Leh -> Upshi -> Pang -> Keylong -> Sissu -> Manali
Luckily we got picked up within an hour by a truck full of road workers (either police or military). We climbed into the back with the workers and got a lift some of the way to the next town, but then it stopped and they got out to work on that part of the road. Luckily another truck came along and they were going all the way to Pang, over two of the high passes! We were in the back of the flatbed the whole way, and at the first pass it started to rain and snow a bit so we pulled a tarp over our heads to keep the worst of the weather out. We got lucky too, as the pass was blocked by a landslide, but we got to the blockage just as a couple of bulldozers were finishing clearing it so only had to wait 15 minutes or so.
The trip to Pang took quite a few hours, the most beautiful of which was the huge open valley/plateau before the road descends to Pang. The sunshine on the mountains and hills looked stunning, and we waved at the nomads who live there in tents with their goats and horses as we drove past. One day I'd love to go back there, hike halfway up one of the hills, and just camp for a week in the middle of that striking open wilderness on the roof of the world.
Descending to Pang at last, we hopped off the bus, shook hands with the driver and slept in a parachute cafe/hotel. These are basically a big tent with a smaller section at the back where travelers can sleep on rough beds for the night - usually truckers we reckon, but the night we were there we met an Aussie couple who were cycling to Leh from Manali! There's always someone more hardcore than you...
Pang is the highest transit camp in the world apparently, and you could believe it with how short of breath you could get just from jogging back from the toilet outside! The next day we started to descend though, this time in the front of a truck driven by a Kashmiri called Sanjay who liked his bidis as much as Nick. I'd never been in the cab of a truck before so it was quite an experience - three of us crammed onto the driver's bed behind his driving seat, with our feet resting up on the dashboard under the windscreen. As before, it was another long hard leg - including the state border crossing from J&K into Himachal Pradesh. I remembered from going the other way that this pass was one of the hardest in terms of the road - something like driving on the surface of the moon, the road is basically fucked - cracked, cratered, with streams running all over it, bits of rocks and boulders, and often a sheer drop on one side with bald, barren, jagged mountains all around. At one point near the top there is snow everywhere which is beautiful, and reminded me of the train from Oslo to Bergen in Norway.
Eventually, the twisted, broken road improves again as it descends back down, slowly, towards Keylong, and the landscape gradually changes - becoming greener, becoming Himachal Pradesh instead of Ladakh. We reached Keylong just in time to find a guest house and get food in the evening, and spent the next day exploring the town. Keylong is halfway up a big valley, with big rivers running down from the mountains on two sides and rambles up and down the hills and valleys all around it. After a day there we discovered there was no way to withdraw money, which me and Trevor were running low on, so we decided to hit the road again.
The next day's hitching was a bit more sporadic. Our first ride with the three of us and our packs rammed into the back of a small minibus took us to the next town along after Keylong, then we got a lift from an army truck carrying massive tanks of water to a base further again (Nick got very wet from the water splashing out on every bump in the road), then finally hit jackpot on another flatbed that took us to Sissu. It was a relatively short leg in our journey because we didn't want to go all the way to Manali in one day, but again we had some great views of the green valleys from the back of the truck, perched on the spare tire.
Sissu was a sleepy farm village, where we met a local guy who was studying architecture and seemed very happy to have some tourists to chat to. His English was excellent and he knew loads about the area, so we learned about the languages, culture and history of the region, how the village was self-sufficient and had to stock up 6 months supply of food because all of the places between Manali and Leh are completely isolated by snowfall in the winter. The only way out for someone who's seriously ill or needs to get to a city in those 6 months is by the government subsidised helicopter that can pick people up from a helipad at the bottom of the valley.
After being awoken by a cow in need of milking outside our window, we tried hitching to Manali but found out the road was blocked again (landslides are still fairly common at this time of year), so had to pay 100 rupees for a jeep to take us a far as the blockage in the road, just over on the other side of the Rohtang Pass. A massive queue of vehicles was parked up waiting for it to be cleared, but we were told it was possible to walk around the landslide and grab a lift on the other side of it. So, off we walked down the side of the mountain, following the trail of locals with pack horses going up and down a rough goat path amongst the boulders. As we descended to the road on the other side of the landslide, a dynamite blast shook the heavens above us and echoed loudly off the opposite side of the valley seconds later, and the work to clear the rubble continued. Rocks and debris rolled down the side of the mountain, away from our path thankfully.
On the other side after some futile bargaining with opportunistic jeep owners trying to pick up tourists for inflated prices, we hitched our final lift with a group of Punjabi lads on holiday. This included many stops for photos and food - including a few drams of Indian single malt that they kindly gave us a sample of from a hip flask before bundling us back aboard the back of the truck with cries of "chello"! So, slightly tipsy, we finally arrived at Manali in time to find a guest house and watch the World Cup Final, tired but incredibly happy that we'd taken this long way round.
