Snow-covered mountainous landscapes evoke images of regal, grand beasts such as snow foxes, polar bears and snow leopards in one’s mind. A confused cow is all we had to be content with.

Everyone at our guest house was busy scraping and shoveling the snow away. In fact, practically every household in Leh had someone on their house’s roof clearing the snow away. It was almost like Sakranti in Gujarat or Independece Day in Delhi minus the kites.

The snowfall had caused the weather to clear up. The harsh Leh sun felt very welcome. Stray dogs had by now overcome their surprise at the sudden change in their landscape and had found themselves warm, dry, sunny patches of road to sleep on.

We had our brunch at a café near our guesthouse while looking at tiny streams of water from the melting snow dripping down the café’s ledge. We spent most of the day wandering purposelessly in the market.

Sidewalks that were shaded, had patches of snow that were now turning into slippery ice. In other places snow and dirt’s unholy matrimony was already begetting mud. By the time we were back (late in the afternoon), the cows had trundled back home and the landscape had drunk all the snow and turned ochre again.

As much as we had enjoyed the snow, we slept with a silent prayer for better weather the next day.

A visit to Alchi was the only thing on our itinerary. That gave us a lot of time to enjoy our journey. We drove down to the bank of a river on the way and collected colorful round pebbles. Some of them had been soaking the morning sun and were pleasantly warm to hold in our frigid hands while those that had languished in the shade were hail-cold.

The moment we passed the ruins of the 11th century Basgo monastery we found ourselves stuck in a traffic jam. Traffic jams in the mountains are not as much traffic jams as they are stalemates that can linger from 30 minutes to 3 hours. We almost look forward to them because they allow us to step out of the car, stretch our legs, and even go for a short stroll. This time our car happened to stop at a small village courtyard that had a cluster of apricot trees in full bloom. Between admiring and clicking those delicate flowers we forgot that we were on moments borrowed from our main journey and had to run to our car as the traffic started moving.

We were visiting Alchi on a friend’s recommendation who had mentioned the spectacular Apricot blossoms at the monastery complex. We were about two weeks too late. Most trees there had shed their flowers. But it took hardly any imagination to deduce how beautiful it must have have been.

While looking for our way out of the monastery, we ran into an old monk who insisted that we were going around the monastery in an anti-clockwise direction. He took us under his wing and made us do three clockwise rounds of the monastery.

On emerging out of the monastery, we were eager to walk in a straight line and told our driver to pick us down the road after a few minutes. It was 1 in the afternoon and the local school had just finished. Kids returning from school were enthusiastic about having their pictures taken. The brother in this brother-sister duo posed for me while the sister posed for the wife:

By this time, breakfast was already a distant memory. None of the restaurants we had seen during our visit last year had opened yet. We decided to continue our journey back to Leh and keep our eyes peeled for restaurants on the way. As we got closer to Leh the weather had turned a little ominous. Eerie light illuminated distant mountains. Barely-existent flakes of snow occasionally swirled down from fat grey clouds overhead.

On reaching Leh we bolstered oursleves with hot food and a short nap. In the evening I went to our hotel’s roof-top restaurant for a cup of hot ginger-honey tea. The mountains of the Stok range visible from here, were cloaked in clouds and mist. But what I’ll always remember this evening by, is this picture of a small monastery atop a hill aglow in the dying sunset against a dark, grey sky.

Somehow during our visit to Ladakh last year, we had missed out Shanti Stupa (longish story involving tired lungs and closed food shops during a ‘bandh day’ so we’ll leave that out for now) and thats where we immediately trooped to after breakfast. After walking through lanes surrounded with closed shops and deserted neighborhoods we found ourselves staring at the face of the hill atop which the Shanti Stupa is. You can either take – as wikipedia informs me – “a series of 500 steep steps” or take a road that snakes around the hill and drops you within a few yards of an uphill walk to the Stupa. Gesmo must’ve put somthing in our breakfast, because against our usually sound judgement, we decided to go up the steps.

After what seemed like an eternity, the Shanti Stupa began to loom before our eyes. While the pristine, white stupa impresses you, the surroundings of the stupa leave you spellbound. The snow-covered mountains all around the stupa, the low-hanging clouds playing with sun to create an everchanging patchwork of shade and light far in the valley below, make you wonder if you are standing at the portal of Heaven.

On our way back we chose the easy walk down the road over a shorter but a little more strenous climb down the stairs; though at this stage we would have ideally preferred to turn into a ball and simply tumble down the hill. The afternoon was cold and cloudy and streets as deserted as they had been during our walk to the Stupa.

Hot food and a short nap are the best cures for cold, weary bodies. Though your snug blanket seems like the best place in the world to be in, a sense of guilt at frittering away your time in your room while you could be out gawking at mountains, draws you out again. This time we hit the main market to buy a few knick-knacks and somehow found ourselves chatting with this old man selling all things Apricot.

We purchased a packet of dried Apricots from him and tried bargaining with him in English.

100 Rs
That’s too much – 80 Rs?

Kya? Kitna? Urdu main boliye.
What? How much? Say that in Urdu please

Assi Rupay
Eighty Rs

Assi? Bahut kam hai.
Eighty? That’s too little

Phir Nabbe?
Ninty then?

Chailye Nabbe de dijiye
Alright, ninty will do then!

It then occured to me that what was Hindi to me, was Urdu to him. The two languages are not as far apart as sometimes their scripts and the tensions between India and Pakistan make them out to be. I was reminded of this essay that a friend had forwarded a long time ago. Or perhaps it was this essay shaping my thoughts here.

Also, notice that we suck at this bargaining thingy – not that we wanted to drive a hard bargain with an old man trying to make ends meet.

