After two days of searching, frantic phone calling and plastering posters written in Hebrew and English all over Old Manali, my wallet containing my credit card, driver's license and passport finally found its way back into my hands. As I was taping up a poster in the main intersection of Old Manali, someone called my name. Behind me stood the anonymous couple holding my passport, smiling from ear to ear. Turns out they weren't staying in Old Manali at all; they'd been searching for me too and just happened to be there for dinner. After countless hugs and thank yous, I immediately went to the closest travel agency and booked my ticket to Leh departing that night, 6 hours later at 2 AM.

The drive to Leh from Manali was 20 spine-shattering hours in the only-remaining rear seat of a Jeep with four mute Koreans, an overbearing Isreali girl who refused to shut her window, and a Belgian photographer whose only pauses in conversation occured when I put my headphones on, on the world's longest and highest continuum of narrow, extreme-weather torn, improperly banked crappy ass road. Discomfort aside, the journey was stunning. Rising out of the lush, green river valley in Manali, the road slowly gains altitude, rising up into the barren Indian Himalaya through the most alien and moon-like topography I've ever seen. Stark brown snow-dusted mountain peaks jut and reflect perfectly in placid, still lakes below. Giant boulders crumble and roll down sheer slopes into seemingly bottomless gorges and craters. There are no towns, villages or signs of life for hundreds of kilometers, only makeshift police checkposts and crude food tents set up for road-weary travellers.

Leh, at 3500 meters (roughly 11400 feet) is the capital of Ladakh, part of India's northernmost state of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). Srinigar is the capital of the western region of the state and may be a name that sounds familiar to some of you since over the years it's been the subject of countless hours of news coverage. It's has been and continues to be a military hotbed amidst the ongoing disputes between Pakistan and China regarding the borders of the natural resource-rich land in J&K. (Just between you and me, from a purely aesthetic standpoint, I think redistribution of the giant knob-like protrusion known as J&K to India's neighboring nations would leave India with a much more pleasing and aerodynamic wedge shape.) Since Partition in 1947, during which the ruling British created the Muslim state of Pakistan separate from the Hindu state of India, Pakistan has slowly tried to chip away at J&K in attempts to reclaim some of the land for their own. They've even apportioned parts of western J&K as gifts to China... without permission from India. The borders are perpetually under dispute and travellers are warned to skip the sensitive areas around Srinagar since bombings and armed warfare still occur nearly every day.

Ladakh is home to many ethnic groups and has a sizeable population of Tibetan refugees. In addition to Tibetans, Ladakhis (Indians, but those who speak Ladakhi and look more Chinese or Nepali than what most of us think of as Indian), nomads (the original yak and goat herding people of Ladakh) and a small Aryan ethnic minority comprise the sparse population of this inhospitable land. This area is also the birthplace of pashmina wool; the soft fine hair of a particular breed of goat native to this area and the material used for the famous shawls we all know and love.

Looming snowcovered Himalayan peaks surround the quiet valley in which Leh sits. The weather now is temperate and dry (though a bit chilly at night) and little grows or lives in the thin air at this altitude. With the exception of occasional flights into and out of Leh's small airport (which reportedly clip a mere few hundred meters above the soaring peaks in order to land safely on the short runway in the valley below), full-time residents of Ladakh are snowbound and virtually isolated from the rest of India for 9 months of the year.

Chris and I are traveling together again and it's brilliant to see him. He and his friend Paul (also from San Francisco) met up here a week ago and I have joined them for the next leg of the journey. Tomorrow is the much-anticipated Hemis Gompa festival, a birthday celebration for Guru Padmasambhava, the rinpoche (next in the Tibetan Buddhist pecking order after the Dalai Lama) who is credited with introducing Buddhism to Nepal. Afterwards? More from someplace with more reliable and cheaper internet access...