The 26/11 attacks were covered “Live” by the television media. For almost 60 hours straight, we had a view of the action taking place outside the Taj, Oberoi and Nariman house from different angles, depending on which news channel your were watching.

So did the masters of the terrorists.

And the terrorists had mobile/satellite phones to communicate with their masters, enabling them to keep track of the whereabouts of the commandos and they sneaked from one room to another in complete darkness.

While this knowledge was given to us by the news channels themselves, none of them stopped the live broadcast of events to protect the safey of the hostages or the commandos who were risking their lives.

It was already common knowledge while seige was still going on that the terrorists were trying to communicate with their handlers using mobile phones and/or satellite phones. If that was really the case, and the media had knowledge of it, why did they not try to stop the coverage?

In the their oneupmanship for TRPs, the word used more frequently than terrorists was the word “Exclusive”. Every channel seemed to be having exclusive coverage of the events that were going on from a different angle.

When the airdropping of the commandos began at the Nariman house the sound of the helicopters would have been a big give away, but we were easily able to see the number of commandos that were mounting the operation. It would have definitely helped if the terrorists did not have knowledge of this.

No doubt, I was one of the many who sat glued to their television sets throughout the entire event, but I realized that it was wrong to show such coverage just for the sake of TRPs. When the media has such great freedom, thhey should behave responsibly and know when to put national security above “Exclusive” coverage.

It is obvious that the operation would have been much shorter had the terrorists no knowledge of the setup of the security forces outside the Taj and oberoi.

Vishal Dadlani ( the music composer of movies like Om Shanti Om ) has started a campaign to encourage or force the media to behave more responsibly. He plans to go to the courts for this purpose, and has started a signature campaign for the same. Readers of this article can go to the website http://smallchange.in and put in their comments and support for the movement. I strongly encourage everyone to spread the word, it is in the interest of our national security.

When the operation ended at the Taj, there were loud cheers for the brave commandoes who risked their lives to ensure the terrorists holed up the in two hotels & Nariman house did not cause more deaths.

However, the commandoes suffered casualties in accomplishing their task. Major Sandeep Unnikrishnan was killed while trying to flush out terrorists from the Taj & Havaldar Gajendra Singh was killed at the Nariman house. Apart from them, there were a number of casualties to Mumbai Police, including at the very top.

While no one doubts their bravery, some thought needs to be put into whether they really should have been killed in the circumstances.

With lesser and lesser encounters with the Underworld and more trouble being caused in the city due to terrorists who are well equipped with latest arms it is pretty obvious that the Police is ill equipped in terms of training and equipment to face the threat of terrorists.

How does one expect a constable weilding a lathi or an inspector with a service revolver to face a terrorist armed with grenades and automatic weapons? I think such a face-off should not be classified as anything but attempted suicide.

Even the NSG commandoes, the elite of the elite that the country has, had to take local transportation buses to reach the action zone. They were wearing helmets that looked more like 1960s scooter helmets, lacking even a visor. The bullet proof vests that they wore seemed to have plenty of room to allow bullets through. They were seen using walkie-talkies to communicate.

The biggest problem when the commandoes entered the hotel? It was too dark to see!! How come even the most elite soldiers of the country do not have night-vision goggles? I am sure they operation would have been over within hours had they been able to locate the terrorists with greater ease.

With the level of technology used in other countries, I think it is high time that it is adopted by us. Why can’t we have radios embedded in the collars of the jackets of our commandoes? Its not that it just looks cool on TV, it eases communication also.

When Mumbai has been such an oft-repeated target of terrorists, why cannot commandoes stationed closer to the city for faster action? Why cannot the Mumbai Police or the ATS have a squad of crack commandoes of their own? Why are we Martyring our brave men so that the needs of palatial houses and luxurious cars of politicians are met? Why is it that anger always has to boil over before any action is taken? Why cannot our politicians lead from the front for once?

These are some serious questions that the government really needs to answer.