We had remembered a small café from our last visit that sells ‘proper’ coffee. Coffee in Leh usually comes in two varieties – bad and very bad. The main recipe in both cases involves powdered Nescafé dunked in fat-rich milk saturated with sugar. The best you can do is ask for sugar to be excluded, but they’d still insist on calling it a cappuccino. This little café offers no cappuccinos, lattes or espressos, but it does serve very good (and fresh) French press coffee. With very little looking around we found it again (its name eludes me now, but i’ll try and find out. Update: It’s called ‘Cafeteria’. Doh!) The terrace of the café offers a beautiful, panoramic view of the Leh Palace and the mountains surrounding it. It was still too cold for people to be sipping their French press coffee at the terrace so we settled for the next best thing – the second floor with windows wide enough for me to stick my camera out and take some pictures in the fast fading light.

We flew to Leh from Delhi after spending a day there. Now Delhi at this time of the year is nothing short of a blast furnace. While flying from Delhi airport during summers I had seen travelers to Jammu holding thick jackets, pullovers, mittens and mufflers, and shuddered at the thought of having to even touch all the winter wear in the sweltering Delhi heat. This time I wasn’t a distant spectator but an active hoarder of all wintery clothes. Ironically, for someone visiting Leh in non-peak season, we couldn’t get window seats – thanks to a large contingent of tourists on our flight. As we flew closer to Leh, from the furtive glances at the window from my aisle seat I could vaguley make out tall snow covered mountains. When we landed, the temperature outside was 4ºC. The mountains surrounding the runway, the azure sky with patches of drifting clouds and an ineffective but bright sun made for a mesmerizing view. We stood there soaking in the scenery while buses after buses loaded the passengers and took them to the terminal barely a few meters away from the runway. The bus ride is a security measure (the airport is used by the Indian Air Force so you wouldn’t want passengers straggling away) and a convenience (walking uphill to the terminal after landing in the thin, oxygen deficient altitude of 11,000+ ft can take a herculian effort).

We were at the same guesthouse as our last visit. The garden where I’d spent considerable time clicking flowers during our last visit, was nothing but a bare, barren patch. It had been readied and seeded for summers but at the moment nothing grew here. The only exception was a lone, young, apricot tree at the entrance which was decked with delicate, pinkish-white flowers.

The rooftop restaurant at the guesthouse was closed. The loos upstairs hadn’t been assigned a gender yet.

The calendar outside the restaurant kitchen was stuck on October’09 – even time freezes in Ladakh once it starts snowing. In my mind this restaurant’s utility lies more in the views of the Stok range that it offers than the food. The former was still being served fresh. Though again, it was a very different view from our last visit. The range was covered in snow, and menacing clouds obscured the tallest of peaks.

Even people born and brought up in Ladakh take it easy when they return from the plains. Half a day of rest is mandatory while anything between 24-36 hrs is recommended for occasional visitors. Consequences of hurrying things up could be anywhere from headache, nausea, fever to even loss of consciousness. That said, we knew from our trip in August that even after those hours spent resting, you never quite acclimitize. It takes much longer than the 5 nights we were to spend here for the body to fully get used to such high altitudes. We slept through most of our first day.

Temperatures in Leh dip quite sharply after sunset. Not even two layers of heavy blankets would stop us from shivering. Since electricity supply in these parts is not very reliable, the guest house didn’t provide any electrical heating. Though they readily made available this LPG powered, industrial-strength room heater (aptly called Superheat).

And on cue there was a power cut. As we sat huddled in the ruddy glow of this somewhat noisey and very picturesque heater, it was not hard to wonder if we had done the right thing by visiting Leh in April.

p.s. The heater was turned off after a mere 20 minutes of usage. The huge LPG cylinder that powered this contraption scared us a little. And given the general oxygen deficiency we didn’t want something else competing with us in the same room.

…from yet another memorable trip to Ladakh. I am sure the mountains will haunt me in my dreams for days to come.

Quite literally.

The rules were quite like football in the sense that trying to touch the stone or stick with your hands carried a penalty – which in this case was the dog’s undiluted scorn that might have translated into a bite, causing you to lose the appendage that intervened for good.

All said and done, Moby turned out to be an adorable dog – like most dogs are. We might visit the Red Hills again just for a game of fetch with Moby.

A part of the city that tenuously (or is it tenaciously?) holds on to its older moniker of Bombay:

There is a very fine line between bold and garish. I am still not sure on which side of this line I should place the Hiranandani township in Powai. Is it brave to replicate elements of European architecture – complete with those tall columns, pediments, balustrades, arches, domes and spires (sometimes merely tacked on to terrace of a multi-storey apartment complex) – or is it pretentious?

Not that it’ll help me put things down any faster, but still at least there’s the illusion that I am in control…

Of course, I spent a good deal of time photographing flowers at our guest house’s garden – something I’d been yearning to do since the day we arrived here.

Soon the morning of our departure to Delhi arrived. Our visit to Ladakh had been full of pleasant surprises, but one last surprise awaited us yet – His Highness The Dalai Lama was on the same flight as us! It caused quite a stir amidst the passengers. Everyone wanted a picture of or with him, some others wanted his autographs – a few pulled out a book written by him, while others grabbed whatever surface a pen would leave ink on. The Dalai Lama made sure that everyone got a chance – he walked all the way to the last seat greeting everyone and doing the best he could to give everyone an opportunity to take a photo.

Nice, law abiding citizens that we are, we had checked in our cameras’ batteries into our check-in baggage. No one at the airport had seemed to know what the correct policy was – the airline staff and the security staff had had contradicting views so it had seemed best to not carry the batteries on board. But given the number of functional cameras we saw being fished out, it would probably have been alright had we taken them with us.

The wife had taken the window seat this time. But it was impossible to not crane my neck and peer through her window for one last look at the beautiful Himalayas.