Day 8 30th April Car crashes, marmots, and an invite to tea and apricots

Photo above - India's dangerous mountain roads today. We had to help right the vehicle before we could carry on.

Bikers from Oman

It's not everyday that you can stay you are staying in the same place at a large group of bikers from Oman, but hey, that's the beauty of travel. One was from Lebanon and spoke good English,and told us that they had just come from Kashmir. They were all dressed in hoodies, hats, gloves, puffa jackets…in the hotel restaurant!

Road trip to more remote parts

After breakfast we set off to drive 50 miles to the village of Beema. We travelled back down the mountain via the rock slide road we had come up on a couple of days ago, and back to the checkpoint we previously passed through. This time we took the second of the two routes available from there, northwest following the river Indus again.

We started seeing the safety slogans again. Some of the best from today include “Be Mr late, not the late Mr”, “A fast drive could be the last drive”, “After whiskey, driving risky”, and “No safety, know injury”.

The road we joined is a minor one and is single lane. It links the villages up this valley, but there are also several army camps up here, so they are looking to improve the road. There are however a lot of stretches that are gravel only. We passed the village of Domkhar where our driver is from, and a bit further on, the village of Takmachik, where will be staying in a couple of days.

This valley is a bit greener than what we have seen to date, being just below 3000m, but the green parts are only in and immediately around the villages. Outside these it is totally barren. It has the effect of making the villages appear like oases. In one such village we saw a marmot at the side of the road.

Were all those safety signs in vain....car crash!

A bit further on we realised how pertinent those safety slogans are as we came across an overturned car. It must have just happened as the family were standing about looking dazed, one was clutching his leg, and there was one vehicle stopped each way whose driver's had got out to try and help. We did the same. There was much talk about how to right the vehicle as it was completely blocking the road. A couple of other vehicles joined the queue to get passed, and one had a rope, so he used his vehicle to pull in one direction to clear it away from the rock face. Then we all pushed to get it back on its wheels. It would not start and was not driveable, so we pushed it as much as possible into the side. I hope someone gave the family a lift down the valley to get some help. We were going the other way.

Eco hotel....but no electricity

A few miles up the road we arrived at our hotel right next to the Indus at Beema, where we will stay for a couple of nights. The river goes over some rocks right here so is very loud, and likely to be lulling me to sleep tonight. We are just over 100 miles from the border with Pakistan here, where there is always some international tension.

The hotel grows a wide range of fruit and vegetables, and during June July and August they are completely self sufficient in this area. It does not however have any WiFi or phone signal fairly unsurprisingly, given it's remoteness, and lack of population.

It is very hot in this valley, possibly the hottest place in Ladakh. Add to that the relatively thin air and the impact that has on the sun's rays, we decided to chill in the hotel after lunch until it was possibly a bit cooler. Then we went out to walk around the village of beema.

Bear in mind that these villages often have just a handful of houses or families, no shop or cafe, way up in theountain, trying to make a living out of agriculture in a very barren area, with harsh winters.

Even higher into the mountains

Although our hotel address is Beema, to get to the village itself we had to drive up a gravel road with loads of hairpins. Once there we had a walk around looking for good photos and interesting people that maybe we could talk to. First up we met some Nepalese people who were making a water channel down the side of the road. Two women were carrying cement bags down the road on their heads!

Invite to tea

Then we saw a woman in her garden, who agreed that we could take a photo of her. She then invited us into her home for tea and apricots/walnuts which are grown in this area. Turns out that she is a widow of two years, and is on her own. She is of Drokpa descent and speaks that language as well as Ladakhi. There are only 20 families in the village, and when someone dies, everyone goes into mourning.

Talking with the locals

Next we wandered further through the village to the school where pupils were coming out. All said hello to us as they went passed. We ran into a teacher who spoke some English. When asked what subject she taught, she said everything! We then started wandering down hill again, and saw a lovely old lady in a small cultivated patch of land. She owned the land, but was still recovering from the damage done by the heavy snowfall the area had a few days before we arrived. The snows had broken branches off trees and interrupted the early growing season. When we saw her she was collecting twigs for a fire because she could not afford any gas bottles. Like all the people we stop and talk with who gives up their time for us, we give her a little money.

Finally we scrambled up a steep track to a farm where sheep and cattle were in enclosures and the family were levelling a piece of land ready for potatoes. It was very hard to get there over boulders and narrow alleys between animal pens. No road or track so no farm machinery possible. A hard existence.

Finally we walked back down to the hotel, at which we are the only guests. Tomorrow we will explore other nearby villages. The widowed lady said that there was some kind of festival going on in one of them tomorrow