Living here in the United States after having spend almost 22 years of my life in Bombay (I still cannot bring myself to call it Mumbai) was quite a different experience. Here people say there is a lot of “traffic” when there are more than 10 cars going in the same direction. Comparatively in India, such a situation would be a dream come true, at any point of the day. Even small cities have buildings that are taller than most skyscrapers in Bombay. But the thing that hits me the most is the cleanliness of the roads here. Even the roads in the most run-down of areas are cleaner than most places I have been to India.

While we are seeing a plethora of new buildings coming up throughout the length and breadth of Bombay, rarely have we seen a project being implemented at such a pace for building new roads or flyovers, while the existing infrastructure keeps on crumbling. A number of the flyovers took years and years to get constructed due to huge delays, the Bandra-Worli sealink has been under construction for a while now. I remember going to my engineering college (almost 6 years back) in Bandra and looking at the constructed sections (I deter from using the words “construction going on” because i rarely saw that). While this constant delay has been troublesome and little can be done about it, the motorists are facing much larger delays because the present network of roads that we have in place are not functioning as well as they are supposed to. Given the number of potholes and congestion present on the roads, it is difficult to maintain a good speed to ensure the fast movement of traffic.

I would liken this situation to that of many of the other public sector undertakings. Many of them were struggling and were incurring huge losses, but the moment they were privatised they transformed from bulky slow-moving, babu-dominated workplaces to lean, profit making ventures. The difference here was the urge of the private sector to make a profit and the fear of failure that pushed them to become more competitive. This is never the case for government companies where one has a job for life immaterial of the performance of the company and hence they tend to be lax when it comes to work and lag behind when it comes to work ethic.

Currently the BMC is responsible for the maintainence of all roads in the city. The typical government job equals job security takes effect here. Rarely do we see the sweepers on the roads cleaning taking effort to clean the roads they are paid to. Minor maintainence work on the roads is subcontracted out and these people are in no way accountable, they often fill potholes with gravel and claim they did their work. If we can bring the residents to be participate more actively in this situation, then it will be possible to bring more accountability into the whole system.

I would suggest the one idea out of this conundrum is to start something akin to the privatization of roads. Currently the work of repairing roads and filling potholes is mostly sub-contracted out by the BMC. Rather than stop at that, why not sub-contract the entire year long maintainence of the road ? It will surely drive the contractors to keep the roads clean if there is sufficient financial incentive in keeping the roads clean and fines for falling below certain quality standards. And most importantly rather than some BMC official who will easily fall for a bribe, the residents themselves be the judge for the quality of the road.

We have seen similar successful implementation in the form of ALMs(Advanced Locality Management) which involved committees of residents to maintain the cleanliness on the streets where they reside. However it is a full time that job and they ALMs were not given enough freedom to work, the ALMs primarily concentrated on keeping the streets clean, and their effort was commendable. But it is a model that has not been successfully implemented on a large scale. Plus as with any other organization involving humans, politics come into play. A single contractor working on such a project would keep the work befert of politics.

The residents of the streets could be surveyed keep a tab on the working on the contractors to keep them accountable. Few contractors can be hired as a pilot project and depending on the results they could be awarded more streets to maintain depending on what the residents of the streets they have previously managed have to say about them.

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And there we have it!!!! What a kick on the ARSE!

There was a lot of cribbing going on (from my friend, mainly) in the run up to this match about how the referees have been unfair towards Arsenal, but they had their fair share today and had no excuse for the loss.

To be fair, Arsenal dominated the match for long periods during the first half, but somehow managed not to score in the first half. While Arsene Wenger might have managed to breed some fantastic young blood, they lack the experience when it comes to crunch situations. No doubt most of their current crop will achieve greatness some day, but not with the current setup which is so lacking in experience. William Gallas should stop wearing the captain’s armband, Gilberto Silva looked more of a leader than Gallas.

The first goal by Man United once again exposed Arsenal’s sudden explicable weakness immediately after scoring a goal. Ronaldo managed to stay cool under pressure and score on the second attempt.

