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For the first time in weeks there are no mountains in sight. To the north and the south, encroaching desert stretches all the way to the horizon. The air is chilled as the late year sets upon far-flung China. Sparse tree-cover appears along irrigation courses, mostly wispy popular showing autumn color. The place is wild and remote, but doesn’t feel it; the modernity of the People’s Republic resonates in this dusty outpost. A week on and already things are so, so different than they were on the Indian subcontinent.
We crossed the border on a Thursday, entering China in the mid-afternoon. If the Chinese army was surprised to see a huge red truck full of Westerners coming over the Khunjerab Pass, they didn’t show it. The men of the border post, all of them ethnically Han and all of them in full military dress, jumped to attention as we approached. They were tough but courteous, and seemed prepared to stand around in the cold mountain air for hours if necessary. When the time came – and it came quickly – they signaled us on with sharp salutes that said “Do. Not. Mess. Around.”
Pakistan is falling away to the south. The canyon walls narrow and the air grows thin. Somewhere in the near distance is China, looming at the tip of our expectations. We’ve watched the massive Chinese trucks ramble past our mountain camp all week. They’re a hint of what’s to come, and speak to the power and wealth of a grand nation whose influence is spreading in all directions, even into the impossible, high places of the Karakoram.
The little village of Passu had a big week. A huge red truck sat parked along the stream, the same stream that was once a glacier. Behind the restaurant, within sight of the dwindling glacier, a hutch of colorful tents poked up beyond the thorny shrubbery of the Pakistani countryside. Every morning, chatty Westerners would snake their heads out of these tents, look up at the surrounding peaks, and spill out into the valley. They’d saunter off to the restaurant to sip tea and read, or gather all manner of silly implements in their packs and go hang from the nearby cliffs. Some would crowd into the back of tractors, minibuses, jeeps, or family cars, hitchhiking to other villages for long walks, all the time looking at the rock.
1) The Delhi-Lahore Bus
This bus is a joint service of the Indian and Pakistani governments, and leaves from Ambedkar Terminal near Delhi Gate in Old Delhi. Compared with other ways of getting to Lahore, it is somewhat expensive. It does, however, save significant time and trouble. The alternative is to travel to Amritsar, hire transport to the border, cross the border on foot, and again hire transport to Lahore. It leaves Delhi everyday (except Sunday) at 6am and arrives in Lahore at roughly 6pm. Three very pleasant stops are provided along the way, including complimentary tea, snacks, and lunch.
Cost: 1500 INRs
From: Ambekar Terminal, Delhi Gate, Old Delhi, India
To: Gulberg, Lahore, Pakistan
Depart: 6am daily, except Sunday
Arrive: ~6pm
Prerequisites
– A Pakistani visa
– Photocopies of
a) Your passport’s picture page
b) Your Indian visa
c) Your Pakistani visa
2) Daewoo from Lahore to Rawalpindi
There are many options for getting from Lahore to Pindi but having arrived on the Delhi-Lahore bus, this is perhaps the most convenient. The Daewoo bus station is only a 5 minute rickshaw ride away from from the Lahore terminus. Other options are cheaper, but these buses are extremely plush, fast, and seem to depart every few minutes. Also, the Daewoo terminal in Pindi is well outside the city, but it is much closer to your next jumping-off point than the public bus terminals.
Cost: max 600 PKRs
From: Daewoo Terminal, Lahore
To: Daewoo Terminal, Rawalpindi
Depart: As soon as you can get aboard
Arrive: ~3:00am
[ Note: Having arrived in Pindi at 3:00am, one is faced with the daunting task of finding lodging. We advise simply sleeping at the Daewoo Terminus. It is a clean, spacious facility with benches that seem almost to have been designed for a good night’s rest. This is an especially good option if you intend to catch an early bus from Pir Wadhai the next morning. ]
4) NATCO from Pindi to Gilgit
NATCO runs all public buses up the KKH. From Pindi, this will likely be an air conditioned coach that leaves from Pir Wadhai bus station, which is roughly between Pindi and Islamabad. According to Lonely Planet’s “Pakistan and the Karakoram Highway” (2008 ed.), Pir Wadhai is the terminus for all KKH buses, NATCO or otherwise, but we did not research other options. The earliest available NATCO bus leaves Pir Wadhai at 8:00am. It is possible to obtain tickets at almost any hour.
