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…

A quick word before I begin, apologies for my rambling discursions in my last two posts, I’m well aware of my tendency to drift rapidly off course at any given opportunity so to get back on course let me tell you a little about the nature of this trip. This is the second time we have travelled with Abercrombie & Kent, who charter Ponant ships for their expeditions, although I also travelled with Ponant on my Antartica trip in 2022. It’s unlikely that we will do another one of these trips, not because of any shortcomings of the voyages but simply because of our primary reason for taking them has been met to our satisfaction.

We are not cruisers by nature but we have taken these trips for two reasons; they allow us to access places and events that we would not ordinarily be able to access by any other means and they are created as expedition trips, not cruises. We have travelled with A&K to Greenland and the Arctic and now on this trip, to small ports and cities around the coast of Japan. In both instances, the ports and sites we visit would either be completely inaccessible or at the least, very difficult to reach. And because they are built as expeditions, they dive deeply into local culture, arts, music and history and require active participation…

We left last night for the first leg of our trip to Namibia and then on to Jordan. This is our third trip to Africa since 2012, clearly it has attractions for us. We're flying to Jo'burg via São Paulo with a 14 hour layover in São Paulo. I'm not a great fan of Aeroplan, the only routing that allowed us to get to Jo'burg on points and in Business is the one we're flying. Aeroplan offered us other options, a leg to Montreal then an overnight to Frankfurt or London, a long layover and then another overnight to Jo'burg. However the Toronto-Montreal leg was in Business the two overnight legs were in Economy but Aeroplan wanted to charge us the full Business points total even though the only leg that was in Business was the one to Montreal. I don't mind paying the full whack to fly in the front cabin but I find it really galling to be charged maximum points to fly in steerage. I know, no handkerchiefs, a first world problem.

All flights to South Africa from North America, with the exception of a direct Washington to Jo'burg flight that's almost impossible to book on points, are right angled routes, no diagonals, so an overnight north-south or east-west, a long layover and another overnight flight perpendicular to the first. We're in São Paulo, halfway though our 14 hour layover and another overnight flight to go...