The cross by Evra to Ronaldo was amazing, materializing out of nowhere and a testament to the understanding of these players. Ferdinand was not at his best today, but van Der Sar was there to cover for it. Ferguson’s confidence in him despite a few blunders in the past seems to be paying off.

The goal by Hargreaves was an absolute beauty. The world (wit the possible exception of Hargreaves and Ronaldo ) was expecting Ronaldo to take the kick but, out of nowhere Hargreaves took the kick and was celebrating even before the ball touched the back of the net.

With the schedule remaining, I think even Chelsea will have a difficult time catching up. Hope we get a double this season!!!

Check out the video, I wonder why Adebayor is celebrating so much after the goal, is it because he managed to sneak in a goal with his hand ? Or is it because the referee was kind enough to allow the goal ? We might never know

With due respect, WHO CARES?

The highlights:

The national carrier is at it again. Despite the tall claims and the much publicized merger with Indian, the services provided by Air India continue to lag amongst the worst in the world. At this rate they are going to lose the even current crop of loyal customers that they have. At least they should know how to behave with passengers. Air hostesses seems to stop just hort of spanking passengers at times. What the hell is going on?

Just google for “Air India Lost Baggage” and you will be lost in a list of myriad list of links, all discussing woes about trying reclaim lost baggage/compensation from AirIndia. But the people at Air India could not bother less. This is probably the bane of the Public sector in India. Nobody cares as long as you have job security, and it is one of the most compelling reasons to privatize the airline to make it more competitive.

My personal experience on travelling with Air India has not been a pleasant one either. The only reason that hordes of students – like me – travel Air India is because of the extra baggage allowance for students going to the United States for studies for the very first time. And they prefer it second time is because they usually have the cheapest fares by about 50-100 dollars – a substantial sum for someone who is yet to start earning.

I had booked a flight from Chicago to Bombay via London, and was coming by the reverse route during the month of August’07. Firstly, there was no communication from Air India regarding the baggage allowance at London. Only one piece of hand baggage is allowed at Heathrow, something I came to know while I was standing in the queue to get my boarding pass. Having checked in my baggage at Indianapolis, it left me with the taskof fitting a laptop bag into my hand luggage.While waiting for the flight I checked on their website – there is no information regarding this limitation on the Air India website, just one rag of photocopied paper next to the start of the queue.

While I somehow managed to fit my laptop bag inside the hand luggage that I was carrying, it was above the weight limit and hence I was forced to check in the hand luggage I wanted to carry with me. Since the laptop bag was small, I was not permitted to even carry my camera in its pouch separately. I was nervous about having to check in my small electronics stuff at the airport, and as it turned out, for good reason. When I got my luggage in India, all my bags were half opened and pieces of cloth hanging out from those unopened pieces of luggage. Still I was like what the heck! that is not unusual for India. But when I opened my bags and tried to reach for the camera to take pictures of my reunion with my family, I was shell-shocked to notice that my camera was missing!!

I immediately mailed Air India regarding this, but have yet to receive any response from them till date, more than three months after I mailed them my complaint. However the story was far from over as I still had to fly back via the same airline.

Something Positive

The very first thing I noticed when I got onto the flight was…… was…….. was……… Individual screens for all passengers!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG! was I dreaming?? This can’t really be true! In Air India?? WOW!!!!

….And the resultant negative

No no I knew I was not dreaming when a few minutes earlier I realized that some of the screens were not working at all. Others did not have functional remotes. Now THATS more like Air India.. Fortunately I was not amongst those unlucky few who had to read and re-read through the trash 50 page magazine for the next 22 hours of the flight. During the flight, half the touch screens were not working.

This is just half the torture story. The other half was played while coming back. The flight was delayed by 6 hours. Although I was not complaining about getting a chance to spend a few more hours with my family, it meant that I would miss my connecting flight to Indianapolis. This meant that I had to spend the night at Chicago airport. What was the compensation for that? A $7.50 food coupon! And of course I was given the option of using any of the numerous couches at the airport for a nice long snooze.

