The bus and shared-taxi station in Srinagar is kinda nutty. It definitely feels like a ripe place for a terrorism attack if that was gonna go down. It's nice to get out of there quickly, so I dd my best to get in a shared jeep for the "8 hour" trip to kargil. The drivers are quite aggressive, trying to get you in their taxis by offering such things as "only Englishman in the car" or "only 3 people in the back. They all say that they are the best driver in the best car. Eventually I jumped in the backseat of a chevy jeep with a British girl and local guy sharing the side-facing back section with me, while 2 Swedish brothers, an Israeli, an Indian an another Kashmiri sat up in the front 2 rows with the driver.
The drive was rather tense, as it seems all the drivers are racing each other. Our driver was funny but crazy. There were a few times when all the cars were stopped because traffic was only allowed to go in one direction, so most of the passengers and drivers would be wandering about on the side of the road. As soon as the signal was given that we could go, our driver would start screaming at all of us and run back to the car so we could get the wholeshot and be the first vehicle to head forth. Of course this advantage was always short lived due to poor road conditions, construction, and traffic.
When we stopped for lunch, he was adamant that we only had 10-15 minutes to eat. It was kind of sad because the drive was so beautiful, it could have been nice to get to enjoy it more. We passed over the Zoji La, which is a dramatic road up across a 4000meter pass and continued through spectacular valleys. At one point in a village the road was blocked for an hour as some locals decided it was a good time to build a ditch across the road and insert a water pipe. Another annoying thing was that the Kashmiri guy in the back with me kept blasting the Moslem prayers through his phone.
Let me pause for a second here to discuss the logistics of Moslem prayers. I get it, pray 5 times a day, it can be beautiful thing. But holy shit when you publicly blast the prayers through loudspeakers from every mosque and through cell phones, it's the most annoying sound in the world. I'm not talking about the language or the words or the meaning of the prayers at all. I'm sure that is all a very nice thing. I'm talking about the acoustics. When you play any high pitched sounds through a megaphone, it may as well be projecting a baby whining as loud as possible for the whole city to hear. And when they start every morning at 3:30AM, it makes the noises of China sound like heaven. Point is, use headphones, buy some subwoofers, do anything to change that horrendous sound that you force upon the world around you.
Anyways,
We made it to kargil in the afternoon, and I split off with the Swedes and Israeli. We had a decent dinner at "New Las Vegas restaurant" and then I passed out. I shared a room with the Israeli guy, he took the floor and I got the bed. I was getting a bit sick from all the dust we breathed in on the ride, plus had a headache from sitting sideways for 9 hours so I needed a good night sleep, and popped a sudafed which helped a bit. I was awoken by the fucking loudspeakers and tossed and turned for a bit before the sun rose. I eventually got up and did a nice hour of sunrise yoga on the rooftop which definitely made me feel better.
We caught another ride that morning in a better car with a Buddhist driver who was far less stressful. The road from Kargil to Leh was a lot nicer than the road from Srinagar to Kargil, but it still had some hairy parts as we had to wait for a few bulldozers to remove landslides. We had some great meals along the way and made it to Leh a little after 2 in the afternoon. I parted ways with my car buddies and searched for the hotel where I was to meet my trekking team...
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