Delhi
We arrived at the airport in Delhi just after 10pm and were not looking forward to waiting around until 6 the following morning for our flight to Leh – the domestic terminals are not the best equipped in the world so we made the best of it and it eventually got round to 4.30am and we could check in. Thinking that we’d be on our flight within an hour and a half we relaxed a little (as much as you can after no sleep!) but 6am came and went and we were told there would be a slight delay – as it turned out we finally set off at 9am!

Leh
After a short flight we landed in Leh and were greeted by some locals in traditional dress welcoming us to the Ladakh Festival (the main reason for us going to Leh). As we hadn’t slept in around 36 hours we were desperate to find a room and get some much needed sleep – especially useful when you arrive in Leh as the altitude is around 4500 metres. Luckily we found a room pretty quickly and crashed out for the rest of the day!

It took us a couple of days to get used to the altitude and the temperature; it was just like being back in England (it even rained a lot!) – to protect ourselves from the cold we bought a blanket each as it was much cheaper than getting a whole new outfit! There were quite a few places that we wanted to visit and the only way that we could do it was by hiring a jeep so we went round all the travel agencies and finally found one that sounded good and booked ourselves on to a few trips.

The first trip we went on was a 2 day tour of the Nubra Valley which we shared with an English guy and a European couple. Unfortunately the weather was crappy so it wasn’t quite as impressive a view as we’d hoped for when we went over the highest motorable road in the world (5602m) at the Khardung La pass. From there we pretty much drove the rest of the day until we got to Diskit where we went into the Gompa (monastery) and had a look around. The final place we were visiting was Hunder where there are some sand dunes – not particularly impressive to be honest – although we did get to stroke some two humped camels! We then had another hour or so drive until we reached Sumur where we spent the night and had a pretty grim dinner which seemed to make everyone ill…

The following morning we drove out to some hot springs at Panamik – none of us were particularly bothered about these which was lucky as they were completely unusable and pretty damn ugly. We then headed back to Sumur to visit the Samstemling Gompa – then we had to endure an 8 hour drive back to Leh. I say endure as that morning one of the European couple had said they were really ill and to pick them up after we’d been to the springs and the Gompa. No problem we said and once we got back to pick them up she said not to worry about her and just get on with things as normal – normal to us had been stopping every hour or so for a smoke/drink/stretch and asking the driver to stop every time we wanted to take a photo. Turned out that they didn’t mean that and glared at us every time we wanted to stop – they didn’t even want to stop for lunch which we thought was a bit rude so we told the driver to stop anyway and we went off to have a tea and a few chocolate biscuits! All in all it was a bit of a disappointment as we saw very little and were just sat in the jeep most of the time – you can’t say we didn’t try though!

During the next few days we decided to head up to Leh Palace and have a look around – it’s very impressive as you look at it from the town centre but we highly advise anyone from paying the 100 rupee entrance fee as there was absolutely nothing inside it, except a very uninspiring room with some photographs! Up the hill next to the palace was Namgyal Tsemo Gompa – neither of us particularly fancied the walk up but didn’t have anything else to do so just got on with it and finally made it to the top after many breaks! The Gompa itself was completely locked up so we just enjoyed the views and had a rest before heading back down for a much needed drink (not beer as it’s ridiculously expensive in Leh).

After the last tour we decided to pay more for the next couple and go on our own so we didn’t have to deal with anyone else – well worth the extra cash! The next tour was a 3 day tour going to the following monasteries – Phyang, Alchi, Lamayuru, Dah, Basgo and Likir.

On the first day we wanted to get to Alchi to see part of the Ladakh Festival, an archery competition and traditional performances – so we went to Phyang quite early and arrived at Alchi just before the festivities were about to start. We had enough time to go and have a look around the Alchi temples – supposedly containing the most important Buddhist paintings in the world – the little that we managed to see were OK, nothing amazingly special though – I think the most impressive paintings were in the temple that was locked – a very typical thing in Ladakh – pretty much all the places we’d visited so far had at least one important room locked! After a late breakfast we headed over to the festival tent to see what was going on – and what a joke that turned out to be – there were a couple of locals (in very casual dress) charging tourists to fire a bow and arrow over the road and very little else. We decided to cut our losses and head off to Lamayuru and hope for something a little more interesting – and luckily the scenery was particularly impressive as we approached. The monastery was quite impressive from a distance but once inside it was pretty dull and we were starting to get a little disheartened with the tour – this wasn’t helped by our driver being a pain in the ass and not taking us to the cheapest guesthouse without us begging and always saying that it was impossible to eat anywhere!