This attitude of Air India seriously needs to change if they are to truly become an international airline.Numerous airlines of our neighbouring countries like Sri Lanka, Thailand and Malaysia have much better airlines. Heck, I reckon even the PIA has better service. This creates a very bad impression about the quality of air services in a country when the sole national carrier is operating so pathetically. No doubt the situation is bound to improve as the private carriers get permission to fly on international routes in the coming months, but this might sound the death knell for Air India. Or just might spur them into action. Jet Airways did the same thing with Indian (then Indian Airlines) and the reaction from Indian was nothing short of woeful. Hopefully things will be better this time round. However nothing less than sweeping changes are going to bring back things in order.

It has been the talk of noob-town for the past few weeks. And for good reason.

The new incarnation of Ubuntu, the Gutsy Gibbon was launched three weeks back to much fanfare. And it did not disappoint. It is easily the best Linux distro that I have come across. Best because it is truly made for human beings, not for the relatively tiny community of nerds who swear by the command line.

First thing that hits you about Linux is the price difference as compared to Windows. Its is Free. No registration Key. No validation required from Windows Genuine Advantage. Just download or order a free CD/DVD and it is all yours. The price is one of the reasons that draws people away from their beloved (and slow, virus infected) windows systems to try something different.

The installation process is fairly similar to that of the previous versions, and the only time you have a few nervous moments is while selecting the right partition for the installation. This is the single reason why I would still suggest that installing Ubuntu is not for the not-so-geeky. One wrong selection or format command can ruin the data stored on the other partitions. But one just needs a little bit of guidance to get through it. Once the partitions have been selected, the rest of the installation process is a breeze. What really hit me was the installation time. It took like 1/10th the time it took me to install XP. WOW!! Things were already looking good!!!

One thing about Ubuntu that stands out is that there is far less dependence on the command line as compared to some other distros. This, apart from the relative ease of installation, makes it the first choice of many first-time linux users who are scared of getting lost between those un-understandable commands necessary to install programs/drivers or even start an application.

Most of the drivers are now present in the kernel and this saves the effort of getting a wired connection to your computer (especially in the case of a laptop) and setting up the wireless. However the integration for Broadcom wireless drivers is still not upto the mark, whereas the ATI graphics drivers have seen quantum leap in the ease of installation. I vividly remember going nuts trying to install ATI drivers on Fiesty, which required reconfiguring about a hundred files. Gutsy gets it done within a few clicks.

There is lots of eye candy, more than even what vista users can imagine once the graphics drivers are setup and Compiz (which now comes pre-installed with Ubuntu) gets going. Although few of the tools add to productivity, it does make using the desktop a much better experience. You can easily spend over a day trying out the various combinations of Compiz Fusion.

Installing programs is also a whole lot easier now. But this is also the time when Linux’s biggest weakness is exposed – lack of compatible programs. Although many applications are now compatible on Linux, it still has some way to go before it gets close to the Windows repertoire. The necessity to enable the various repositories for installing differently supported programs is a tad irritating. It leaves one confounded when installation of a particular software is rejected when for some vague reason while in fact just one of the various repositories need to be enabled.

The support offered by the various forums online is very good and does a far better job of problem identification/solving than that by Windows Help Center. Even searching for known issues is very easy on the forums and goes a long way towards increasing user confidence.

Even for its vastly superior performance as compared to the Fiesty Fawn, there are a few bugs that need to be ironed out. The most common one seems to be the issue of the computer getting stuck in a limbo while putting it into standby/hibernate. This creates the unnecessary irritation of having to shutdown my laptop every time I want to take it from one place to another.

Will Gutsy send shivers down Microsoft’s spine? Not quite, there are still a wide range of applications that many of us would not do without that are currently not supported in Linux. OpenOffice is still a poor alternative for MS Office, though some of the net based applications like ZOHO and Google Documents & Spreadsheets will make the job easier. But it does show ample promise and will surely draw more than a passing glance from Redmond.

