This is a long-overdue post but for the last 8 days we have been in the Rumbak Valley about 3 or 400 metres higher than Leh and about 90 minutes drive away, further up in the mountains and completely off-grid without access to cell coverage or internet. We returned to Leh yesterday and I write this in our hotel, snow-bound as our flight to Delhi has been cancelled by a blizzard until, with luck, tomorrow.

As I mentioned in my last post, our first two days in Leh were meant to be ‘rest’ days. The altitude protocol requires that we spend those days inactive and resting so as to acclimate to the altitude. However, we spent our first two days doing everything but resting…

This post and the ones following in the next few days have all been written retrospectively since for most of the time since our arrival we have been off-grid, with no cell or internet service.

We arrived in Delhi late in the evening of Sunday February 16 after a lucky escape from the weather in Toronto, a snowstorm that had begun in the early afternoon of February 15 and which was piling up heavy snow on roads and runways.

We have not been in Delhi for about 12 years and so had forgotten the insanity of Delhi traffic. Let me be not be judgmental…Indian drivers are a very creative lot. They add one more lane to the designated design of any road, so an eastbound stretch of road that was designed with 2 lanes magically contains 3 lanes of cars, as well as buses and motorcycles. It’s not that there is room for 3 lanes but rather that every inch of road is utilised as drivers squeeze in and out of lanes, slide by each other and tuck into any slight opening…

I write this as we get ready to leave for the airport on our way to Ladakh in the Himalayan section of northern India. Our goal is to track and photograph snow leopards, an endangered species who are only found at high altitudes in this region.   

Weather for the Toronto area is calling for significant amounts of snow overnight tonight and through Sunday and, as our flight leaves at 20:00 I worry that we may not get away before the flight interruptions begin. I’ve firmly latched on to this particular worry…