Bye Bye Leh, Hello Kargil

Taken from a wee blog I had going in 2015

Bye Bye Leh, Hello Kargil Ah, the first month of my gap year has come to an end and what better time to write and reflect on it than 15 days too late? Well obviously one month truly away from home is a momentous occasion but that isn’t the real reason I am writing this much delayed blog post. The real reason is that I am leaving the glamorous city of Leh to head into the unknown (in more than one way) that is Kargil. That’s right, from tomorrow onwards, I will have relocated to Kargil – a much less touristy and much more conservative place than Leh. The reason for my relocation is as follows: 17000ft feel that they have reached a point where their work can be spread over a greater region. Hence Kargil, being the district-neighbour of Leh, is the region of interest at this point. I shall, therefore, be heading over there to trek through the Zanskar Valley in the conquest of finding schools and getting crucial information about them which can later be used to better understand the region. This is the first step of many that 17000ft undertook in Leh and now in Kargil, so there is something enthralling about being at the foundation of a brand new challenge. And what a challenge this will be… but I will get to that later. Now I have to deal with the hidden sentimentality that I have buried deep down for my time here in the city of Leh.

Leh will always hold a special part in my heart. Over here, I earned my first salary (skipping over the 5-ruppee massages I gave my grandparents all those years ago) and deposited my first check. Over here, I hand-washed my clothes for the first time (yes, I am a late-bloomer) and did so strategically AND idiotically after the electricity went off. Over here, I also met a great bunch of people including an ex-special forces officer who used to lend his aircrafts to the UN and learnt kung-fu with his wife in Shaolin Temples in China and a French skier/professional white-water rafter who was frustrated by the recent earthquake in Nepal for messing with his Everest attempt (a noble man indeed). This was a place of first in which I was thrust into embracing a life of independence head first. No babying around happened here. I had work hours, I had to get up on time, ensure that I was fed, do my own errands. I had to be my own mom.

But that in itself was the fun part and it came easily and naturally to me. It also made me realize the beauty of independence (of course in a city environment). Being independent, I had to rely on no one but myself. If I messed up, I was to blame. If I did something great, I knew I was the cause. I could experience things that I wouldn’t necessarily experience otherwise. Group settings, especially while doing tourist things is a major pain. In a museum, you can’t stop and read about every exhibit you see. In a temple, you can’t randomly sit down for two hours during a meditation session because you ‘feel like it’. Individually, you needn’t worry how your social counterpart is doing or appreciating your choice in touristy location because you are the only one there. Peace, quiet, no need to consistently have a conversation for the sake of avoiding awkwardness (which happens to be my greatest fear). And weirdly enough, I didn’t miss having someone to go home to and tell about how my day was (even though my daily summaries could fit on a peanut). However, this was only a month and maybe an extended duration would drive me crazy but at this specific instant, I am satiated. I guess I will get a first hand experience of that in my 7-months in the Andamans.

This month did go quickly, though. I managed to get propositioned by my landlady for her daughter (two years younger than me) and then, two weeks later, politely told to leave her guesthouse. Guess laughing at her proposal had an adverse effect. I also managed to get myself cursed by four hundred years old human femurs which resulted in me breaking my boots, glasses, belt as well as my friend’s shoes all on the same day. I managed to make a girl cry out of fear and tens of children ridiculously happy by teaching them the alien concept of a high-five. I saw the doppelgänger of Juan Mata while achieving my lifelong dream of appearing on a Spanish Travel Show. I tried and failed at smuggling a Canadian into an unbelievably terrible palace/museum. I attended my first Buddhist meditation session where firangs made me realize how terrible my posture is. I got lost on a mountain cliff while being responsible for five Americans and subsequently chose and climbed down the ‘least’ dangerous cliff (or so they think). I’ve loved and lost, partially because that is a nice expression to use in a reflective blog post. I’ve been at the epicenter of the great Wifipocalypse of Leh 2015 where the loss of wifi was correspondingly followed by actual human interaction (weird right!?). I have haggled at stores with fixed prices and bought goods from store owners who expect a bargain. I have also experienced being chased uphill by a bull (although that was Kargil, where bulls running away from their owners is common practice).

So as you can see, this single month has thrown up a lot of things that wouldn’t seem too ordinary. But all that revolves around the city of Leh. A city where the law is so insignificant that finding the first fully fledged police chowka requires a 5 minute drive out of the city. And it is this inanely flexible law which makes me believe that Leh is such a phenomenal place. Contrary to the notion that a lack of enforced law results in havoc and mayhem, Leh is an incredibly calm city. Even with the rich foreigners to steal from and the incredibly distant cops, peace has managed to envelop this city. Weed, hash, local LSD (as I’ve been informed) is commonplace in restaurants and it, in a way, works! The freedom over here attracts tourists which generates revenue all round. It is a win-win situation! However, I am fairly sure that this is the cause of a few of the randomly weird things that go on in the city. First, every single restaurant is a multicuisine restaurant that has to have Italian, Israeli and Indian food on the menu. In fact, there is a restaurant called “Amigos” that is owned by Koreans that sells sushi rolls and has OPEN-FIRE PIZZA OVEN scrawled across its wall. A few steps further, one will find the “World’s Highest Paintball Grounds” that coincidently has a shop bang opposite openly selling vibrantly coloured bongs (mae out of that what you will). The local cow population rivals the actual local human population while cow-poop tracks mark routes almost as well as roads do (if you start going into the little by-lanes). My current neighbor has a Hannah Montana fridge (just wanted to put that out there). And last of all, the city has terrible puns emblazoned across T-shirts in every single merchandise shop including “How I Got Leh’d” and “Hard Yak Café” with the Hard Rock logo.

But this little challenge has to come to an end as new roads, specifically the Leh-Kargil Road, lie ahead. I will be trading in my comfortable room for a whole host of rooms while I go around the villages of Zanskar, surveying schools all around. It’s hello to a lot of mutton and a fraction of a possibility of yak meat as well as the invaluable underwear wearing techniques that have been passed down to me by my father as the bulk of my inheritance (contact him for details). Hopefully a month of walking and no distracting technology will see me returned a changed man, or the same guy but either way, it’s going to be a journey.

So don’t expect much more from me in this next month (better yet, keep low expectations for the frequency of these blogs) for I will be out of internet connectivity and my laptop battery may not be able to charge due to a lack of electricity granted to me by Kargil’s notoriously famous failed Hydropower Project. So I will bid you adieu for now but my farewell to Leh shall be tomorrow when I climb up to Shanti Stupa for the last time at sunrise to get a last glimpse of Leh (until I come back a month later that is…)