I hope to write more as I keep on using my Linux system more and more. Overall the epxerience has been a good one and I see myself booting my computer in Linux more frequently as time passes.

- Newbie Noob

Due to the amount of studies to completed while preparing for exams, I barely found time to sleep. One of the positives out of the deprivation of was sleep was I was able to witness one of the most beautiful sights since coming to Indy.

What a beautiful morning it was !!! A cloudless sky with an amazing transition of colors, as my day of reckoning (exams) dawned!

Yeah I did PS it a bit because the response of the CCD of my canon was not good enough to capture the true colors of the early morning sunlight. But heck, it was just to make the representation more accurate! Although I did go a bit overboard while editing it.

This is the final part of the essay covering my ten day trip to the roof of the country. Continuing from where I had left off at the PangongTso lake, we made our journey back to Leh for another day’s rest (yeah we took “Rest Days” very frequently) before leaving for Nubra valley. I believed that the sight of Pangong lake was the most wonderful sight I had ever seen. But after seeing Nubra valley, I was a little confused. As it was obvious whilst traveling to the spot where we camped, the entire region was once submerged in a river. Wherever the land had been dug to pave way for the roads, well-rounded, smooth stones were jutting out from it, compressed between layers of earth, very similar to those found on river beds. Legend has it that it was actually a gigantic flood, which receded after one of their deities prayed for the well being of the region.

While traveling to the valley, we had to cross KhardungLa – the highest motorable road in the word, truly an awesome feat by the Border Roads Organisation. The road peaks at 18,000 feet, with two bases on either side of the pass, namely North Pullu and South Pullu, at about 16,000 feet. I called them bases because the road is so thin that it is only possible for one vehicle to traverse the road at a time, hence the road is open in only direction at any given point of time. They have huge parking spaces where military trucks congregate as they wait for clearance to move forward (More on that later). Navigating through the extremely thin roads was scary, and speed at which the local & military drivers were crossing it was even more scary. Experience brings in more confidence,I guess, but we did come across the wreckage of more than one truck along the route.

Nubra valley is a desert for all practical purposes, with an extensive area covered with sand and camel rides to boot! While it was a surprise to see that camels survived at such an altitude, I was totally unprepared for the kind of camels that I saw. It was a hilarious sight!! One of them had humps falling over, which ok, but the second one seemed to be on a dose of – believe it or not – Center Shock! (Check out the pic if you do not believe me). The last time I had a camel ride was in my formative years at Juhu Beach in Bombay, something I had since shunned to protest the cruelty meted out on the poor creatures by their owners. This time was no exception and I just went on a walk in the sand, as usual, trying to capture the beauty of the place. My friend who did take the camel ride, was actually stuck in the middle of the desert. Why?? Well, the camel just got bored and decided he needed some rest, so he sat down while my friend was still on his back and refused to budge, no amount of coaxing from the owner seemed to work.

The camp we stayed at was situated farthest village where tourists are permitted, since it was situated very close to the Chinese border. Nubra Valley is at a much lower height (close to 9,000 feet) than the surroundings and hence the weather was much warmer than anywhere in Ladakh. The village looked creepy at dusk as we ventured out for a walk, which was cut short by, of all things, a shower! A shower at the roof of the earth in the middle of a desert, a rare phenomenon indeed!

While returning from Nubra Valley we timed our trip badly and were stuck at the South Pullu junction for a good 3-4 hours. The best way to kill time was of course to walk around the place (slowly, slowly, you don’t want to tire yourself too much). There were close to 35-40 military trucks waiting for clearance to move ahead. Along with the horde of military trucks was a Mercedes Truck!!!! Summer is a time of frenzied activity as these roads are open only for four months of the year due to the inhospitable climate and a full year worth of supplies need to be gathered within those four months.

