leh

hello again

or should i say jallee as they say here.
i made it after waht can only be calle d fucking made run across the
hill to this odd tourist innundated place. (more about that in another
post when I have some energy.)

The trip across the zojila( the gateway from kashmir to ladakh
was rather spiffing in the front seat of a quiet nice
Indian TATA jeep.) Overnighting in the rathole was ok
I think that actually it was a fly farm!

Anyway I got up from one of my classic
i'm not going to sleep here nights to board
my rather plush looking love jeep that was going to take me over
some rediculous passes to my present location.
The jeep was full of a motley crue of ladies,indians, kashmiris and
of course my own stupid head. Things seemed to go well.
The young driver seemd ok till we got to the mad bends.
Blind overtaking on hairpins on some of the highest passes in the world
is an experience you must try. You will learn to meditate rather quickly!

Anyway, things seemed to go swimmingly untill we came down from a highish
pass. we had stopped at some typical chai stop and then the radiator decided to blow.
he had been doing to much of the old over speed, over braking, over steering and the engine had had enough.

I looked on not surprised but a tiny bit annoyed as we had another
100 klicks to Leh and the weather this side of the passes was a little shitty.
so he vanished in the jeep leaving us all. He returned within ten mins and we all boarded
to be told that it wasnt fixed and that it would take a while to get there.
Yes folks every five or ten k's we had to stopp fill the radiator back up and
cool the engine off. It got to the point where he eventually just started driving the
jeep under water falls at the side of the road in an attempt to cool it down.
Well, we got onto the to of the plains(you know the ones that you seeeon national geographical
magazine covers,) and thyen she decided to blow big time. Smoke and steam pissong out all over. It was then that many folk decided to bail out and start flagging donw other traffic. I decided to hang on in there and get to leh one way or another with my young leh driver.
so from this point on it was ten k's and then it would stop: half an hr and then we would start again. He then decided to open her up and try and cannon ball run home to leh. I.e that petrol
gauge was flashing so we had to freewheel and hope that we could make it. That is get up to 80mph and then just free wheel for as far as we could through towns and villages
back to leh. Not too bad as we had passed most of the passes.

suffice to say. I made it and am now listening to jeff buckley writing to you.

there shall be more on this blog very soon when i have slept and rested a little

stay well

miss ya

bo makalu