Bob, Zanskar and Demon Swordsmen!

After driving around the areas close to Leh, Sharon and me decided it was time to leave and head towards Kargil and then Zanskar Valley. The way up was nice and the road good and we spent 2 nights in a small town called Lamayuro. Here lays the oldest monastery in Ladhak, and as usual, nicely situated on a cliff. A big shot Lama was here for 4 days to give teachings and the monastery was packed with people. The teachings were in them selves good, but with a all dead time for translations from Tibetan to English and Ladaki, even a senior monk sitting in the honors podium fell asleep. Me and Sharon had no chance, after I woke her up, we tip toed our way out.

We headed on north to the bigger town of Kargil, a place situated very close to the disputed line between Pakistan and India. This town was artillery shelled a few years ago in the so called 'Kargil war'. As soon as we came near Kargil, the people, architecture and religion changed from Ladhakian Buddhist to Muslim. Nice white and brown monasteries, to turquoise and pink mosques. Signs are mostly in Arabic and it felt a bit like being back in Egypt. In the entrance of town is already posters with old Khomeini, as the population is mainly Shia Muslim here. Inside the town is many similar posters with other old men with turbans and white beard. We stayed here only one night, checking up the bikes. Next morning we started our journey towards Zanskar Valley. If Ladhak, at least until a few years ago, was a isolated part of the world, Zanskar is the essence of it. This Valley can only be reached during the few summer months, as the road can be opened. During the winter it's almost totally isolated, reachable only by foot and Yak. The road was the most horrible I ever been on. I'm sure the Romans must have built better roads! The dreaded Manali - Leh road was a new built auto-bahn in comparison to this! After 5-6 hours drive, we made 70km and got off with the heads still shaking!

We met a climbing expedition team in a small guest house where we spent the night. The nearby mountains of Nun and Kun attracts top climbers, but one group of climbers had been a bit careless and 2 disappeared, one was found frozen. The had been told by the guide to come down from base came because the weather had started to turn bad, but going against his instructions and also ignoring the guidelines, the wanted adventure and stayed. They knew the risks, up to them. Now the expedition was there to collect them but also to train some local youth in proper climbing techniques, to make them future guides.

The next day the trip to Zanskar went on. The landscape here is breathtaking and after being jaded a bit from Leh areas, this was really nice. But the bad road made it hard to concentrate on the surrounding's. You need an eye all the time on the way looking for a way around rocks and holes, crossing big water streams and avoiding trucks and jeeps. Preferably honking a bit just in case, sometimes the drivers fall asleep and can hit you without knowing. Some people Sharon met had been in a jeep were the driver snoozed off and drove off the road, luckily not at a drop off, and they came away only with cuts and bruises. Driving a Royal Enfield can be really great, but it can also be a royal head ache. Apart from some oil on the spark plug in the mornings and a slight knocking noise, Vaselia has been running really great the whole time. Bob has been having some difficulties with the gears that keep slipping off, but still it's manageable and we keep moving forwards. Time to time you have to make an annoying stop at the police check post. It is totaly useless, they just want to fill in anything in the papers because they know it doesn't really matter. One police asked me what registration number the bike had. I couldn't really hear or understand him, so I asked "Registration?" He started filling in 'R-E-G-R-I...' on the papers.

Reaching Karsha, a village with a big monastery near the main town of Padum, we found a really nice family whom we could stay with. There's also a whole bunch of hyper active kids, fingering and looking at everything we did, a big annoying if they weren't so lovable. The house had also a perfect view of the monastery and the surrounding valley, which was specially nice at night time. The only thing was that we had to park the bikes near the main square, which was crowded with small kid with nothing better to do then climbing, pulling, pushing and jumping on every inch of Vasilia! Every time I came within sight of the bike, I had shoo away some kids before they would pull a 180kg Enfield on top of their heads!

We seemed to have come at the right time The next day was a 2 day festival at the monastery with masked dances and night time festivities in the village. We went to to see the festival in the monastery, which had much much less visitors and tourist and no charges for front seats or whatever. The dances were much like the one in Hemis that I had seen before, with impressive costumes and a lot of Buddhist symbolism. But instead of small monks with bamboo sticks, whipping people from coming to close, was a Demon swordsman (with a real sword) with a scarf over his face, drawing lines in on the ground but constantly having to smack people a bit with the steel to move them. I was sitting on the main stairs where the actors/dancers were coming down, and around me sat some other people also trying to squeeze up against the sid to not be in the way. The demon swordsman homed in on us. Spanking away people around me, he surprisingly left me squeezed against the stone wall and didn't touch me. Great! I had a nice spot for taking pictures, almost to close as the dancers almost smacked and stept on me as they danced down the stairs. The demon swordsman walked over to me again. This time he bent forward a said "Claudio, you remember me? Tenzin Lekshey?". "Yeeaaaa!!" I lied, I had no clue... They are all named Tashi, Tenzin, Dolma etc.. But after the dances were over he came up to me again and I saw who it was. One of my athletes from the Tibetan Olympics in McLeod G. I knew he was a monk, but not that he was sword swinging old ladies and not that he was staying here. It turns out that the house we are staying with in is also part of his family! Small world they say...

Zanskar valley is something else. Off the beaten track, the villages are still quite untouched, but very soon they probably will be bombarded with internet, Kashmiri souvenir shops, restaurants and the usual tourist things. This because a road is being built to link the Valley with Manali. Then it will be easier and faster even to come here, then Leh. This is really good for the people living here in isolation and bring them closer to Buddhist Ladahk instead of the administration from Muslim Kargil.

Having some time on our hands, we thought about finding a mechanic and fix Bob's gearbox problems. In the town of Padum, we found a man some people called a mechanic, but he didn't want to touch the bike. Instead the was a group of other willing men to help, that hallways through the operation said "No, we are not mechanics, but we like to fix things our selves!" As you can understand, the gearbox ended up 10 times worse and as icing on the cake, they gave Bob a very strange and bad sound coming from the engine. We had to change his name from Bob to Crazy Frog because of that.
So tip nr1: Don't give your bike to be fixed by local farm boys!
Bob never made the drive back home to Karcha and had to be left by the side of the road... Big bummer! The only solution was to put him on a truck and send him back to Kargil and, hopefully, fix him there. Sharon took the bus.