Cost: ~1200 PKRs
From: NATCO Termainal, Pir Wadhai Station, north of Rawalpindi, south of Islamabad
To: Gilgit NATCO Terminal
Depart: 8:00am to ???
Arrive: 18-20 hours later
We spent our last day in Leh tearing down high mountain roads on bicycles. For 800 rupees, a jeep carried us up to the highest motorable pass in the world, put us on mountain bikes, and then tailed us as we careened back down again. When we started taking on dirt banks at high speeds the jeep hovered anxiously close by, and then eventually disappeared as our antics got more and more dangerous. The single-track potential around Leh is unbelievable, and we had a ridiculous amount of fun both on and off the pavement. It was a perfect last afternoon in the big mountain playground, one that I followed with a final plate of fried momos at Norlakh Restaurant. Leh was so good.
All still abuzz the next morning, chattering about our week, we arrived at the airport for our early flight back to Delhi only be delayed for three hours. This gave us plenty of time to speculate about what we’d find when we got there. Would our visas be ready? Who’d be sick? Who’d be stuck?
These little dispatches seem to be coming farther and farther apart. Again, my apologies. I had plenty of time on my hands in Rishikesh, and a good internet connection to boot, but spent most of my time working (but failing) to get Windows off of my laptop. I did do quite a little bit of writing, too, but mostly on topics that will not be of interest unless you’re obsessed with climbing gear. Anyway, I’ll not make any more excuses; it should be clear that I really want to write these dispatches as often as possible, but that sometimes traveling takes precedence over writing about traveling.
The Rajdhani Express seemed to chug on forever, and it became harder and harder to occupy the tiny berth with my six companions, lovely people though they may be. In the end, we mostly watched movies on my laptop to avoid irritating each other. We arrived in Delhi after another restless night on the train, a few hours late, and found that we were not at the train station that we expected. But in India, all transportation problems can be solved by flagging down a tuk-tuk. So, we made a dawn commute across town to the regional bus station in some hired minibuses. For some reason, we’d decided that it would be fun to “slum it;” to take a public bus the remaining seven hours from Delhi to Rishikesh. In the end, this proved to be interesting from a sociological perspective, but at the time it mostly involved a sore butt. This seven hour bus ride cost about $3, a bargain considering the distance covered, the wildness of the ride, and the fact that we got to see a man thrown from the moving bus.
Sorry I’ve been out of touch for so long. We’ve been off climbing in some southern backwaters, which has been great, but our connection to the rest of the world has been pretty unreliable. Plus, I’ve got a growing queue of things that need to be written in some semblance of order. I want the big picture to come through nicely here, you know? The upshot is that I bought a sharp little laptop in Bangalore – a birthday present to myself – so I can write and do some coding while in transit. In fact, this is my first blog entry written on my laptop, and I am indeed transiting. Seven of us are leaving southern India on the Rajdhani Express, bound for Rishikesh in the foothills of Uttarkhand.
Trains are a lovely way to see India. Maybe they’re great everywhere; I wouldn’t know. In the West trains are quite expensive, so much so that driving or taking an airplane has always made better financial sense to me. In India, though, you can get from one end of the country to the other, traveling on the order of 1000 miles, for under $100. No special deals are required, and you can get tickets on very short notice. The more comfortable cars (so-called “3AC” and “2AC,” both air conditioned, the latter having 2-tiered bunks, etc.) are filled with middle-class families, business men, students, and the rest of progressive Indian society. There’s no livestock. You can certainly choose to travel in the people-with-livestock class, but this is generally only undertaken by the exceptionally tight-assed, poor, or masochistic. But I digress. The point is that trains are India’s great travel bargain, and that they are a really nice reprieve from the touts, beggars, blowing dust, and other stressors of Indian travel.
