On our way to India

Applause, Zippy ready for India

Applause, Zippy ready for India

We leave Tucson today for a few months in India. We begin in Ladakh, tight between Pakistan and China, in the Tibetan cultural, and landscape land. We start in Leh, in an 11,000 ft. valley in the Himalayas.

We’ll hang out exploring temples while we acclimatize, then test some passes, and ourselves. We’ll stay about a month in the mountains and then descend into the plains where we may take a train to avoid the most populated areas, and go to the far south. We’ll be working on stories for Desert Leaf.

We have a one-way ticket, so we don’t know where we’ll fly home from. It’s nice not to know. We don’t have a phone. We should have internet fairly often and we’ll post here.

The preparation craziness is done, so now we can allow ourselves to be excited. This is going to be fun. No doubt some physical and mental challenges along the way; hey, that’s what makes life interesting, memorable.

I expect my camera to get a workout: Ladakh is called The top of the World for good reason, with the highest motorable road, spectacular scenery, and the Tibetan people are colorful and friendly. We rode across the eastern part of Tibet on our In Search of Shangri-La trip, and want to see how the Tibetans are different here in their western-most range. We expect some differences: they are free in India, not so much in China.