Some time after the Vipassana retreat it was time to leave Ladakh.
There was talk of the last bus for this season and once snow fell the road would be closed and you could only leave by plane.
So Eve, Yannick and me got on what was called the last bus to Manali for a gruelling two day trip.
When I came back to India for the first time again in 2007, I noticed that the roads in general had become much better, so I guess the trip on the Leh-Manali Road is not such an ordeal anymore, but whatever the road condition are nowadays, one thing doesn´t change, the beautiful landscape, the tricky weather conditions, the power of nature.
The only seats left were on the last bench in the back, where I got the seat in the middle, so brilliant to stretch out my legs, but sometimes the potholes would send me flying into the air, almost hitting my head against the roof and then coming down, crashing into the bench, making me worried about my spine.
We conquered Taglang La, a 5328 m high pass and had a stopover for one night at a site where the passengers were supposed to spend the night in some tents by the highway.
Since all of the other tourists did so, the three musketeers had the whole bus for themselves, so we slept inside the bus so that we didn´t have to pay for the tent.
After all, we had survived a toppled truck. What was a night in a bus to us?
The next day in the afternoon we arrived in Manali, a place utterly blessed with weed and Israelis.
A totally new experience for me, the Israelis, not the weed.
So far I had not encountered many Israelis on my trip.
There had been none at all in Pakistan and they were forbidden to travel to Kashmir in 1992 because of the Muslim guerilla there, but here in Manali they were everywhere.
Many young Israelis where there to let off some steam after their time in the army and it wasn´t always pretty.
I don´t know if they did not get it that they were not in Palestine any longer, that they were just guests in another country now, but there were cases where Indians complained about Israelis behaving disrespectful towards them.
Later on during my travels in India and Nepal I would sometimes encounter lodges with signs outside which would bluntly state “No Israelis“.
A bit shocked first but always inquisitive I asked the owners why they put up such signs and they ususally all answered something like “Too much trouble.“
Don´t get me wrong, I have encountered many wonderful Israelis during my travels, but those were usually soul brothers and sisters of mine, single individual travellers with an alternative outlook on the world, not groups of abusive ex-soldiers.
I strongly believe in calling an asshole an asshole, and if an asshole happens to be Israeli, I wouldn´t call calling him one Anti-Semitism then, but Anti-Assholism.
Now before you accuse me of anything here, just check out Flipping Out by Yoav Shamir to get an idea.
http://crimedocumentary.com/flipping-out-2008/
Though filmed about fifteen years after my first visit to India it shows some of the problems I also encountered.
Now being a bit older and wiser I understand that some of the Israeli guys I met probably suffered from some form of PTSD which in combination with drugs caused some problems, but in those days I thought them just being obnoxious.
After some days in Vashisht where we enjoyed the hot springs, wellness for poor travellers, we got on a bus to Delhi where the three musketeers reunited with our Kashmiri friend Ismael and his family. It would be the last time that we would all be together. I was planning to go to Nepal to get a new visa for India, Eve and Yannick would go back to France, so Eve went and bought some sweetmeats for about ten Deutschmark.
Do you have any idea how much sweetmeats you would get in those days for ten Deutschmark, 180 Rupies?
We stuffed ourselves to the point of feeling slightly sick and still couldn´t finish the lot.
We told Ishmael about our accident with the truck and he apologised for getting us the wrong driver!
What a sweet guy!
We thanked him for all the adventures he had made possible for us, including the truck accident, so that he didn´t feel bad.
After all, what better way to live life than to live dangerously?
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@ecotrain.
