nevermind

I am not going to Delhi this week and won't be uploading photos or anything like that. A series of heavy thunderstorms (so rare as to be almost non-existent in Ladakh) have battered Ladakh for many days in a row this week and the road to Manali (the way I got here) has apparently been destroyed in multiple places. Lots of destruction here in Leh, too. I am told it could be a couple of weeks before it is safe to use the road to Manali again. Even in its normal state, you can see that the river bed hundreds of feet below the road is littered with trucks smashed like toys on the rocks. There are only two roads out of here -- one to Manali and one to Srinagar, where they're blowing up visitors.

Part of coming here means being willing to get seriously stuck here. It's a wonderful place to be stuck, I have to say. So I am going to go kill some time somewhere, not sure where yet. Packing my bags today and heading west in whatever way I can. Likir, Lamayaru, Kargil, down through the Zanskar Valley, to visit monasteries, mosques, and mountain caves. Something like that. More later, of course.