Hindu temple
This morning we went to Schiphol Airport, near Amsterdam. Around noon our plane left. At the end of the evening our plane landed for a stop in Abu Dhabi. We had to spent a couple of hours there before we continued our flight to India.
We arrived in Delhi early in the morning, but according to
dutch time, this was still middle of the night. The first thing I noticed was
the humid heath when we left the plane. From the airport we took a bus to Delhi.
The sky outside was very cloudy and even foggy. My first impression was that
everything looked rather old and dirty. Some streets were unpaved and had many
holes and cowshit. There were not many people on the streets, because of the
early hour. It took us a while to find a guesthouse. There we first took a rest,
because we were still very tired.
Later that morning we took a walk in the neighbourhood. We
first went to the tourist office to get more information about the city and also
about Kashmir. We had planned to go there after Delhi, but we were not sure
because of the political unrest. Later that day we met a guy (named Nazir) that
knew an english couple that were going to Kashmir too. In the afternoon we
visited a beautiful marble hindu temple.
Hindu temple
Outside the temple there were a lot of beggars, hawkers and
other people trying to make money, such as snake-charmers. When we were back in
our guesthouse we first took a shower, because in this hot weather you easily
sweat a lot.
In the evening we went to Nazir's house for
dinner, together with the english couple (their names were Barney and Rachel).
He had invited us this morning. The meal was very good. A large amount of rice
and chapati-bread and many different sauces and vegetables. They didn't have any
knives and forkes, though, so we had to eat it with our bare hands.
Meal at indian home
Today we were going with an organised bus-ride through the city. Nazir had recomended this to us as an easy and cheap way to visit many interresting places in Delhi without having to bother about transportation. The bus went first to the same temple that we had visited yesterday. But this was no real problem for us, because it was a beautiful temple, and now we could take a closer look at it. The next goal of our tour was the Red Fort. It is a large fortress with red walls, containing various palaces. Unfortunatly many palaces were rather decayed. After this the bus took us to Mahatma Ghandi's grave and to the former home of Indira Ghandi, and to a couple of other monuments.
Mausoleum
In the afternoon we visited the Bahai temple, which is located
just outside the city. The bahai religion was founded in the previous century in
Persia. It has rather modern views and great tolerance towards other religions.
The temple is a beautiful marble building shaped like a lotus flower.
The last goal of our tour was the Qutb Minar mosque. This
is India's oldest mosque, but only its minaret has remained intact. On a square
near the mosque is a large iron pilar. There's a legend that says that everybody
who can enclose the pilar with their arms backwards, will recieve luck.
Qutb Minar mosque
This afternoon we would take the bus to Kashmir. In the
morning we woke up late and took another visit to the centre of town. Then we
met Nazir and the english couple at the ticket office. The road from Delhi to
Kashmir was first a big four-lane road (although there were also bicyclists and
pedestrians on it), but soon the road got smaller. There were many trucks on the
road, which often had many paintings on the outside. Most of them had large
amounts of thick black smoke coming from the exhaust-pipe.
A couple of hourse after leaving Delhi, the bus got a flat
tire. It took a long time before it was repaired. In the maintime we sat near
the road, talking with the other passangers. Because of the delay we had to wait
until midnight before we could have dinner.
In the early morning we arrived at the border of the state of
Kashmir. The bus stopped here for registration of the passengers and for
breakfast. After having passed the city of Jammu, we entered a mountain
landscape. From the bus we watched a beautiful scenery with little streams and
waterfalls and groups of monkees sitting along the road. As we travelled
further, the mountains got higher.
This afternoon the bus had trouble again. This time
something to do with the oil. Again it took quite a while before we could
continue. In the meantime we could eat something in a small restaurant. After
this lunch we sat down beside the road, talking with some other travelers. Among
them was a group of 2 danes and 1 welshman living in Denmark (in the rest of
this story I'll name this group 'the danes').
When the bus finaly could continue, it was already getting
dark. It would not be possible to reach Kashmir today, as was planned. We would
have to go through a tunnel, which was not open at night. The bus stopped in a
small village before the tunnel, where we could sleep in some kind of old
barrack.
We were waked at 5 o'clock, to continue our journey. Soon we
reached the tunnel that gave access to the Kashmir valley. We noticed that the
whole valley was swarmed with soldiers. You saw them everywhere. Along the road,
on top of hills, in the woods and most of all in the vilages. At every
streetcorner there were heavily armed soldiers. It looked like a scene from some
Vietnam movie.
The houseboat that we had rented looked beautiful. Because
of the tense situation in Kashmir, there were not that many tourists. Therefor
we could get a very luxurious boat for a little amount of money. On our boat we
had our own servant, named Mashid (as far as we had understood). He was a
friendly guy.
Inside houseboat
We spent this afternoon by resting on the porch. Every now and then small boats passed by with people that wanted to sell things. Mostly hip clothes and ornaments. We were usualy not very interrested in their merchandise, though.
This morning the danes moved to the houseboat next to ours. They didn't like the one they had first. Our plan for today was to make a tour on the lake with a shigara (a small boat). Mashid also joined us as our guide. The first thing we approached was an army checkpost, where we had to show our passports. We visited a number of beautiful mughal gardens.
Mughal gardens
After visiting the gardens we went to the other side of the
lake. Here was the Hazratbal mosque. This place was swarmed with soldiers too.
We were not allowed to come too close to the mosque.
We now went through the Nagin lake. This is one of the
smallest and also one of the nicest lakes in the area. After this we entered
Srinagar. The town made me think of Venice, because of its many canals and
bridges.