It was owned by some European couple who were very reluctant to let us have a peek into the vehicle, nevertheless, I was content with a picture of the exterior. It was while loitering around the Merc that I had my first real interaction with a soldier, although he happened to be one of the engineer corps. He was on his way (or was it returning? I don’t remember it clearly) to being posted at Kargil. He was from the temperate regions of interior Maharashtra, but had already been posted at Siachen Glacier more than once. It was both mind numbing and moving, getting an insight into the kind of physical and psychological trauma the men in uniform go through to ensure we have a good nights sleep. Each soldier is sent for a duration of three months, but many develop altitude sickness and snow blindness, and rarely make it past two months into their posting.

The kind of weather they live in was enough to warrant the round the year use of winter boots specially made in Italy, costing a cool Rs. 15,000/- a pair. Of course they are regularly put to good use as there is no road to the camp at the Siachen Glacier, atleast during the winter, and hence groups of soldiers trek in the unforgiving snow, sometimes for 3-4 weeks to get to the army camp. All this with heavy loads on their backs. Supplies are usually airdropped, as are trucks for use on the paved paths in and around the glacier! The total cost of maintaining the current position on the Siachen Glacier costs the Indian army almost $1 Million a day (not a typo).

Occupied/abandoned dwellings of nomads are also a regular feature while travelling around Ladakh. Most of them rear yak, which take to the warmer climes once winter sets in. They have just a tarp to protect themselves from the harsh weather, but somehow they manage with it comfortably. Guess they also grow fur like their yak.

Towards the end of the trip we decided to go shopping in Leh, but what we saw literally shocked us. Prices for even the smallest of artifacts was simply exorbitant. And since the foreign tourists gleefully pay whatever amount is demanded, so no amount of bargaining works on these vendors. Quite disappointing, I must say.

Fortunately or Unfortunately, we had to take a flight from Leh to Delhi, and just days back while preparing for the trip I had read that the A position seats are the best while flying from Leh to Delhi early in the morning. And so it was. We had a beautiful view of the mountain range, with no sunlight blocking our vision. It looked like some painting or a scaled replica of the region. It made me want to return there once again.

Forever.

This part of the story covers our journey from Leh city to parts in and around the region. A couple of days of rest is enough to get on acclimatized to the altitude at Leh.

The flawless beauty of the region had enthralled my senses like nothing had ever before. The thought of even settling down in this region came to my mind. However, the discouraging news came during the first day of our stay at Leh itself. While talking to one of the waiters while having lunch about how the weather is like during winter, he replied..

Its very cold, so cold that I work on Goa for eight months of the year and only for four months here. Its too cold to survive here.

OMG! I had an aversion to cold weather anyways. All plans of settling in Leh were dropped then and there (Little did I know about the kind of weather that I should expect in Indianapolis – my home, at least, for the next two years).

Walking from one place to another in Leh can be very tricky. Because of the pollution (read haze) free air, different places look much closer than what they actually are. Add to that the fact that we get tired very quickly because of the thinner air which deprives the sea-level city dwellers of oxygen. The one time palace of the ruler of Ladakh seemed like a 10-15 minute walk, but it took approximately the same time – by vehicle!

Like most monasteries and other important structures, this palace was perched on a hill, precariously close to the edge of a cliff.It offered a good panoramic view of the whole city, which isn’t bigger than the average Bombay suburb, and the surrounding mountains, of course. It is mind boggling how the monasteries and palaces we built on such hill tops given the technology that was available 400 to 700 years back.

One of the more recent structures in Leh that is as big a draw as any of the other other monasteries is the Shanti Stupa. It is faintly visible on the picture above. It is located at – you guessed it – on a hilltop! This stupa offers another good view of the city, bring located at the far end of the city. The snow capped mountains beyond the city look nothing more than a painting. A perfect painting at that.

