Keylong to Leh (yet another long bus journey)

Keylong to Ladakh is a long, tiring bus journey, especially if you take an HRTC bus. Thankfully I was sitting beside a very nice French couple, Charles and Camille, who were going to Ladakh to trek for their honeymoon. As soon as I sat down they asked me "What my name was?" and "How long I'd been in India for?". At the first stop of the bus journey for breakfast an Indian man had to go back down, he couldn't go any further as he had been on a trek the previous night and had problems breathing since. I offered him a tablet I had for altitude sickness, he thanked me but declined and said he had to go back down. I told him I hoped he felt better soon. After taking a couple of photographs we got back on the bus and continued our ascent.

The next 6 hours were fairly uneventful; just chatting, taking photos of the beautiful views, 2 passport checks and an abundance of chai breaks. We also had to stop for an hour beside some snowy landscape that was very beautiful as there was a traffic jam, I wouldn't have imagined there would be traffic jams in the Himalayas, but it's still in India and anything is possible in this country


A truck driver let me sit in the driving seat of his truck for a photograph and his truck had a sign "SMILE IS TAX FREE ITEME" as well as the obvious hazardous sign letting everyone know the truck is "INFLAMMABLE", i'm sure it's meant to be flammable but indian signs are just too funny, haha.


I also climbed on top of the bus for a photo, oh the ways to make time fly.........

I had met a man whilst waiting for the bus who was from Pune and was going to Ladakh to teach yoga and he had given Guru his DVD that looked cheesy as hell. This man had some false pretense that he was something special and he seemed to think he was Osho. He was playing a whistle very badly at the pass on the mountain.


Throughout the trip there was beautiful Ladakhi music playing in the bus, one cd on repeat for 16 hours, obviously with Osho playing his whistle throughout and trying to get everyone to sing. At all the stops when I asked if there were any toilets I was told with a wistful look and a wave in a random direction "Oh yes, open toilet", basically the land of the world is your toilet. So, when we reached a stop that actually had a toilet for ladies we all ran to it, to find out it had no door and all the men could see in. I really didn't enjoy this experience for obvious reasons!!!!!

At this stop I ordered some vegetable soup and it was great, out of a packet, just like the soup you can get back home, GREAT. There was also the cutest little girl I think I've ever seen washing her hands repeatedly and laughing to herself. I took a few photographs of her and then she came over and started smacking me and giggling, haha, so cute.



There was only about 4 hours of our trip left to go and with so many changes of terrain around to check out the 18hr bus trip was going very quickly indeed. We had also made another few friends on the bus as well; Alok from Bombay and Akshay from Pune (cousins who were going to Ladakh together). Poor Akshay had the bench seat on the bus.

The drivers of the HRTC buses can occasionally leave the road and take a short-cut if they see fit and our driver did this so with about 2 1/2 hours to go we were thundering through desert and skipping many of the larger Deluxe buses, that also cost considerably more, with the Ladakhi music playing in the background.




With 1 1/2 hours to go I started feeling ill, I had faired better than the poor Chinese girl who was travelling with her friend and had been very sick since 1 hour into the journey. She had to be sick out of the window, leaning over her friend at least 10 times. When we stopped for chai my stomach was not fairing well and Oliver (a Hungarian boy travelling India alone for a couple of months), had a very sore head with the altitude, we bonded over a bus-hating conversation.

By the time we finally reached Leh it was now dark and with no accommodation booked we decided to join forces and all hunt together.