Author archive
9 August 2013
It was a very civilised departure time of 1110 for our flight from Leh to Delhi. We arrived at the airport about 2h prior to find the queue quite long. As usual, security was tight (but inconsistently enforced, eg. some people snuck water bottles through while others weren’t allowed). After takeoff, we had a normal […]
8 August 2013
A wet start I woke to the sound of rain in the middle of the night. It felt very cold and I was pleased we had extremely heavy blankets to keep me warm. I went back to sleep and woke before 0700. I took a sip of water from my bottle and it taste very chilled. Stepping […]
7 August 2013
Possible renal failure due to Diamox? Kim was unwell during the night. He had to go pee a lot; the symptoms resembled when he had acute renal failure. This made sense as Diamox works by (according to Wikipedia) altering the normal kidney, which after several intermediate actions causes the blood to take on more oxygen. […]
6 August 2013
The palace and the fort We had a leisurely breakfast at one of the several lovely garden cafes in our corner of town. The plan was go visit Leh Palace (which resembles the Potala in Lhasa) and also the ruins of Tsemo Fort. It would be a hike to the former and another to the […]
5 August 2013
We couldn’t decide on whether to eat breakfast or not; precious minutes could mean missing a minivan to Leh and having to wait hours for the next one to fill. We ate anyway, in the hotel restaurant, before taking the short walk to the taxi stand. As with yesterday, we were the first again. We […]
4 August 2013
Leaving Srinagar Our Srinagar guesthouse host brought us tea in the morning. He wanted us to help locate this guest from Christchurch who had stayed with them several times. A quick look on White Pages did the trick. We were pleased to be able to make the old man happy. We will give the lady […]
3 August 2013
Today is our day around Sringar by tuktuk, starting with the Khanqah Shah-i-Hamadan mosque in the old city, dating from the 1730s. It is a beautiful spired building decorated with papier mache and wood panelling. Text continues after this gallery. Next was the plainer but larger Jama Masjid from 1672 which has four […]
2 August 2013
We slept in today. It was a leisurely breakfast before leaving the houseboat at 1100. The houseboat is actually docked on the side of the lake close to a small road, even though we had rowed across from the other shore when we arrived … I suppose that is for a more dramatic effect. The […]
1 August 2013
We woke at 0445 as we had arranged to be picked up at 0500 to go to the floating markets in the lake by shikara (row boat). If there is one thing I didn’t like about our houseboat is the pricing for this excursion. They tried charging is INR2000 for a 3 hour outing when […]
31 July 2013
Leaving Jammu It looked like I had chosen a good day to leave Jammu. Compared to the overcast weather I’ve had yesterday on the bus, it was a scorcher. Feeling guilty about not having explored Jammu, I walked across to the Raghunath Temple across the road for a look-see before breakfast. I took a tuktuk […]