...we have rested well and got an idea for another trip...the following day we were amazed that on a regular work day literally everything was closed and that Leh turned into a ghost town in memory of some events from the war time. Everything went back to normal as of 2 p.m. though....we were told that the person signing our permits to enter the Pangong Lake area area may or may not be there the following morning. In fact by 10:30 everything was arranged...we tra...

...we realized we were capable of climbing to 6,125m and and climbing down in one piece after all. Specifically:...we met our guide, who despite his young age (31) and slender physique turned out to be a a genuine superman and a mountaineering genius (he was the first to paraglide himself from the summit to Leh, does rock climbing and water rescue for the Indian army, conquered some 8-thousand m peaks, taught mountain rescue courses, ran an ultra marathon in Leh ...

...early morning on Tuesday we flew into the Ladakh region, dead tired, after two nearly sleepless nights (first train, then Delhi airport), went straight to the hotel and slept until early afternoon...we checked into the same hotel as last year and were taken a little aback to see that they doubled their prices (still cheap) and swapped their wifi for oh-so-useful flat screens in every room...we did not do much of anything, lazing about on sun-filled streets of ...

...we bought pills to alleviate symptoms of altitude sickness; funnily enough, apparently they're intended by the manufacturer for the treatment of glaucoma, inability to pee and epilepsy, nothing else; somehow, they got proven in the field of mountaineering and they are supposed to work; we got them over the counter of course...we realized we had forgotten to mention we had found some traces of Poland in Calcutta: Gillette razor refills with a sticker "Manuf...

...we learnt from big signs that there was no "idle sitting" in Indian train station waiting rooms; I guess they'll have treadmills then...?...we went through a nightmarish train trip from Calcutta to Varanasi, the holy city of the Hindus - no A/C, people stacked on each other like sardines in a can, a vendor selling tea, shoelaces, dynamite, cookies or samosas passing through every 40 seconds on the average (I counted) waking everyone up with their screaming...