Our bus left Leh at around 2:30 am in the morning. It was a
long journey. I don’t think I have ever done such a long non-stop bus journey
in my life. Though it was not crowded like the government buses that we had
travelled it was still very cramped for an 18 hr journey.
The Leh-Manali road is around 480 km long and it passes
through one of the highest motorable roads in the world. It climbs up to a
height of 5300 m altitude. It goes through 5300+m altitude passes at least 3 times.
The road winds up and down giving spectacular views of the Himalayan mountain
ranges. The roads are not well paved most of the time and in some place it’s
just dirt road with potholes. The roads hardly had the width of a truck, and
being a 2 way road made the travel extremely dangerous and scary at times. But
the journey through the mountains, passes, valleys, riverbanks, plateaus are so
beautiful that given all the risks and discomforts, it still is worth to take
the trip at least once in a life time.
The bus made two long stops in the 18 hr journey for
breakfast and lunch. The high altitudes means the air was thin and I started
getting headaches afterwards – a clear symptom of altitude sickness.
The long journey was very tiresome. If I had known this
earlier that it is going to be so tiring then I would have skipped this part of
the journey altogether and flew directly to Leh from Delhi.
We reached Leh at 8 pm. We took the taxi from the bus stand
to the Gangba homestay where I had stayed last year. It was really nice to see
some familiar faces and to be in the familiar atmosphere again. The family was
as friendly as before and I was surprised to see that they still remembered me.
We took a shower and had our homemade dinner. Afterwards we just sat there and
surfed the net, posting messages and photos. Finally it was wonderful to just
relax and not worry about anything.
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