When last heard from we were stranded in Leh after the first major snow storm of the season. I write this in Delhi after our experiences of leaving Leh, which follow.

Yesterday March 1, our departure from Leh can best be described in classic military parlance as a case of ‘hurry up and wait’.

You need to know that the two previous days’ flights arriving and departing Leh had been cancelled by the snow and the airport was in chaos. We were told that we had been re-booked on a flight leaving sometime in the afternoon so should not worry about leaving for the airport, 10 minutes away, until we were given further instructions. Three of our group were scheduled on an early flight leaving at 7:30 but we relaxed with our books in our room and waited for more information….

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…