Leh city is surrounded by small pockets which have guest houses/ resorts and serve as intermediary points while travelling to the other regions worth visiting in Ladakh. One such place is called Ulle, at about 2 hours distance from Leh. It is on the banks of the Indus river, and here we had an opportunity to go river rafting. The water was very dirty and very cold, but none of us wanted to miss the opportunity to go rafting. The rapids in the course are relatively calm ( upto level 3 on a scale of 5, they said). The raft does move very fast all along, but without the many jerks and bumps that one would normally expect. Towards the end when the river slows down a bit, the instructor gave us an opportunity to dive into the water and go for a short swim. I was the last one to take that opportunity, but I jumped real hard, and drifted so far ahead that the rest of the guys had a tough time rowing to catch up with me. When I asked the instructor (who didn’t seem a day older than 20) what would have happened if they had not been able to catch up with me, his nonchalant reply was

Aap Pakistan pahuch jate (You would have reached Pakistan)

You gotta be kidding me dude! But I was satisfied that they fished me out before I entered Pakistani waters.

Pangong Tso. It is very difficult to describe on sight as the most beautiful in the entire region of Ladakh. But I were forced to make a choice, then it would have been the Pangong Tso (Lake). It is about a six hour drive from Leh city, so starting early is a must. The accommodation available around the lake is not the best, hence we preferred making a day trip to the lake. It is in the shape of a “J”, with only the bottom third in India, whereas the other two thirds are in China. The lake is a brilliant blue, with shades changing constantly as the clouds cover and uncover the sun. The water is crystal clear, thanks to the visitors who have so far refrained from littering. The blue-green colour is due to the reflection of the sky from the surface of the water. I had seen pictures of the lake prior to going there, but I still wasn’t prepared for the first blue of the blue as we approached the lake. It was simply overwhelming. The lakes contains two patrol boats of the Indian army, which we were not allowed to photograph because of security reasons. The road to the lake passes through the Chang La pass, which is the third highest motorable road in the world. The highest, Khardung La, and the second highest, Lachung La, were also covered during the trip. I will write more about Khardung La in the next post.

I tried to capture the entire color range of the lake by clicking photos at different times and then merging them, but never came close to capturing the true beauty of it. The solitary structure towards the right of this picture is actually a toilet! Needless to say it was too dirty to inside. Every moment I could look at a different part of the lake and it would look a different color. It could have put the feathers of a peacock to shame. There are a few more pictures of the lake on my flickr account, which can be accessed by clicking on these photographs. Also some of the panoramic pictures are not fully visible on the blog, they are better viewed on flickr as well.

I will finish off the description with the concluding part, hopefully sometime in the coming week.

It was a long standing dream of mine to go on a trip to Ladakh, near the northernmost tip of the country. Strange. I still refer to India as “country” even though I am in the US now. Anyway, getting back to the topic, it was the most wonderful experience of my life. My first impression of Ladakh was from the auto magazine Auto-Car India, where a team had done a Kargil to Kanyakumari trip. I had heard about it for years, seen pictures from a friend of mine who had been there earlier and also seen videos of it. It just looked too good to be true.

It was a trip planned as my last trip with my parents.I was supposed to leave for the US to pursue my Masters in a month’s time, so it was sort of a parting gift from my parents. My and another friend’s family set off on a wonderful journey towards the end of June. Though I must mention that august is supposed to be a better time to go there.

The itenary was something like this; we flew to Delhi from Bombay, overnight to Manali by a bus. After a couple of days at Manali, we set off on a two day road trip to Leh, the capital of Ladakh. We had to stop overnight at a place called Sarchu, which was at an altitude of almost 15,000 feet!! Did I mention it was in a tent? And then went to places around Leh for a day or two.

The flight to Delhi was fairly comfortable, but the real excitement started just as we were preparing to leave Delhi. We were supposed to leave for Manali at 4pm, however the bus was caught up with some permit trouble somewhere in the outskirts of Delhi and it came to pick us up only at 7pm. Three hours lost in a flash. All the while that we were waiting for the bus, the travel agent who had booked the tickets for us went from a Volvo bus (for which we thought we had paid), to a Volvo-jaisi bus, and eventually shoved us into a rickety 20-something years old bus with vertical backrests.

