Rangdum, Padum.
The three posers of Padum. The smallest one had such a running nose that I wanted to run away from them, but they so badly wanted me to take their picture that the bigger ones kind of forced him to wipe snot off his nose and wash his face. Good that they won in them versus me in the end, I think.
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Haider and "Chong" Nurbu, our guides for the Zanskar trek, met us at Hotel Caravan Sarai in Kargil. They came from Leh, with a bus, a driver, three Nepali cooks, and half a busload of camping and cooking gear. The bus took us to Padum, where we are to start the trek.
This road here is a highway or something. The bus journey will take two days, and the landscape will remain more or less the same all the way.
For a long time, the twin mountains of Kun and Nun - tallest in the region - are visible from the vehicle. As we reach close, we stop by the glacier of Kun and Nun:
The occasional cuddly Himalayan marmot and his wife scuttle away into their holes as the vehicle approaches, and peeks out in a "what's up there?" way. Bothered baby yaks run away with groups of "normal" calves. Once I saw two of them tied together, with each pulling and running in different directions as we approached.
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It was raining when we reached Rangdum in the afternoon. It is a meadow walled by mountains all around. There are a couple of tea shops and a police outpost. Flocks of cattle move back to their steads as the sun sets, with men moving along.
Some people comment that the place reminds of Har Ki Dun, in a rather scaled down way. A woman and her son inquires if we need chang, and brings a large can of it. As Haider and gang pitch tents and cook dinner, we are having a minor party in the bus, complete with booze and music and head banging.
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Another day's bus journey took us to Padum. This is where we start our Zanskar trek, and the last place where we are going to have telephone and regular electricity lines. There is an internet cafe as well. There is a monastery in the distance at a foothill, and a couple of Buddhist temples and a mosque in the town. I took a walk in the monastery's direction and finally gave up because it was getting too late and I left the camp without telling anyone.
In the evening, we took another walk around the place. We climbed up a deserted looking temple and from its roof watched the sun setting. I cursed myself for not taking the camera along. On the way back, we ate momos at a restaurant where the patrons are mostly European. This is the season Zanskar sees the large influx of foreign nationals. All of them from Europe. We seem to be the only crazy Indians that want to travel in this region.
A hundred pictures not taken. Like those animals scuttling away from the bus. Like the mostly arind and sometimes icy and sometimes green landscapes. Mountains. Like Tenzin the lama I met when wandering around Padum. Like the old man Tenzin I met at Padum. He says he is a compounder and the hospital, and grins widely. In the evening, he and a friend sit on the grass by the stream and drink mugfuls of chang. His friend offers me a mug, and when I refuse, he looks at me with tender disappointment.
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Because I could not think of a better layout:
