Leh is still quite a remote place. While becoming very touristic with plenty of travel agencies and restaurants, most of them are just opened 4 months a year, the road to Leh being closed during the winter. There is also regular power shortage; electricity is just working in the sunset for a few hours, maybe during the night if you are lucky. Internet is therefore also rarely available and 3 times more expensive than in other cities (90 Rs vs 30 Rs an hour in an internet shop).
With the other travelers in the mini bus, we became friends and made some activities together in Leh. In the first days, we did almost only sightseeing or resting and got acclimatized at 3500m altitude. It is impressive how you get quickly tired from a normally quite easy hike. Not always that easy though, they love to build Gompa (Buddhist temple) at the summit of a hill, so you have a quite steep walk to get there.
I got sick arriving in India, having a diarrhea over a week. The pills I used to take in Germany caused me more troubles (heavy stomach pain), so I went to the doctor, actually to the hospital. It was quite an interesting experience: I paid only 2 Rs for the registration; got into the queue for the physician; after a while entered into the room where 2 patients were before me just being analyzed (so no privacy), and finally explained my problem and got a prescription within 2 min. It was already over! I went to the pharmacy next door and paid 90 Rs for a tablet of antibiotics and rehydration powder containing some minerals.
On the 31st, I had my first trek: with Dorothea, a German girl from our mini bus group, we wanted to go for 3-4 hours, but finally walked for almost 7 hours! Leh is like surrounded by mountains; we walked first at one side and though it will be too short to just come back, so we started climbing a mountain, reached the summit at 4200m almost only in short and t-shirt, kept walking on the crest and finally get down from the other side. Exhausting but amazing journey! Back in town, we were starving: we indeed started the trek without any food!
The first week of September is dedicated to the Ladakh festival: Ladakhi from different villages and valleys show their traditional dance and handicraft. You can also see polo match or participate to some meditation courses. It ends with the ‘Grand Ladakh Marathon’. So we stayed in Leh the 1st of September to see the opening ceremony (and the 3rd for a live dance performance). The festival was introduced a few years ago to attract more tourists. Indeed, they were almost as many photographs as Ladakhi with their traditional clothes! The culture is very close to Tibet here, many people are actually from Tibet. I found also many similarities with Mongolia, the harsh conditions are also similar: very sunny ¾ of the year and very cold the last quarter. The clothes are also quite similar to those made in Peru and Bolivia around the Titicaca Lake, which is also in a high altitude (3800m).
On the 2nd, we decided to get out of the city, and went with a local bus to Thiskey to see one of the major Buddhist monasteries in Ladakh.
We went the 4th and 5th to the Pangong Lake with a “Jeep”. Unfortunately, Manisha couldn’t join because she felt too sick. Dorothea had also some problem the way to the lake. We were finally just 4 in the car: Dorothea, I, and two British students. On the way, we saw a lot of marmots, yaks and marmots in the valley. The Changla pass was already under snow. The lake is beautifully blue, a little salty and apparently without any life, probably because it gets completely frozen in the winter. In that point, it reminds me the Dead Sea, but just 4700m higher (-400m versus +4300m)! The lake is also on the border with China: one third belongs to India and two third to China. The evening in the guest house restaurant was very friendly; I met a group of Indian guys on government duty to check the schools in the area: very interesting discussions!