The Rajdhani Express has been speeding north for more than 15 hours already, and we have at least 20 more to go until we transfer to a bus in New Delhi. No one is looking forward to returning to Delhi, even for a couple of hours. Last time we were there we’d just come down from a beautiful Himalayan valley and we all immediately got sick. Thereafter, Delhi became synonymous with vomit-inducing filth, open sewers, and tainted food. Now we’re looking at just a few-hour layover there, but even that seems unbearable. What’s even more daunting is that, after our short stint in Rishikesh, we’ll be back in Delhi for a full week so we can suss out our Chinese visas. Wonk.
I’m also a little reticent to leave southern India. The cities here – Mumbai, Hyderabad, and Bangalore all got visits – seem metropolitan, even cosmopolitan, in a way that much of the north did not. By no means have they shaken off the craziness that makes a city an Indian city, but those in the south manage it with a certain panache that allowed me to joyfully overlook some of the typical annoyances that a tourist finds on the Indian street. Even little things like colorful homes, colonial architecture, or tree-lined avenues made the south seem that much more livable. Given the growth in the tech industry in Bangalore, I would even consider coming back for a much longer stay.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Backing up to where we left off last time, we finished off our stay in Goa with a party, as I am sure you’ve figured out. This was the perfect end to four days of tearing ass around the beach towns on our scooters and watching sunsets on the Arabian Sea. The only real snafu for the dude organizing the party, me, was that it was kinda against the law to do what we were proposing, which was basically to pound out sweet jams next to a bonfire on the beach all night and invite every honky in a 30 mile radius. This is precisely the kind of thing that recent government prohibitions aimed to stop, especially in the monsoon season, and I found it extremely difficult to find any locals who wanted to turn subversive. But the bottom line was that we needed 1) a place and 2) and sound system, and only the locals could provide. In the end, we got both from the place we got everything else we needed in Goa: the “gangsters” who ran our hotel. Whether or not they were actually some kind of organized criminals is open to speculation. All we know is that the headman, John, owns some kind of restaurant, and that they were happy to take our money, seemed to have a lot of connections, could get just about anything, and didn’t actually do much other than play cards. But then that was the way that Goa seemed to operate across the boards.
This given, though, I didn’t really tell them what I was planning on doing. They had already agreed to provide us with a catered fish BBQ. I got them to bring along a PA systems so we could “play some music while we ate.” Then I secretly went about printing up a bunch of fliers, which the whole lot of us spent the day passing out on our scooters. In the end, a handful of people showed up to join us and we had a fresh dance party that ran until the wee hours. The gangsters protested on several occasions and eventually tried to extort us for their support in the inevitable raid by the police (which never came), but the ladies of HotRock were extremely persuasive and the headman accepted a rum-and-coke and some time at the mic instead of hard cash. He was actually a pretty good rapper.
But what about the climbing? I’ll cover the topic more thoroughly in a future post, but the punchline is basically that Badami has great sport climbing on miles of underdeveloped sandstone but can be a little repetitive, and that Hampi is very relaxed but not worth your time unless you’re bouldering V7 and have fingertips of steel. We spent 6 days in each spot, and I think everyone felt much more productive in Badami. But then, no one on the trip is pulling exceptionally hard at the moment. Even those few that are bouldering within sight of V7 didn’t find Hampi to be the nirvana that Sharma’s Pilgrimage suggests. We actually took the time to watch the film one night in the Laughing Buddha Cafe and found Sharma echoing some of our sentiments: that Hampi really forces to you go out and look for lines to work, that it requires a significant investment of time to yield rewards. All of this would have been fine if we hadn’t come down from Chhattru Valley just a month beforehand, where almost every boulder had a great, accessible line (or ten) on it. Again, see my other post for a more comprehensive treatment.
