Wed, Jul 20

9:22 am: woke up at 8 (great sleep last night) when pawan started thumping the door. Kshitij slept on for another half hour. We catch up a bit of 'whose line is it anyway' on tv. let me go get ready.

11:12 pm: today was a great relaxing day. We went out to the market - tibetan stuff, ladakh handicrafts etc - generally moving around.

We went to La Terrase for lunch - well, started at around 12 and sat there for 3-4 hours. Its a roof top restaurant and the sun was bright. We had some salad and pizza - good stuff!

we then came back and had a short nap in the afternoon. In the evening, we went to World Garden Cafe - its a small open restaurant and serves all kinds of cuisines. Mostly foreigners (well, that seems to be true of most of Leh). We were there for 3-4 hours. Its amazing how good food you can get in Leh - we first had some paneer chilly which was absolutely great - then falafel and veg lafa were equally good.



There was an interesting set of people here. There was one table where people just kept coming in, joining in, having food and leaving. These looked like backpackers who probably had been here for some time and kept running into each other. Strange kind of commmunity eating, if you will.

On the other side was a group of 5 whiich kept smoking hash for most of the evening, but were well behaved all through.

In front of us, there was a couple sitting, and midway through the meal, the guy just collapsed - fell in front on the table. The woman was hysterical and called for the ambulance. Fortunately, there was this person (a local guide, perhaps) who rubbed his chest and brought him back to life. The guy just stood up, pushed away everyone away and walked out. It was hard for him to match his steps - he was obviously stoned - scary! After this, this rescuer person went and joined the hash group and started an interesting conversation - ''by qualification I am matric'' and all - we could overhear just parts of it, but i'm sure you can find more on their travelogue :-)

At around 11, we walked back to the hotel. Watched some movie and now its off to sleep. Chilled out day after last few days of hectic stuff.