Ladakhi Roads
I was on the back seat of a bike, my camera was in the backpack and I thought that I would ask my friend to stop if I see someting beautiful. First time I asked was here… and then I left the camera with lense open right on my shoulder.
It’s almost impossible to tell here what is medium beautiful and what is very beautiful, especially if you still remember how it was for real.
And then it’s extremely hard to choose which ones to puplish from over hundred of photographs and which ones not. Every photo is literally ripped from my heart.
Is it possible not to show you the stupas plentifully scattered along the roads?
Rivers?
And snow-white river beaches? Alas, we could not bathe as the mountain river water was plain icy.
Can I skip showing you prayer flags between the cliffs and cliffs between the prayer flags?
Graceful curves of the serpentine road?
And sometimes roads look like they cut open the matter oа earth tiself.
Is it possible not to show you clouds of road dust going up?
Restaurants by the road. Nice ones.
And not really nice ones.
Imperturbable ladakhi grandmother with apples and prayer wheels. And you can also buy home-made chung from them.
Can I miss showing you our iron horse?
And heroic driver.
Hitch-hikers.
And high mountain donkeys overpassing the steepest slopes.
There are funny phrases on the sides of the road appealing to be careful:
«If you sleep your family will weep»
«Drive on horse power not on rum power»
«When going gets tough, the tough gets going»
«Better be Mr. Late than Late Mr.»
Though I didn’t see my favourite one from Sikkim: "Be smooth on my curves."
There are Indian petrol stations which originally must have had a supply of petrol and water.
But in reality there is neither of them.
Once you even see a some kind of tantric signs on the roads :)
You run into numerous tents where road builders live: there are so many places that need to be widened, strenthened, straightened…
I can show you these photos but can they really show the height at which the road goes?
Depth of the canyon it’s passing by?
Cliffs hanging right above us?
Sometines there are stone cliffs and sometines green trees.
And can these photographs really show you the beauty of all these places?
Greatness, spaciousness of all these places?
Of course they cannot. They can point, help to imagine, help to guess or to remember something that you have forgotten long time ago.
I’ve taken this road two times. Once to Lamayuru and back on a bike. And second time up to Shrinagar on a jeep. I knew that buddhist Ladakh is going to end very soon and wanted to picture the very last stupa, the very last prayer wheeel.
And they were still going on and on… And then, finally, a small gompa with a statue right on the cliff.
And that’s all. There in front is muslim Kashmir and mosques only.
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March 20, 2009 1:41 pm
By Car insurance claims, November 23, 2009 @ 5:27 pm
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