The awesome seats ensured that I did not sleep the entire night, regarding which I had a tiff with the bus owner. I had a heated argument, but eventually he prevailed as he just simply threatened to throw us out of the bus if I did not sit shut (Grrrrr). And it turned out that it was worth being awake all the while. The driver nearly drove us into a ditch and then did manage to veer off road while negotiating a ghat. His constant honking also ensured that none of us could sleep peacefully. I tried to keep a ocunt of the number of times he honked, but I could not keep up with him. After 15 loud hours we were at Manali.

Our hotel at Manali was overlooking the river Beas about a quarter of a mile downhill. It was a pleasant break from the humdrum traffic and pollution of Bombay. For a change the sound of streaming water filled my ears, as against the usual honking and drone of vehicles. It was two enjoyable days spent at Hotel Brighu in Manali, which incidentally had a 52 inch television to entertain high-paying foreign tourists. Incidentally the football world cup was also going on at that time, but I preferred immersing myself in the old issues of Nat Geo.

From Manali we left early in the morning for the long drive to Leh. The two Mahindra Scorpios went zipping through the mountains, which were an awesome sight. Some trivia: The entire region uses Mahindra Scorpios for transportation as it is supposed to have the most powerful turbo charged engines available in India. Innova, Sumo or the Qualis were as rare as Mercs on those winding roads.

As we went from Manali, which is at an altitude of about 6,000 feet, to Sarchu, which is situated at about 15,000 feet, we could literally feel the air getting thinner and colder. Even going for a small walks during breaks in the journey was getting tiring. At the same time the presence of military vehicles started increasing. Every now and then convoys of trucks would pass by us in groups ranging from three to thirty. The was the truck drivers negotiated the bends was simply incredible. By rule, all civilian vehicles had to make way for military trucks whenever they approached from the opposing direction, since the roads are built and maintained by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), putting them precariously close to a several thousand feet fall. It seemed like, time and tide and military vehicles wait for no one.

There were several small bridges en route which could be setup and dismantled all with the space of a few hours!! Credit again to the BRO for that.

As we reached Sarchu, I could not help wondering how come such a serene place existed in such a rugged region close to volatile international borders. But that was just a trailer of things to come. Unfortunately, the change in altitude within a day took its toll on me and mom, and both of us had a severe bout of altitude sickness. My condition was bad enough to warrant the need for an oxygen cylinder, which was empty, and there was no spare cylinder. So now I was at the mercy of just the medication that my parents, who are both doctors, plus a little help from a doctor from a military camp ten minutes down the road. The attendant at the camp was too drunk to be of any assistance, other than blabbering that everything will be fine. All that while I was vomiting. Some advice: Always carry a proper sully of medication within easy reach. My medicines were “lost” somewhere in the pile of bags that we were carrying.

Somehow I made it through the night, and we set off for the remainder of the journey with me dozing in the back of the scorpio. But I was soon woken up just to admire the scenic beauty of the highest desert in the world. It was the most barren landscape that I had ever witnessed, yet it beautiful. A couple of hours after we had left Sarchu we came across a gigantic open space that was surrounded by mountains on all sides. It resembled a huge cricket stadium. The road we were running along was on the edge, touching the mountains. But the drivers decide to take us for a spin right through the center of the flat land. It was something that i had only dreamt of in the past. We went racing down the un-tarred surface with nobody behind or ahead of us! I had barely imagined such an experience prior to this.

Try spotting our companion Scorpio in the pic below!

After a few more hours of winding road, and a few shortcuts (straight downslope, that is) we finally made it to Leh city. There are several Monasteries on the outskirts of the city, most of them several hundred years old.

It is a green blob on an otherwise barren landscape surrounded by snow capped mountains. Leh is at an altitude of 11,000 feet, with a plethora of tourists everywhere. The drivers told me that 75% of the tourists there are foreigners.

To be continued……