We've now been in Leh for 10 days, its a place you kind of get stuck in, though maybe we wouldn't still be here was it not for the fact that Ant got horribly ill 72 hours after arriving!We are 90% sure Ant got food poisoning from one particular grotty restaurant, though most are really nice there are some that don't care about standard hygiene.Ant spent the next 5 days being really ill, we'd just visited an ayervedic medicine guy a couple of days before the episode and he'd given us some potions to take, sadly these didn't work for Ant and 4 days into being sick he ended up going down the conventional route and visited a real doctor who prescribed some real drugs - after about 1 day of taking the conventional stuff he was well on the road to recovery.

So, our first 7 days in Leh were pretty much spent close to a toilet and with Ant fighting a horrible fever!Thankfully we met Justin, a wicked guy who kept me sane while Ant was sick, sometimes rescuing me for lunch/dinner, whilst Ant complained to himself or sung to the toilet.

Once Ant was better we started to explore Leh and the surrounding area.This place is beautiful, sitting at the highest point of the town is a Gompa (Buddhist monastery) and a disused royal palace to the east at the next high point is Shanti Stupa, a Peace Pagoda opened by the Dalai Lama in 1983 - both sites are amazing places to watch the sunset, though the climb up is pretty hard on the lungs, even when you think you've acclimatised to the 4,500m all you need to do is walk up a hill and then you realise that you'll never get use to being at this height.

Here so many people are plying for your trade, I've managed to get my jandals sewn for a 40RS, had one of my shirts dyed maroon for 50RS (suspiciously the same colour as a monks robe) and Ant had his hair cut for 30RS - all of this together is about the price of a lollipop.

With my fantastic sense of direction - not - I've managed to get us wickedly lost, we'd have been pretty annoyed had it not been that we were walking along the river banks, through barley fields, passing by happy locals going about their day and finding a wonderfully secluded spot by a stream just to chill out - at the time we sadly hadn't realised that we may have been sitting on a shrine, this only became apparent when a couple of women came over with their prayer beads and patiently waiting whilst us heathens finished our picnic - doh!During this epic adventure we stumbled across a sanctuary for neglected and abandoned donkeys, the place was so incredibly sweet... as soon as we walked into the sanctuary we were surrounded by about 30 donkeys wanting food, thankfully the lovely old man who tends them bought out a massive bag of carrots for us to feed, it was just so cute - unfortunately due to all of the signs we were unable to kick, punch or ride the donkeys, who in their right mind would go to a donkey sanctuary to harm them (but this is India).

There is so much to see around here, though sadly we've only made it out to Tiske Gompa perched on the side of a mountain and after climbing up through the quarters for monks you arrive at the temples, one with a huge gold seated Buddha, although I would loved to have taken a photo, it would never have done justice.From Tiske Gompa we walked down through villages to Shey Palace, unfortunately we didn't realise just how far the palace was so by the time we got there the last bus back to Leh was about to arrive - actually the bus never did arrive and we had to hitch back to Leh.We were disappointed that we didn't get to see the palace, but the walk made up for it.

We are finally leaving Leh tomorrow and will head for Srinagar, Kashmir with this guy Ritesh, he'd put up a notice asking for people to share a jeep with him.It seems that most people get a jeep that takes 1 day, but we've decided - with Ritesh - that we'll take 3 days, taking in the local sites at our leisure. After our Leh to Manali trip - we just want to take things slow.When we arrive in Kashmir we'll meet up with one of Ant's old work mates, Abbas, he's coming for his cousins engagement party - which we've been invited too, how exciting!!

Aside from Ant being sick and the frustrations we are having with Indian broadband, we are slowly getting into the Indian way of life.Hopefully we'll be here for a few months yet, but if Ant continues to get ill we may have to rethink our plan - I like to call it 'Man Stomach', imagine 'Man Flu' but 10 times worse.

So, next destination Kashmir!!