In the evening we had diner together with the danes. After
diner Barney and Rachel came too. The favorite passtime of them and the danes
was smoking lots of hashish. We also played chess and some other games.
In the morning we relaxed a bit on the roof of our houseboat,
together with the danes. Sunbathing and playing chess. It was not that very hot,
but the sunshine was intense. In the afternoon we climbed a hill in the area. On
top of it was an old little hindu-temple. Next to it was another army-post. From
the hill we had a great view on the valley. We could see a lot of places we had
visited yesterday. Downhill we took another way, which was steeper and had no
shadow. This was quite tough. When we were walking downwards we heard a speech
coming from a mosque. We could not understand it, but it had a rather agressive
sound. Perhaps a call for jihad against the indian army?
Today another dutch guy had come to the boat next to us. He
had made a trekking tour through the mountains the past days. We had been
thinking about that too, but we didn't have enough time for that, because we had
already booked a return flight from Leh to Delhi. We had also thought about
smaller trips, but these were either too expensive or too unsafe.
In the evening we all came together in our living-room
again.
Today we wanted to hire a shigara for ourselves, but this turned out to be difficult to arrange. So we decided to spend the day realxing on our houseboat.
This was our last day on our houseboat. Again we spent the day
relaxing. This was nice because we were facing a rather tough travel the next 2
days.
In the evening Mashid took us to a carpet factory in the
neighbourhood. He said that he worked here in the winter, when there is little
tourism. It was interresting to see. All carpets were made by handwork. Every
little thread was layed in seperatly, according to papers with color- codes.
Quite impressive. Off course after the showing us the factory, they wanted to
sell us carpets. But unfortunatly our budget did not allow us to.
This morning we left for Leh. Leh is the capital of Ladakh, a small piece of Tibet which is part of India. The bus ride to Leh was going to take 2 days. In the bus we met some other travelers. Some of them hadn't liked their houseboat in Srinagar. We were sitting in the back of the bus, which was a bad place, because here you could feel every bump and every hole in the road. The landscape that we went through looked beautiful.
Small town at Srinagar - Leh route
After a while we reached the Zoji-La pass. This is a long and
steep and unpaved pass. Its highest point is at about 3500 meters. Just before
the pass there was another checkpost. The pass is only open in one direction at
a time. The landscape was very impressive. At a certain point the road was
blocked by a couple of large rocks. These were blown away with dynamite.
In the evening we reached the town of Kargil. We had to
spend the night here. We chose a room in very cheap and sleazy hotel. The
population of Kargil are mostly shia muslims. In the restaurant where we were
eating this evening there were pictures of the iranian Ayatollah Khomeini on the
wall.
we had to get up very early this morning. The bus left at 5 o'clock. The landscape in this area looked very barren. Again the bus went through some big passes. The highest point today was above 4000 meters. The views were breath-taking. Sometimes the mountain slopes were very very steep, and the valleys sometimes were incredibly deep. Deeper than one can imagine.
Checkpost at Srinagar - Leh route
Around noon the bus reached the Indus valley. From now on the journey to Leh would be easy. We had lunch in a small village. This was the first tibetan village. There were many buddhist stupas everywhere. Later this afternoon we reached Leh. This place had a very 'eastern' atmosphere. You often saw buddhist monks and tibetan 'prayer-wheels'.
Does the number 13 bring bad luck? This night I got ill. I had gotten diarrhoea. At least every half hour I needed to go to the toilet. I decided to stay at home today. My friend visited a tibetan monastry in the area. In the afternoon I went to the garden of our guesthouse to get some sunshine, because in our room it was rather cold. In the evening I went to a restaurant to eat some white rice and black tea. After that I went back to bed. Our beds had very thick and heavy blankets to keep us warm.
Still ill. Although not as bad as yesterday.
I was feeling a bit better again today. This morning I had breakfast again. In the afternoon I felt well enough to take a trip to a monastry. I chose the Tikse monestry, because this one was the closest, and I didn't want to travel in a bus for too long. My friend stayed at the guesthouse, because he had already visited this one. The bus station in Leh was very chaotic. It took me a while to find the right bus.
Tikse monastry
It was quite hard to climb up the hill to the Tikse monastry.
Because of the high altitude of Ladakh, you easily get lack of oxigen. When I
entered the monastry a monk called me and took me to a room with a huge gilt
Buddha statue. When I left the room I heard some monks blowing on horns. In
another room a ceremony started. A group of monks there were sitting still and
humming, and every now and then they suddenly made a big noise with horns and
drums. A few child monks were serving tea.
In the evening we ate at a resturant which specialised in
middle eastern food. It tasted very good.
Today was our flight back to Delhi. At the airport there were
many security checks. We were checked with metal-detectors about a dozen times.
The view from the plane on the mountains was spectacular. A few hours later we
landed in Delhi. The hot climate there was quite a shock again. We first went to
the train station to buy tickets for Bikaner for tonight. At the train station
we were constantly being harrased by beggars, touts and "friends". I got very
tired of this. Later we went to a 'Wimpy' restaurant for a hamburger (actualy a
lambburger) and a milkshake. After that we visited the Jami Masjid, the largest
mosque in Delhi.
At the train station it was difficult to find our places on
our train. We asked several people, but nobody seemed to know. But at some
moment a guy came by who glued papers with the names of the passengers on each
compartment. We had a 'sleeper' train where the benches could easily be
converted to beds. Quite handy.
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