Leh

Well, I've made it to Leh! We arrived early yesterday morning, but I slept the day away, so this is my first time out of our guest house and to the internet cafe. I'll tell you a the highlights of my travles thus far.

I had a layover in Newark of about 5 hours, which ended up being a bit longer for a few reasons. First of all, my flight from Portland landed about thirty minutes early! Then, about an hour before my flight is to take off, the sky turned very dark and grey. A lightening storm rolled through, and they grounded everyone for a bit. We were delayed getting on, and even more delayed taking off, since the ground crew couldn't work during the lightening storm to load the bags and food. But, I slept. I slept a lot on the almost 14 hour flight to Delhi, surprising for me.

As I looked around the airplane, I realized I was one of a few people not of Indian descent. The, I wondered what those other non-Indian people were doing, where they were going. I had that same reaction on my flight from Delhi to Leh. In my mind, Leh is this unknown, remote place. In fact, it seems to be the starting point for many trekkers, as is obvious by the many trekking companies that line the road. I also wonder how people decide to go trekking in the northern part of India. It's absolutely beautiful here, for sure, but also very remote and takes a long time to get here. I suppose there are many people who are looking for that next big adventure, and this spot is certainly adventurous.

In Delhi, since my flight was late landing by about 2 and a half hours, I only had 3 hours to rest in the hotel room by the airport. I tried to nap, but I may have slept too much on the airplane! As I was leaving at 3am, I had a sense of wonder about what I was about to begin, the trek to the monastery. I met the other intern, Mojun, at my hotel. She had just arrived from Hon Kong at 2am, and we were on the flight together to Leh.

Arriving in Leh, I landed at 10,800 ft. elevation. I felt it. Also, I was exhausted from the traveling the the 12 and a half hour time difference. Don't ask me where that half hour come from, I don't really know. Anyways, we collected our bags and were off to meet up with SonamDawa, who arranges our hotels and transportation here. He took us to our guest house, which is at the edge of town, going up to the mountains. It is absolutely beautiful here, the mountains are enormous, and some still are covered in snow. We had tea, were shown our room, and then had breakfast. Breakfast consisted of a sort of bread that was puffed up, visually it reminded me of nan, but tasted nothing like it. They gave us locally produced apricot jam and some butter to eat with it. Delicious!

I slept allllll day yesterday. I was exhausted. We had dinner in our guest house, which was a vegetable soup, rice, a kind of lentals, and some sort of green vegetable that reminded me of cabbage or seaweed. Not too bad. Then we went to sleep. I woke up around midnight, and didn't really fall back asleep, just rested until about 7:30am.

Today I think we might see some religous sights. Tomorrow we take off for the monastery! It will take us two days by taxi, which will be very interesting... Hopefully I'll be able to post soon afterwards, but I really have no idea where the nearest internet connection will be. I have Sundays off, so hopefully I'll be able to make it someplace then!