Let me just say that it is really nice to be able to sit on the train and write without having worry about how many Rupees it’s going to cost me. To recap, just so it’s all clear: party in Goa, drove to Badami, nearly drowned, climbed sandstone for 5 or 6 days, drove to Hampi, suffered on granite boulders, drove to Ramanagar (outside of Bangalore), went into the city for my birthday, bought a laptop, ate Domino’s, climbed some, got on the Rajdhani Express. Got it?
~br
Mumbai was everything that Delhi was not: beautiful, (relatively) clean, cultured, metropolitan. Granted, I didn’t see much of Delhi because I was sick, but I am sure that I did not see enough of Mumbai. The sprawling city on the water was an absolute oasis after three days of transiting through the stix. All of us were filthy, having spent the previous night on sleeping in the parking lot of a truck stop. Mumbai opened itself up with coffee, cocktails, and STEAK! So good.
More on the food theme in a moment but first I should mention Udaipur, the lovely lake city that we visited the day we left Mt Abu. The place has a somewhat unimpressive palace sitting in the middle of a weedy lake, but was amazingly laid-back despite the fact that it’s so close to the Delhi-Agra-Jaipur tourist circuit. I get annoyed when I see too many honkeys around, but Udaipur made up for it with really lovely, helpful locals and a pretty promenades and markets. I was on cook duty there, and made a trip with the help of a cool tuk-tuk driver down to the butcher’s market to get some mutton for BBQ. “Mutton,” it turns out, is actually goat in India – and tough goat at that – but the whole experience more than made up for the subpar dinner.
From Udaipur it took us two hard, dusty days to get to Mumbai. We rolled into the city as we usually do, covered in filth and blaring party music. The locals were flabergasted, and the police stopped us just to take pictures. We found the Salvation Army hostel (a great deal in the heart of Colaba), dropped our bags, and started eating. Our fellow HotRocker, Dave, had been planning a culinary tour of Mumbai for weeks, and the city’s restaurants did not disappoint. Mumbai is very pricey – practically at Western cost – but our splurging was well worth it. We even managed to squeeze in a fancy night out, complete with a long overdue dance party. I was sad to leave after just two days, and am looking forward to coming back in the distant future with a pocket full of cash.
Two more days of slightly less filthy, less exhausting transit followed. Again, we slept in the parking lot of a roadhouse. But again, too, our torment was rewarded, this time with a couple of really lovely days on the beach in Goa. We’ve had good weather despite the tapering monsoon, but the party capital of India has been pretty much empty. Evidently, things have calmed down quite a bit here over the past couple of years, with the authorities putting the party scene on ice. But it’s still crawling with weird Euro-hippies, the detritus of the post-rave fallout. The beaches are pretty, but not stunning, which makes me wonder how this place became THE Third World party destination at all.
Some hilarious things have happened, but I’ll save my stories for a later post. Right now I have to go and organize a sound system for the inpromptu beach party that we’re throwing tonight. Keep your fingers crossed that I don’t get arrested, or have to bribe the cops AGAIN.
~br
It has been a very busy week. Last Tuesday, recovering from a respiratory infection, I started a 27 hour train journey south from Delhi to the city of Hyderabad. Accompanied by my friend Mel, a veteran traveler, I’d left the relative safety of HotRock to attend the wedding of a friend, Bhargav Kuntamukkala. (Words and pictures to come. Promise.) The respiratory infection left me weak, and during the train ride I finally got what I’d had coming to me for a long, long time: Delhi belly. The intestinal irritation was minor, but I couldn’t really eat for several days, which is exactly the opposite of what you want when you’re at a wedding! Despite all of this, and mostly thanks to the amazing hospitality of the Kuntamukkala family, Mel and I had a wonderful time in Hyderabad. We left after four days to catch the HotRock crew, who had since moved from Delhi to Mt. Abu. The return transit was even longer than the first – 40ish hours in all – and included one night bus, one missed train, one amazing coincidence, and an eventual recovery from Delhi belly.
