To Ladakh

Up at 3:30 to catch my flight to Ladakh. I sit next to two Canadian women, about whom I am initially extremely judgmental: they are badly dressed and their voices bug the shit out of me. I don’t speak to them until the end of the flight, at which point one offers me a place to stay in Delhi at the end of the month. I am ashamed.
Coming into Leh is a bit like landing on the moon, but with snow on the peaks. The landscape is dry and rocky and dramatically shaped. The sky is impossibly blue. No air pollution here. It’s much colder than I’d imagined – 6 degrees Celcius – but when we step into the sunshine I barely need my sweater. The big marketing slogan for Ladakh is that it’s the only place on earth where you can sit in the sun and get heatstroke but have a limb in the shade and get frostbite at the same time.
I’m fatigued the rest of the day; the 3:30 wake-up was one thing, I’m still not totally over the stomach bug, and I’m huffing and puffing with returning to altitude (Leh is at 3500 meters / 11,500 ft).