Day 3: Flight from Delhi to Leh
You do not know when you will get to Leh, and after a while you do not even know whether Leh itself exists; the existence of a fertile valley and a town in all this wilderness of rock is so improbable that Leh seems as mythical as the Golconda of Marco Polo, an imag
A Journey in Ladakh - Andrew Harvey
Getting up at 
In Leh we were picked up by Tashi (as nine out of ten people from Tibetan descent seem to be named) and taken to the Mountain Edge Hotel in mini vans. Here we were welcomed with black tea and cookies before our room keys were handed out. Making a quick stop at the toilet I had a rather misfortunate event when, bending forward to fill a bucket with water, my sunglasses slipped out of my pocket and shot straight down the drain of the squat toilet that lay next to the regular ‘western’ one.
The altitude of 3200 meters started to have its effect: shortness of breath, a slight headache and dizz
The hotel, Mountain Edge, was located a few kilometres out of Leh's city limits, just below the rock with the Shanti Stupa.
Leh is little more than a small town with a new and old part, the latter including the Palace that looks out of the town and resembles a mini version of
On this first day of getting used to the height it was better not to run up to the palace right away.
Hidden away in the main street is a tiny little gompa (temple) called Chowkang. It houses a temple hall, big prayer wheel, a kora with smaller prayer wheels and (yes!) public toilets which look like blue funnels stuck in the ground. After another call of nature I walked the kora, spinning the prayer wheels and had a look inside the temple hall, which wasn't all that remarkable.
I ran into Kirsten at the gompa and asked her what a decent pair of sunglasses would cost. She advised me to have Tashi, her contact at Nomad Travels, to help me out since there were a lot of fakes without UV filters being sold. Until then I had to do with the sunglasses Tineke was kind enough to lend me.
At 18:00 hours we all gathered at the Menthokling Garden Restaurant, next to Tashi’s office, where I had some delicious fried chicken momo's (which some of my travel companion that never had momo's immediately loved as well) and a chicken sizzler.
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The good thing about this remote location is that it's in a relatively quiet area and it's only 10 minutes walking to the Shanti Stupa. The downside is that it's a bit of a pain in the behind to quickly get to and fro Leh. In our case a shuttle service was provided but the more it was used the less willing they were to drive people up and down. You'll have to plan your day around this because you can't just quickly walk into Leh.
The hotel itself is nice, seemingly rather new and with a lot of wood panelling, giving it a warm feel. Rooms are relatively spacious and clean, but the shower has a rather enigmatic mechanism. Once you've worked it out chances are that you won't have any warm water or the trickle is so weak you have to run around in order to get wet.
I personally had a very good experience with the hotel manager, who was helpful and courteous. Others however had other experiences and it seems like this person has difficulties dealing with stress (read: too many people that want something at the reception desk at the same time).
A definite area of improvement is the fact that there weren't enough clean towels and they were not replaced daily. Also, the wastebin with used toiletpaper wasn't emptied either !
I'm afraid this is another case of 'not bad but there must be better places'.
