery rocks on the river bed and then all of a sudden we were on the other side! Yey! what fun! I was overwhelmed by an overriding desire to do it again! Luckily Rhona managed to talk some sense into me and we drove on!

Up to the top we were realising just how much the altitude sapped power from the van. It was pathetic, we rarely got out of second even on fairly level ground! Over the top and we were presented with the biggest landscapes we had ever seen, mountains and glaciers close up on both sides, then opening up into a vast wide valley below. The bottom of the valley looked flat and green, but was scarred top to bottom by a spectacular deep canyon. It was quite amazing. We arrived at 'Sarchu' which is a kind of tented sleep over point for truckers, and some travel companys have their own camps there as well. It's at the low point before it begins to climb up to the next big passes (two more to go). That said it was still up at around 4500 meters! We drove off the trail and found a very secluded camping spot by the canyon with beautiful views. Rhona had her afternoon snooze, and then we were moved on by some people who told us that we were destroying the nature by sleeping there. So we drove back up to the dust bowl of Sarchu and parked up with the truckers.

By 10pm the area was completely awash with trucks stopping for the night, so we decided to get up at 4am again to try and beat the rush. we couldn't imagine anything much worse than being stuck behind lines of lorries belching their way up the single lane passes. Our plan worked and we were on the road before 5 just as the sun was rising and the truckers were emerging from their slumber. We had a clear road to ourselves, and didn't see another vehicle for around 2 hours which was lovely. We climbed up to the next pass - 'Lachlung La' which was higher than the last, drove down through more incredible scenery which had become very desert like, and up to the highest pass - the Tanglang La, which at 5328m/17500ft is the 2nd highest motorable road in the world. Incedentally, the highest motorable road in the world at 5601m is the 'Khardung La' just around the corner, and we were quite tempted to drive up it just to say we had done it, but it turns out you need all sorts of 'inner line permits' for going close to the disputed borders with China and Pakistan? So we chose to be satisfied with just the 2nd highest! At one point the road just diverted off into a massive dust flat where you just had to pick your own route across this huge bowl at the bottom of the valley to the other side. The problem was that this dust was like talcum powder up to a few feet deep in places, and it was a little tricky finding our way through the more shallow bits to avoid going under! All said, after 9 bone shaking hours we arrived in Leh with pleanty of time to settle in! The underside of our poor Matatu had received a good battering from rocks, and the engine seems a bit ratty, but all in one piece!

This little excursion has re-written our preconceived ideas on the word 'romote'... We realised that when you drive for three days seeing no permanent civilisation, just occaisional summer-only tents housing people to service the road that are only there for a few months a year, it could be classed as remote?

We have been quite ammused by some of the Random rhyming 'safety awareness' signs that we have seen by the road. Things like: 'safety on the road is 'safe tea' at home', and 'I am very curvaceous, treat me gently'. The best one has to be this pictured to the right...

Leh turned out to be a lovely town. The first thing we noticed was that there was no rubbish anywhere unlike the rest of India which is quite frankly a tip. They have a 'no plastics' policy which is quite impressive. It is also in the rain shadow of the Himalayas, so its annual rainfall is on par with the sahara desert. We found a beautiful guesthouse to stay at though, with stunning views across the valley towards snow capped Himalayan peaks.

Distance travelled so far: 8978 miles

Max temp: 29

Min temp: 3