30th June 2010
The solo trip to Ladakh in 2009 was so fruitful, so breath-stopping that I decided to take my parents there the very next year. And I did.
Only the duration was doubled (almost) and the itinerary included more regions, the most important being Kashmir.
Also this one was in the first half of July when there wasn’t much sunshine. This offered the sight of lovely green fields that I hadn’t seen in my earlier trip, but then, it was cloudy and without sunshine the beauty of Ladakh which lies mostly in the subtle variations of the colours of the desert – brown, grey, jade, amethyst, purple – all lay in unicolour shadows.
Tourism had as if become doubly popular. There was new construction where there had been none the previous year. There was more commercialization and more people.
Highlights of day 1
Some nice pictures of striated mountains from the flight.
Got my dad a black-grey sweater, wool on the outside, fleece on the inside.
My attempts to motivate mom and dad to climb up to Shanti Stupa failed. One look at the Stupa above and my dad said “I CANT”. I knew he could if he tried.
We rode up to the Stupa in a taxi.
The area around Shanti Stupa had been given a parapet of black and gold floral grill.
Fortunately they agreed to descend on foot.
Though it was the same place, though I had covered all of it with my camera and from all angles, I took just the same number of pictures or perhaps, more.
The solo trip to Ladakh in 2009 was so fruitful, so breath-stopping that I decided to take my parents there the very next year. And I did.
Only the duration was doubled (almost) and the itinerary included more regions, the most important being Kashmir.
Also this one was in the first half of July when there wasn’t much sunshine. This offered the sight of lovely green fields that I hadn’t seen in my earlier trip, but then, it was cloudy and without sunshine the beauty of Ladakh which lies mostly in the subtle variations of the colours of the desert – brown, grey, jade, amethyst, purple – all lay in unicolour shadows.
Tourism had as if become doubly popular. There was new construction where there had been none the previous year. There was more commercialization and more people.
Highlights of day 1
Some nice pictures of striated mountains from the flight.
Got my dad a black-grey sweater, wool on the outside, fleece on the inside.
My attempts to motivate mom and dad to climb up to Shanti Stupa failed. One look at the Stupa above and my dad said “I CANT”. I knew he could if he tried.
We rode up to the Stupa in a taxi.
The area around Shanti Stupa had been given a parapet of black and gold floral grill.
Fortunately they agreed to descend on foot.
Though it was the same place, though I had covered all of it with my camera and from all angles, I took just the same number of pictures or perhaps, more.
