Laziest Tourist in Leh

I think we were the laziest tourist in Leh. It seems like the thing to do in Leh is either "cultural tours" (driving to different "sites", often monestaries, and then looking at these sites) or "trekking tours" (hiking in the mountains and camping for some number of days) or some combination of the two. Each day everyone has a "program" and the chatter about the hotel tends to revolve around what your program for the day was or what your program for tomorrow will be. We arrived in Leh and spent most of the first day acclimating to the climate. The best part of "acclimating" was the lounging in the hammocks in the garden of our hotel. That afternoon we were whisked off by our guide to see some sites and do a bit of pre-trek shopping. The next day started early in the morning and was chock full of site seeing and day three was set to be the same. The sites were nice, but we had different ideas of what we wanted to do. Instead we cut day-two's site seeing down and chucked day three out the window completely.

So what did we do if we weren't doing "cultural tours" ??? We loafed. Except for a brief adventure into town to procure further trekking material we were permanent fixtures in the garden (most often in the hammocks, sometimes snuggling two in a hammock.) We read, napped, meditated, drank tea that the people at the hotel brought out to us. Somehow, despite having next to nothing to do, we still managed to be late for just about everything we were supposed to do (meeting with our guide about the trek, meals, etc.) The best part, probably, was Saturday evening (day three, right before leaving for the trek) when we were ambling from our rooms back to the hammocks for a little pre-dinner card playing to find that there was a "cultural program" in the garden. My theory is that Leh was is so bent on culturally programming us touristst that when they heard we ditched the "program" for the day they decided to send the program to us. It was basically traditional music, singing and dancing with nice little informational monologues before each dance so we knew what it was all about.

In general Leh was really... different and relaxing (to summarize.) It was such a contrast to the rest of India that I've been seeing. I sort of don't even really think of it as India. It was about 80 degrees cooler (from highs of 105+ in Delhi to below freezing at night on the trek), way quieter, much less oxygen, Buddhist, the people looked Tibetan or Nepalese (not Indian), and full of mountains and totally different vegetation. As for relaxing... despite having so much cultural programming foisted onto us, we really could do whatever we wanted and were so totally taken care of (like we have been this whole trip!) that it was still quite relaxing. Also, there is something about being up in the mountains that just gives off a "relaxing" vibe.