Basketball at Midnight

The passes are still closed, but we had to get out. Becky bought a flight for $210 from Leh to Delhi two days in advance. More on a budget, I bought a flight from Srinigar to Delhi for $60, and then I rushed to arrange a jeep from Leh to Srinagar. Although it was supposed to cost $25, I got away with it for only $15. $75 instead of $210? The only difference was that I just had to travel overnight and hope there were no problems.

Right around sunset, there was a small landslide blocking our way. It wasn’t two bad except for one boulder, and about 20 Ladahkians and myself tried to move it. It looked very pyramidal (tetrahedranal?), which is about the worst shape to try to roll it. Nevertheless, the Ladahkians began trying to roll it. It couldn’t be rolled. I tried to show my driver that we should try to pivot it back and forth and that that would be easier than rolling it. I’m not sure if my message got through, but that is how we got it far enough out of the way to get the jeeps by. Yes, I’d like to take credit. It was all because of me, but it was a little less exciting when I realized the bulldozers were coming down the road just as we edged the jeep around the boulder and headed onward. We still arrived in Srinagar at 6 am, which was 2 hours before I wanted to be there and 4 hours before I needed to be there.

So I sat in the only tea shop that was open near the airport (which itself didn’t open until with a man who worked in the highway department in Delhi. He was working in Leh and had the same price realization that I did. He told me that it’s still $70 to fly to Leh, but $200 to fly from Leh. After our conversation ran out in the second hour, I began reading my book, which made the Kashmiris very interested. They were wearing something that looked like a clothen shirt that went down to their calves. They didn’t put their arms through the arm holes, and so they mademe think of cloth ghosts. When I began reading, they all came over to me to peer at my book. They were pleasant enough, but they didn’t speak enough English for me to find out what was so interesting about the book. It was a dumb book, after all.

I arrived in Delhi a little late, and about 3 hours after Becky’s flight arrived. We took a prepaid taxi to the train station and then caught a train in General Class (no pre-arranged seats) down to Agra. General class is where all the exaggerations of train travel in India comes from, with people crowding into the aisles and sitting on top of the trains and such like that. To give you an idea of cost, the taxi 15 km across Delhi cost 225 Rupies based on distance (about $5), and that was a fantastic deal. People wanted to charge us double. The 3.5 hour train ride from Delhi to Agra cost us 120Rupies, or 60 rupies per person.

I had a miserable overnight experience in General back in 2004, but for the 3 hours to Agra, I figured it would be fine. When we found the right train, it was already mostly full. There were some people in the aisles, and we ended up sitting in the luggage rack above the normal seats. It would have been more fun if people didn’t give me an occassional nasty look when I stretched my legs to rest them on the opposite luggage rack. People generally were interested in the white people riding general, and really interested in the white woman riding general.

Now I’m in Agra, home of the Taj Mahal. Compared to Leh, it’s wicked hot down here, though it really isn’t too bad. I’m going to hang onto my winter jacket since I still expect to go through Uttaranchal and Nepal. I expect to be in the area for another week or two to remember how much I don’t like hot weather. Then, it’s back to the mountains.