The Wheels Of The Bus Go Round And Round.

The wheels of the bus go round and round,
round and round,
round and round,
The wheels of the bus go round and round,
aaallll day long (literally in this case)

I caught the bus at 5am in Leh, the capital of Ladakh in the north of India. And The first day of bussing finished at 7pm

Herearesomephotos!!!!

9:17am I got the idea to take a photo pointing forward to show some of the bus, and I liked it so much thats all there is here! This first shot got me into it because the bus wasn’t on a road for a while, it was just driving towards a gap in the mountains on the other side of a desert. The best way I could get this across was by getting the bus in the shot as well.

10:52am These pillars are a common feature in the Himalayas. I would like to throw stones at the base of them to see if I could make them collapse, or maybe shoot a hand gun at the base.

11:07am The bus joins a river for a while. There are a lot of rivers, rivulets and streams all all the Himalayas, its amazing to think that they will eventually join the ocean 1000′s of kilometers away.

11:09am There’s some snow in the river

11:17am And there the river is completely covered in snow, a snow bridge, I wonder if its safe to walk on?

11:21am Onward into some harsh looking environment. I guess its around 4000m above sea level, not many plants and no trees around.

12:19pm You can be driving along with hardly any change in the environment, then turn a corner and be presented with a view like this. Never fails to grip you, you can hear the change in mood on the bus when this happens, conversations stop and there is a muffled shuffle as heads turn to look out of the window.

12:30pm 10 minutes later the view grows more feature rich and you are presented with more ‘down’ And see the layers on the mountain on the right, its great to see these and try and read some of the history of the world through them. Each layer placed down over many years, then pushed up to form nice curves and folds.

2:06pm (A whole hour and half passed since the last photo! What went on! We stopped for food at some community, but since I didn’t get a bus shot of it I didn’t want to put photo’s of it up here, it would ruin the continuity, i’ll put them up another time) It wasn’t the best weather for photo’s on this bus journey. Still, they do look nice in a gloomy forboding sort of way, but if the sun was out for sure the light would be so rich as to make the photo’s look unreal. I do have some of these brilliant coloured photo’s on a previous post when I did this journey the first time some 3 years ago.

2:12pm These tents belong to a camping site, I think it would be nice to stay here for a couple of days, walk up to the top of the ridge and see whats on the other side. I suspect a huge vista of mountains yet with no road, just the deep Himalayas, H.P. Lovecraft country.

2:26pm Them low tents on the right side of the road are for the road builders/repairers who live in the craziest places to work on the roads, Gawd bless ‘em.

2:28pm The road was quite busy, it opened quite late this year, which causes a few problems since Ladakh is isolated for many months in the year, so they patiently wait for things that they don’t produce themselves. So when the road did finally open there was a month or so backlog of deliveries to be made.

2:41pm One of many ‘scrapes by’ This is an easy one since the drop off isn’t death inducing, and the bus is on the safe side. Some of the passings go very slowly and the bus is on the edge, as I talked about a few posts back.

2:50pm You just know this lake is super super cold. Lots of ice in it, what you could see of the water was on the edge of being ice itself, it had a lumpy look to it.

3:15pm This area was one of the reasons why the road was closed for so long. Many sheets of snow would be still covering the road if it wasn’t for bulldozers that came and shifted it (and in some cases came back to shift it again after unexpected snow storms filled it up again).

3:24pm Presented with even more snow.

3:25pm Even more snow, and you can see just in front of the bus how thick the snow was on the road. The first time I did this journey was earlier in the year and there was less snow. In fact there was mostly no snow that time around, a cloudless sky with UV rich sunlight pooring in through the thinner atmosphere at this height.

3:39pm And then there is even more snow cover. The air was super cold here, a good bite in it.

3:40pm Very deep snow here. What a job to clear this road of snow.

3:45pm And then there was very little ground without snow, and the snow over 1 meter deep all around.

3:48pm Its quite camoflaged but if you notice the bottom of the valley on the left of the bus is rather deep!

3:54pm For the most part the road just goes two way, backwards and forwards. There being no other place to the sides to go. Just over the top of the mountains are areas where seldom people go.

4:04pm Coming down now away from the snow plains. And there’s some small community in the distance. I think they moved there when the snows started to melt, for sure they can’t live there in the winter, the place is totally uninhabitable. I would really like to get a glimpse of this area in the winter. Shorter days, around -40c, and lots of snow. There are wild yaks around, and I saw some wild deer, so these guys eek out a living somehow, surely not in these high areas though, im sure they go to lower ground.

4:47pm A nice shapped mountain on the other side of the canyon, which is deathly deep as usual.

4:59pm Greenery! Life returns to the land as we go lower and the snow clears up.

5:09pm One of them death inducing drops again. This one had that 55 degree angle slope that led to a vertical drop into the canyon way below. At times like this I calmly went through how best to improve my chances of living should it fall off. I noted which windows were open so I could dive straight through one should it fall, I also was aware at all time the arrangement of my camera strap and camera case over my shoulder, so I could easily untangle myself if they caught on the window. I really did plan it! Some curiousity leads me to wonder how it would be. I’ll check some stats on the road see how many accidents there are every year. I do feel privalged to have done the road a few times now. I think i’m being overly dramatic about it though, many people do this journey many times each year.

5:15pm Again being suddenly presented with lots of distance and many features in this distance. Its surely one of the most amazing bus journeys in the world, if not the most amazing bus journey. I think there are some equally amazing and dangerous ones in the Andes in South America.

5:21pm Some of the road condition is perfect, some not so perfect. (you would think they would make the more dangerous areas more perfect, i guess though the problem is working on the most dangerous bits, its very hard to make the road any wider because there is nothing to build on).

5:59pm The mountains on the left look very lord of the rings hey, they even look computer generated.

6:03pm Some rubbly crappy road, not so high though, if the bus fell we would just get bruised and broken a bit, and cold from the water, unless of course my planning and cat like reflexes land me safely on the road as the bus takes a dip.

6:12pm As the sun goes behind the mountains we come closer to our destination.

6:12pm The area is very habitable now, lots of green, trees even. And some very fairytale looking villages in idilic places.

6:40pm Just up ahead is the village of Keylong, our destination. We made it safe and sound. No problems at all. The journey started off kinda slow for me, felt like the whole arduous day loomed ahead of me, but after the first hour things sped up for me and I was in constant wonder at what was going on outside the window.

I have one more day of this bus journey that I will do in the same style, with the times and everything. It was a shorter bus journey, only 7 hours, half the time of the first day. There are still some wonderful photo’s from it though.

I highly recomend this bus journey to anyone that feels bored with life and needs a shake up, its totally awe inspiring, you can’t help but feel something unique seeing these surroundings. The altitudes which you travel through are pretty mind altering as well, if you don’t exert yourself it all takes on a rather dream like quality. Then when the bus stops and you go to the toilet you are suddenly out of breath taking a small walk.

Look forward to all your comments