We had a really good night’s sleep and woke up hoping for a better second day. When we had booked the trip the guy had told us we would be visiting Dah, which according to our guidebook was where a very small tribal group are located. The guy had said that we could spend the whole day and night in the village which sounded really good, especially for Kim as she really wanted to get some good photos of some tribal people. Once we arrived at Dah we were shocked, the place was non-existent, there were some steps up by the side of the road that led us through a few fields where we saw one old lady and absolutely nothing else! We asked our driver where we were expected to eat and sleep and he said that it was impossible in this area – aarrgh! We decided it would be best to head back to somewhere nearby to the places we were supposed to be going the following day. It didn’t take long before we realised that we could go to Likir and Basgo and then just go back to Leh before it got too late. So that’s just what we did, luckily both Basgo and Likir were pretty cool and we had a good afternoon before we arrived back in Leh.

Our final tour was just a half day tour of some of the nearby monasteries, the first on our list was Hemis Gompa – finally we had found a monastery that had more than one small room to look in and it was really impressive, one of the monk’s even asked me to polish the floors using some special slippers! The photographs will show you better than I can explain how impressive it was. Next we went to Thiksey Gompa, very impressive again from a distance but this time there actually was quite a lot of interest inside – again the photos give you a better impression than my verbal mess! The final stop on our tour was Shey Palace which had quite an impressive statue of Buddha inside but that was about it – probably the best tour we went on and by far the cheapest and shortest!

We had decided to stay in Leh until the end of the Ladakh Festival to try and actually see something of it as we were practically unconscious for the opening ceremony , Alchi was a sever disappointment and we had planned to see Cham dancing at Spituk Gompa but unfortunately Kim was really ill the morning we were supposed to go! The closing ceremony was the only thing left so off we went with very little hope for anything of interest – this was probably why Kim was quite unprepared to photograph all the people in traditional costume when we finally reached the polo ground!!! We didn’t get to see much of the ceremony as it was already jam-packed full of people but we did manage to find our way to the backstage area where everyone was getting ready and getting out of their costumes once they’d finished their performances. We had a few laughs with some of the participants and watched what we could from our vantage point until it finally came to an end.

It was finally time for us to leave after almost 2 weeks in Leh – so off we headed at 5am on a bus heading to Manali (Vashisht)  – a 2 day bus journey (or you can do it in 19 hours straight) that only takes you 485km! Needless to say it was quite an ordeal and a little painful on the buttocks after a while, we had to spend the night in a tent (not the nicest way to spend the night when you were told you would have your own room) and had very few breaks – all part of the experience though!

Vashisht
We finally arrived on the afternoon of the second day of travel and snagged ourselves a really good cheap room that seemed to be close to everything. There’s not actually very much in Vashisht but that’s probably why it’s so popular with the tourists – the highlight is the hot springs – unlike the other one’s we went to these are fully utilised in the form of public baths. The first time you go into the baths it’s quite hard to deal with the heat of the water, but after a few minutes your feet have finally warmed up and it’s a nice way to spend half an hour before getting back out into the cold!

We also met a Dutch guy called Manuel who stayed in the room next to ours and ended up playing cards most days/nights and also drinking quite a lot of cheap whisky and playing ridiculous drinking games (which inevitably lead to midnight hot springing!!). This was pretty much the routine for the next week apart from one day where we went to Manali to go and see a few sights, the temples weren’t particularly amazing but we did get to see an awful lot of Angora rabbits, not sure why but there are women everywhere trying to get you to have your photo taken with the bunnies!

McLeod Ganj
It didn’t take very long to get to McLeod Ganj from Manali but that was the problem! We had been told that the bus would leave Manali at 7.30pm and then arrive the following morning at around 7am, however we arrived at 4.30am and it was impossible to find a room – we had to wait around sat on the floor until 6.30am before any of the guesthouses would unlock their gates, but luckily we had our trusty set of cards to keep us all occupied! We had heard that the Dalai Lama was going to be holding some talks for 3 days so had decided it would be a good chance to go and see him. We never actually managed to see him but we sat just outside where he was doing the talks and listened for a while – didn’t understand most of it, even the bits in English were difficult to follow but nevertheless it was still a good experience.

