After the festival, we had a couple of days driving through the Zanskar Valley, from Leh to Padum and on from there to Kargil. They were long drives, but very enjoyable ones as the scenery was absolutely stunning – harsh, rocky mountains, snowy peaks, and the occasional glacier. We did also visit some more monasteries, including the Karsha Monastery where as well as the usual colourful paintings on all the walls, they have this icon in the photo, made partly from mummified human remains! The hostile relationship with neighbouring Pakistan became more apparent here, from the Kargil War Memorial to the used Pakistani shell decorating our hotel. & we started to see the army presence along the roads, with armed soldiers stationed every half mile or so. It didn’t feel dangerous though – or at least not in that sense. Natural disasters such as rock falls feel like a far greater threat, and it was quite shocking to see some houses near a recent land slip.
Landslips are quite common on the roads through the mountains, and people from the Border Roads Association (Bro, as they like to refer to themselves!) were working on many parts of the roads, both maintaining and improving them. I don’t know how it came about, but they’ve erected many road signs with all kinds of messages, mostly safety-related, such as:
- Donate blood, but not on the road
- Lower your gear, curve is near
- Road is hilly, don’t drive silly
- Protect your head, or end up dead (this one for motorcyclists, of course)
- Fast and furious, is injurious
- If you sleep, your family will weep
- I am curvaceous, be slow
and one that had nothing to do with safety, but which I liked
- Without geography, we are nowhere
I did wonder whether any accidents had been caused by drivers looking at the signs instead of at the road, but still enjoyed reading them!
Then from Kargil we took the road on into Kashmir, finally arriving at the last destination of the trip, Srinagar, where we took shikaras across Dal Lake to our luxury houseboats. Time to relax, to look at the flowering water lilies (apparently the first time they’ve flowered in some 30/50 years, following recent work to dredge parts of the lake), to watch the squabbling moorhens and elegant pond herons, to enjoy the sunsets – and to fend off Mr Wonderful Flower Man, who appeared at least once a day to try (and as far as I know, fail) to sell flowers to people in our group!
We also visited the early morning vegetable market, toured some of the interesting ‘corners’ of the lake, watched a spectacular lightning storm one evening, and toured the city. There is interesting older architecture (apparently from British times), an old fort, and a number of old tiered gardens down the hills around the lake.
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