Articles from this Category
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 […]
30 July 2013
I now know why I was feeling so shattered yesterday. Something was brewing; my tummy wasn’t well this morning. It wasn’t too bad but I took a capsule of loperamide only because of the 6h bus ride ahead. I had to get from McLeod to Dharamsala in time for the 0940 departure to Jammu. With […]
29 July 2013
Above: Main square of McLeod Ganj on a wet afternoon as viewed through a cafe window. Today I finished my 5-day yoga course. I was so exhausted I took a lie down after lunch. As it was my last day in McLeod Ganj, I forced myself to walk downtown to get to the Tse Chok […]
27 July 2013
After my yoga class to day I decided to walk to the Kalachakra Temple which is the temple adjoining the Dalai Lama’s residence. Collectively, the temple and the residence is called the Tsuglagkhang Complex. It isn’t an inspiring collection of buildings; just ordinary blocks perhaps from around a decarde ago. The temple itself wasn’t grand […]