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I am in Kunming, China, just arrived. I weighed myself on accurate airport scales and found that I lost 20 lbs and returned to my high school weight. I spent almost two months in Pakistan and India combined. Food is vegetarian there and pretty dull. Mostly rice with dal (kind of spicy bean sauce). But major factor in weight loss is not food itself but how they serve it. Here in China food is serviced usually by attractive, neatly dressed girls. In India/Pakistan it is always served by overworked boy, who looks dirty and put food on your plate with his bare hands even if a spoon is available. Passion for low sanitary food handling in these countries is very strong and unexplainable.

From Russia to India (part VII: Travel notes on how to loose 20 lb effortlessly)

Alex Mumzhiu
2006-03-22 19:38:33

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mansion is located. After Naggar I visited Manali, Leh and Shimla. Manali and Leh are swarmed by hordes of tourists. In Manali even larger crowds of locals follow every tourist trying to sell him something. Leh is better because it is mostly Tibetan town and Tibetans are not as business oriented as Indians.

Shimla is nice. There is not many foreign tourists there, and also there is not much to do there.

Leh is known as little Tibet. There are many Tibetan monasteries here and Tibetan architecture (which is so close to my heart) prevails in the town. Why do I like Tibetan architecture so much? Because of Roerich! Many of his pictures of mountains contain little gompa or chorten so naturally fitting to the mountain landscapes. Tibetans live much better life in Leh than in Tibetan Autonomous Region of China, where they lives like second class citizens after Han and Hyi Chinese.

If you remember, my initial plan was to travel from Kashgar to Lhasa through Tibetan plateau, also known as Cheng Tang. However the stories of travelers died from the high altitude sickness on the 5000m plus mountain passes, and from freezing in tents at high altitudes scared me off.

I travel between Manali and Leh by bus. It is a 2 day trip with one night spent in the middle of the trip. I used this trips to check how really dangerous Cheng Tang is.

I rode a bus from Manali to Leh, filled mostly with young backpackers. I exited the bus at Tanglang La Pass on the 5360 meters (17582 Ft) and unfolded my bike. All the people exited the bus, they were very excited, they shook my hand and wished me luck. In Leh I constantly met these people, my former co-riders, and they continued to express their excitement. After exiting the bus I rode bike down from the pass to the nearest flat place and put my tent at an altitude still close to 5000 meters. There was no forest there, but I found on the road a couple pieces of ribbon from old tires, ...