It had been a while since Kim had taken any photographs, especially because Vashisht was not a very photogenic place, but there were some interesting shots to be had in McLeod Ganj – well there would have been if her camera lens hadn’t broken! So we booked the next bus to Delhi so that we could go and see the nice people at Canon and get it fixed – hopefully!

Delhi
We arrived early in the morning and made our way to Pahar Ganj to get a room sorted out before we headed over to the Canon service centre – trust them to stick it 40km out of the centre. Once we arrived at Canon we finally managed to convince them that the camera and lens were actually in fact Kim’s (they insist on ignoring women and speaking to the man) and they said they would give us a call to tell us how long it would take to fix, but it could be up to 2 weeks. Well there was no way we were going to stay in Delhi for that long so we luckily managed to book 2 seats on the next train to Goa that left the following afternoon.

When you hear the word “express” you assume it’s going to be speedy – how then, does it take the “Goa Express” almost 48 hours to travel from Delhi to Goa. As boring as the journey was it was still preferable to being stuck in Delhi so I suppose it’s not all that bad – plus you do get to sleep pretty well on the trains and have as much chai as you can drink.

Goa – Palolem
We were really looking forward to coming back to Palolem as we’d had some great times here on our last trip which was why it was such a shock when we saw how little of it still remained standing. The Indian government have enforced some restrictions that only allow the beach-side businesses to stay open for 6 months of the year, so for the other 6 months they dismantle everything and pack it all away. It’s just our luck that we were still too early for the season and most things were still packed away. We did manage to find a couple of good places to eat though and had our first beef steak in quite some time – I still can’t understand vegetarians!

The day after we arrived we had a call from Canon, we weren’t quite sure what we wanted to hear as we hadn’t been expecting them to call for at least another 4 days – on the one hand they could say that it all got fixed much quicker than planned, in which case we’d just spent 2 days on a train to only have to spend another 2 going straight back – or that it would be taking the full 2 weeks. Turned out that they couldn’t get the parts needed for the lens in the whole of India and had to get them shipped from overseas so it would be taking up to 15 days (not including Sundays) – at least we’d get a good tan by the end of it!!!

After 10 days we gave Canon a call and were told that everything should be fixed and ready to pick up the following Wednesday or Thursday at the latest so we headed off to the train station to book tickets back to Delhi – which turned out to be a bit of a trauma and ended up taking us over 7 hours! We spent our final couple of days sleeping in until lunch and then spending the afternoons on the beach before heading to our favourite English restaurant to fill up on delicious steaks!

It was finally time to head back to Delhi and carry on with our trip and finally visit Nepal (3 weeks later!) – all we had to do was endure the next 42 hours on the train!

Delhi
We arrived nice and early 2 days after setting off from Goa and got ourselves a room before giving Canon a call to tell them we’d be coming to pick up the camera and lens – only to be told that it wasn’t ready yet and that they were adjusting something. After arguing for a while explaining that we’d been told it should have been ready by now we decided to just wait until the day after. However, the following day we called back and were told to call them back 2 days later as the parts had only just arrived – again there were more arguments until Kim finally snapped 3 phone calls later and demanded that it be ready that night or early the following morning. 4 hours later we got a call saying that it was ready – after waiting a total of 3 weeks it only actually took them 4 hours to fix it!

We were finally ready to head off to Nepal and had decided to make our own way there via train and bus but because of all the problems with Canon we were stuck with having to book 2A tickets on the train (very expensive compared to our normal sleeper class) but luckily for us we got upgraded to first class when we got on the train. This actually turned out to be a major downside – because it was so nice in first class we decided that it was safe enough to get the laptop out and plug it in (you don’t get the luxury of a plug socket in sleeper class) – 30 minutes later there was a faint smell of something burning and then we finally figured out that the power supply for the laptop had somehow managed to burn out. Problem after problem – this one affected the both of us though as I would be unable to do any of my design work and Kim wouldn’t be able to download or adjust any of her photos! Not really what you want just as you enter a new country and especially after the past 3 weeks – although we shouldn’t really complain about having to spend 2 weeks on a beach in Goa!