Life in the Himalayas

So... turns out the 36 hour minibus ride was worth it! After taking a few days to acclimatize to living at 18,000 ft we were settling in pretty well in Leh, the town is only accessible by road for 3 months of the year - it's a really old Buddhist city on the border with Tibet and is surrounded by some stunning mountains and valleys...

(if not in need of some professional builders!)....

The downside to these stunning views is that the air is quite thin so we've spent the last few weeks getting totally knackered just doing simple things like climbing the stairs !

During in our time in Leh we've been lucky enough to be staying in the best hostel in town - "Goba" - It's right on the edge of town and run by a lovely local Ladaki family. Matt was slightly put off by the hippie drumming circle in the front garden as we arrived but after checking out the view from our bed was persuaded to stay...

And once we realised that our co-habitants were actually normal people and not total hippies (well maybe Sean & Annabel are) we were very happy that we'd chosen GOBA.

Since then three weeks in Leh have flown by and although we've done our fair share of sitting around chatting & drinking we've also managed to squeeze in some adventurous stuff as well -

We've mountain biked down the worlds highest motorable road (albeit very slowly in Charlotte's case) which starts at a very chilly 18,567ft and is more than a bit hairy in places !

We've also had 4 chicken's killed in honor of our new friend Annabel's birthday BBQ, Charlotte didn't realise when she walked into the shop and asked for them that they would kill them in front of her so ran off up the street - Matt on the other hand was only too happy to pick them out and even named a couple of them

We've visited Pang-Gong Lake (which is bloody huge by the way !) with some of our new friends, the lake was stunning but the trip was made even more enjoyable thanks to our group, particularly our American friend Scott's front seat commentary and constant haranguing of our driver Jimmy as he negotiated the slightly suspect mountain passes that we had to cross to get there "Precious cargo here Jimmy, slow down man !".

Whilst there we stayed with a local family which was a communal experience to say the least with all of us sharing one big room where the bedding consisted of the worlds dustiest mattresses and a concrete floor and the food was...errrm...well let's just call it "basic" (no more home-stays!);

One other thing worth mentioning is that at Pang-Gong Lake there is nothing other than the lake....really, nothing (except a couple of goats and a donkey and they get boring pretty quickly). Oh and Matt says it's bloody freezing to swim in !

We've also visited (many) local monasteries...

And ridden a Yak...

We leave today (wednesday) on a local bus for a 20 hour journey to a place called Srinigar, so provided we survive the trip we'll have more updates for you soon !