AUG-A-5

THE “TRANSITION DAY” IN LEH,

DURING WHICH I WAS TO HAVE REGROUPED AND PACKED UP FOR THE FLIGHT OUT FIRST THING

THE FOLLOWING MORNING, NOW A VANISHING DREAM, WITH A PROLONGED ROAD TRIP TO LEAVE THE “HILL COUNTRY” BY BOUNCY VEHICLE TO GET TO A PORT FOR A NEW ARRANGEMENT OF MY SOON TO BE MISSED INTERNATIONAL FLIGHTS

August 21, 2003

About the only thing useful in the course of this layover day in Leh, is that my laundry has about half dried. It is not yet ready to be packed away for the several different uses—the Alaska expedition for which much is set aside, the repair and cleaning up kit, the leave behind in Leh pile for the next trip up here perhaps at the next summer time in this same July/August interval, and the duffel bag to be carried forward to Simla to be ready for me with its sleeping bag and other essentials for the next excursion to Sikkim, from August 4—18. It is now likely that I will be making the same tiring road trip via Manali to Simla to get to Delhi by road.

As inefficient as this is, and uncomfortable besides, it is very lengthy as well, so that I will never be able to make the scheduled Lufthansa return flights and will have to re-schedule something else to get me back to the USA in time to do all the things I have been planning through the last endless road trip days by bouncy bus with the blaring soundtracks from “Bollywood” films repeated so endlessly, that I now know the nonsense terms of affection in Hindi. I should. Since these “Goo Goo, Gah Gah” sounds are the only lyrics repeated as many as a hundred times per repeated playing of the tired tape. Remind me that I MUST have my own sound system and books on tape for the next endless road trips. I had bought a special memory chip and tried to get the MP3 programmed for this purpose before this trip, but the teenage guru who was supposed to have engineered this feat had met stone wall technical problems along the way, and then did not appear at work for the last several weeks before take off. So, this missing item has cost over a hundred of my man hours, doing nothing but breathing in dust and fighting to stay in my bouncy seat while the blare of Hindi schmaltz permeates even more of my environment than does the coatings of dust!!

I went first thing this morning to the Photo Shop, which I had to pass the Kashmir merchant Imtiyaz to get to the store. He accompanied me, since I seem to be one of his best customers and more specifically, “finder” agents, even if some of the customers I bring to him are mainly poor students. He became my American Express agent as well; since I bought two roils of film, having come down to the last exposures of the trip well-rationed out for the end of this trip. Since the end of this trip may well be another week away, I got two more rolls of film and a new battery for one of the cameras, and without Indian rupees, Imtiyaz will be good for it for me, since the merchant still has my wide angle zoom lens, which apparently needed far more extensive work on it wherever they had sent it, and it has not returned. So, it will have to be carried by Imtiyaz to Delhi when he decamps from Leh when the road closes in later September. He will visit his family in Kashmir for a few weeks, and then go to the family stalls in Connaught Place in Delhi for the winter which I had once visited. He will carry my lens there if it has been repaired for the 2500 R fee which is about the same as the charge by George Mora Nikon Camera Service the last four times the screw had derailed on the aperture setting. If I can stop in at either the arrival in Delhi, around October 5 on the way to Sikkim, or around October 17 on the way out from Sikkim, I may be able to pick up my lens, which would have been the one to have over the last several weeks for the wide-angle vistas of the magnificent mountain ranges. But, as many other small but nice details, this one is not to be on this “go round,” and it seems that I will be making a less than scenic road trip with all the risks and discomforts of the unpaved “Hill Country” mountain switchbacks with less interest in the photographic adventure of it all than in just getting through it to be on my way back to commitments on the other side of the world where people may not as fully understand and appreciate the exigencies of the travel plans and their dissolution in this part of the world.

I then wandered back to the Internet Café I had previously used, run by teenage Tibetan girls (all of them, of course, born in Ladakh, as was at least one of their parents, so calling themselves loyal Tibetans is a bit like my saying I am Dutch and eager to go back and kick the European occupiers out of my homeland). They play a game with every newly arrived customer as we awaited the availability of a machine to use. Rob was using GWeb mail which I could log into if I was interested only in sending the message that I am stranded; since it would have no access to my incoming messages on my GWUMC account which I might try after the original message was sent out by way of GWeb. For at least twenty minutes they tired hard to figure out where I was from and how many languages I spoke, figuring at last that I was surely English, but never guessing that I was an American. The game continued somewhat wearingly, until I got on the machine and sent the first four attachments of Aug-A-series, announcing the return from the Trek and the disruption of my further travel plans. Just as I tried to log on to the GWUMC account to review any incoming messages, the machines went down, and I have no idea as to what news is going on at home or around it, and it may be just as well, since I will not be in a position to do anything about it—that position being returned to the USA to untangle whatever glitches may have developed at Derwood, GWU, or points in between.

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