Over 2000 Km by road, in around 10 days. Stunning landscapes, wonderful people. That sums up our Ladakh trip. But how did it actually work? How did we make it happen? Read on to find out! Leh, the capital of Ladakh , is accessible by air and road. Flying into Leh is the easiest, and time-saving option, while the road is the time consuming one, but with the added advantage of driving past some of the most beautiful landscapes in our country. Each option has much to recommend it, and we chose the road for just one reason – altitude sickness. Altitude sickness was one of my biggest concerns, since I suffer from motion-sickness. Yes, I do travel a lot, but that is despite my condition, and, over the years, have learnt how to handle it. I struggled with it when we visited Nathu-La in Sikkim, and wondered if I would be able to manage a week at the even higher altitudes that we would encounter in Ladakh. This was the reason we stuck to a basic plan, of only 9 days in Ladakh, thoug...
The Sandipani ashram was the first halt on our temple tour of Ujjain , and we entered the grounds expecting a short 10 minute halt, warned by our driver cum guide not to waste too much time, and ended up spending close to an hour wandering around the ashram. The reason was an inmate of the ashram, an engineer by profession and a Veda scholar by choice, a descendant of Guru Sandipani – the preceptor of Lord Krishna. Much of what he told us might have been mythology and unsupported facts, but his stories brought alive the image of Krishna as a young boy, choosing the person most suited to be his Guru, arriving at the ashram, persuading the guru to accept him as his disciple, bringing the holy waters of the Ganges to the ashram as an added incentive for the Guru to accept him as a student, washing his writing tablets by the river, performing the duties as a diligent disciple as an example to the others, making friendship with one of the poorest students of the ashram, a frien...