Mel and I went to Mumbai to catch a train to Mt. Abu, which we managed to miss thanks to the extremely pokey bus from Hyderabad. Now we had a few hours to kill until the next train, and were haggling with the taxi drivers outside the station. We’d decided to go into the city for a little food. At this point, we’d only see 3 white people in the previous five days. Then, thousands of kilometers from where we’d last seen them, appear our HotRock friend Fey and her boyfriend Gordy, who’d also left from Delhi on a little adventure. I love a good coincidence! Turns out they were taking the same train, albeit to a different place.
Trains in India are quite restful if you pay for a decent berth, which is not terribly expensive by Westsern standards. For example, $50 got me all the way to Hyderabad (27 hours) in a comfortable air-conditioned bunk. So, after a week of illness, I was quite looking forward to the return trip. My antibiotics had finally started to kick in and 18 hours in an air-conditioned bunk really helped me recuperate. We arrived in the hot, dry station town of Abu Road in the mid-morning. Then it was a short bus ride up to the cooler climbs of Mt. Abu, which is a bit of an oasis in desert Rajasthan. At the top of this minor mountain is a big lake and a very chilled-out little resort town. It’s just what I needed after a week on the go. The rest of the HotRock crew arrived a few days before us, but little climbing has happened. The mountain stays wonderfully lush thanks to seasonal rains, which are good for flowers but not for climbing. The day after tomorrow, we’ll all climb onto Birt for the start of a big transit south.
Can’t keep up with all this jet-setting? I’ll try to put a little map together sometime soon so everyone can make sense of my comings and goings.
~br
It’s warm and rainy here, and today is Indian independence day. We didn’t arrive until 2am the day before yesterday. It was a long transit, but we had a good time on the truck. I went to the American Embassy the morning of our arrival to start the process of getting a visa for Pakistan. Some HotRockers are leaving for home, and a couple of new faces have just appeared. Everyone has been in a celebratory mood despite the long transit, but too much partying left a handful of people sick this morning. It seems that I’ve mananged to dodge the bullet yet again. I’m now making preparations for a trip to Hyderabad for Bhargav’s wedding.
~br
I tried to call many many times yesterday, but there have been continuous power outages and the phone service around Manali is terrible. We’ll be leaving tomorrow (Friday) for a more remote valley in the shadow of the monsoon. It will be our first climbing of the trip so far; everything has been much to wet too climb in Manali. I doubt that I will have any way to communicate from there, and will be out of touch for perhaps more than a week. Nonetheless, we are in the Himalaya!
The truck (“bus”, “Birt”, whatever you want to call it) is stuck in a rice patty a short distance from Dharmasala, which itself is a short distance from McLeod Ganj, the home-in-exile of the Dalai Lama. We had a nice stay there a few nights ago. Seeing the Tibetan faces really made the idea of Asia come alive.
The trip from Amritsar to the rice patty was absolutely wild! The idea of driving this vehicle to the places that we are going is madness, and the locals know it. The looks on their faces are priceless. We’ve crossed (and failed to cross) more 3rd World bridges than I care to remember, and have had to tread (16 tons) lightly on some very treacherous mountain roads. The drivers, Henry and Pete, are amazing. In the end, one back wheel slid into a ditch while trying to navigate a small farming village. Two recovery vehicles have been destroyed trying to get the behemouth out. Today some army cranes will give it a try and, if all goes well, the truck will join us on Sunday or Monday.
Everyone is itching to climb, despite the fact that they’ve all been rather sick since Amritsar. It seems that I am the only one who has not suffered some serious intestinal distress. Keep your fingers crossed!
~br
t r a n s i t i v i t y 