Poaching tigers has been a major issue in most of our national park. There was a big cry about vanishing tigers when it was discovered that there were no tigers left in Sariska National Park. As it normally happens, new measures were taken to protect tigers after sufficient noise was made. But are the forest departments and the government really serious about the poaching issue? Aditya Singh thinks otherwise. He runs a lodge near Ranthambhore National Park, and blogs on wildlife conservation. Aditya feels that nobody, not even the NGOs are really keen on saving our wildlife.
The big boys of conservation – few well-known megalomaniac personalities who have cornered the conservation limelight/profits (believe me it is very profitable) and the Project Tiger (or NTCA) – are living in an elite dream world and are hopelessly out of touch with reality. They have a mutually beneficial relationship based on you scratch my back and I scratch yours.
Read Aditya’s take on poaching and conservation.
+ The next few posts in the Ladakh series will focus on traversing the Manali – Leh highway. These posts will cover transport options from Manali, what to see, where to stop, and everything else you would want to know when taking this route.
+ The prices mentioned here are as of 2008. Please factor in inflation!
It is the difficulty involved in traversing the road that attracts travelers to make the journey from Manali to Leh by road. Nowhere else in India do you get to drive hundreds of kilometers without seeing a single permanent habitation. The road runs above ten thousand feet for almost entire journey, and the highest point on the road is above 18,000 feet. The landscapes are unparalleled. The superb greenery on the way out of Manali will be the last stretch of abundant vegetation that you encounter until the day you return from Ladakh.
The journey is hard by itself, and very often the mode of transport chosen can make things harder.
The Delhi – Leh Bus
It took some time to register in my mind that there really is a bus that goes all the way from Delhi to Leh. It is an ordinary bus with 2+3 seats, run by Himachal Road Transport Corporation. It is the cheapest way to get to Leh, and probably the most uncomfortable. It arrives in Manali around 10am and leaves an hour later for Keylong. Reaching Keylong by 5pm, the bus continues towards Leh next morning, arriving at the destination in the evening. Most of the time it will be crowded when it arrives in Manali. If you are lucky, you might find a few seats unoccupied in the last row when the bus leaves Keylong.
The first hotel we looked up on arriving at Keylong did not have any rooms available. So did the second, third and the fourth. The one hotel which could take us in was the most expensive in town. I must have spent a good thirty minutes without much luck, searching through all the hotels near Mall Road. It is not the best feeling – having arrived in some remote town in the middle of the mountains, faraway from everything, only to find out that there is no place to stay. A supposedly nice guesthouse recommended by a friend was closed for good, rented out to house the offices of a government body. The options left, it seemed, were the most expensive and the least expensive. The latter was a bunch of grubby dorms near the bus-stand, mostly used by passengers who take the Delhi-Leh bus that halts for the night in Keylong.
A House on the Slopes of Keylong
It helped making some inquiries at the mall road before resigning to the expensive place. A recommendation by a friendly man (who worked at one of the hotels that was full) lead us towards the old bus stand, along the mall road for a quarter kilometer and then a steep climb through long series of steps. The heavy backpack weighing a dozen kilogram, along with the thin mountain air made it all seem like work. But the place we stumbled into was just how we would like it – clean rooms and loo with wide windows opening up to views of the mountains and the Bhaga Valley. The place was good enough to keep us stay put for four days.
Slopes of Keylong
Of the four days in Keylong, the first was spent visiting the ancient temple filled with fine wood carvings in Udaipur village. Another day was spent gallivanting in Keylong, and the day after that was a festival in Shashur monastery. On the third day we realized we were running out of money! We had forgotten to draw cash at Manali, the last place to find an ATM on the way. So the evening and the next day have to be spent trying to find ways to get to Leh with whatever money was left. The Delhi-Leh bus, discomfort at its best, was the cheapest option, but even that was completely booked. After running around for sometime in search of all possible options, a kind travel agent let us book a shared taxi, accepting only part of the money in advance. The rest was to be paid once we got to Leh, drawing money at one of the ATMs in the market. We were to find out later that it was not as simple as it seemed. And being penniless meant we had to travel direct to Leh, without stopping anywhere on the way. The plan to break the journey at Sarchu, Pang and any other place we wished to on the way, was not to happen.
