"Where we're going, we don't need....Roads"

This past weekend we went to visit some friends and decided to go even farther north to this lake that was only 110 kilometers away. So we booked a taxi and after the pizza party, what's the point of sleeping if you just have to get up at 3 am anyways?! So about 4am we start off on our Great Himalayan Adventure...

The drive was Beautiful!! We saw the sunrise over the mountain tops and took pictures the whole way there. Remember how i said it was only 110 km?? so to go 110 km in the mountains took 6 hours to get there and 6 hours to get back - i have no idea how that taxi made it there and back without falling into a pothole and never getting out!

The longer we traveled the smaller the road got and the bumpier it became! Imagine being squished up in a car, holding on for dear life as if you are riding a mechanical bull. There was no sleeping on the way, let me tell ya!You know its bad when the driver stops calling it a road and starts refering to it as "the way".... We stopped at a dabba along the way, strange i might add - we hadn't seen a soul for about an hour and all of a sudden theres this little place to get some food. don't worry we were able to find a ladies toilet - a large boulder half a mile away. I always say i live in the middle of nowhere....I was wrong - We live in a Metropolis compared to where we were! I think there were more sheep than people. Below is a picture taken along the way, about 2 hours away from our final destination.

Along the way we ran into several herds of sheep and their shepherds. Crazy! There were definitely some points when the driver slowed down and almost stopped bec he couldn't tell where the "road" was and by "road" I mean tire indentions in the grass or gravel. Off roading has taken on a completely new meaning now. When we finally made it to the Lake... we were most pleasantly surprised, we walked up to the top of a hill and looked out to see this...We walked around the lake to the other side and just sat in the green grass just enjoying the view. It was so surreal. It was deafeningly quiet. No horns blaring, no bells or drums sounding, not even the wind blowing, birds chirping or insects buzzing. It was dead silent! The lake was crystal clear with not a ripple on it. It was so soothing to be there we just curled up in the grass and slept for a couple hours. Below is me and Jules before we passed out asleep.

AFter we woke up, we headed over to a tent dabba. We felt like we were camping! We ate the typical indian dish - dal, chavel (rice), chipati, and another veggie. It was really relaxing and the owner was really hospitable and friendly. there were some other guys there just "hanging out" and playing some cards after they ate. We wanted to teach them Texas hold 'em but good luck explaining that in hindi.

As we were finishing our food, our driver runs in and tells us to hurry because its about to rain... if you saw the roads when they were dry and you heard it was going to rain - you'd peace out pretty quick too! We tried to just run up the hill towards the jeep but at 15,000 feet, good luck with that. we got half way up and had to stop because we were breathing so hard. Pesky oxygen.

As we started off the driver seemed a bit edgy and kept looking out the window and up. So he finally explained that there had been a lot of rain lately and made this area very prone to mudslides. I don't know about you but we all were plastered to the windows looking up and watching for falling rocks or a mud avalanche ready to push us off the mountain. But no worries we didn't see anything and were in the clear within 15 minutes.

Our driver gave us a good hindi lesson on the way back. We stopped for Numkeen chai on the way home (otherwise known as Yak tea). I wasn't the biggest fan of it but it tastes like buttery soup. It is made of ghee, salt and tea. If you go in thinking "soup" it's actually not too bad... We left there, and finally arrived at our house at 9pm.