There is no time. There is no space. Not in a discrete sense, in any case. Hours merge into miles, time and terrain meld in this awesome, desolate, indescribable land, stretching endlessly in all directions, all dimensions. Once you cross the Rohtang pass from Manali in Himachal Pradesh, India, and reach Keylong, the rest of the journey to Leh - two hundred fifty miles and more - is through high-altitude desert, over peaks and on plateaus at fourteen-, fifteen-, seventeen-thousand feet. Narrow roads with frayed edges meander over high plain and massive mountain, curving lightly, flatly, for miles without end, or rising in relentless switchbacks. The ruffian slopes they cling to swoop down on them in cambered columns of red earth, then spill in staccato cliffs on to the river-bed below - cliffs of pleated earth, as smock on an infant's frock. Folds and pleats, stubs and spires have all been carved by air. It stretches credibility. This is air so thin you take it in gulps, so spare your heart pounds wildly in your chest even at rest!

Meanwhile, parsimonious streams of snow-melt have carved deep ravines in places which fall away so swift and sudden you catch your halting breath. In other places, the river-bed is wide as the valley, soft and limpid, a shallow, cold, clear layer of water criss-crossing it in bands of sparkling silver and steely gray. And the roads - always the roads, which hold your attention with hypnotic force in this terrain - paved pretenders all, these ribbons of leavened tar are constantly overwhelmed by rogue rock and sliding scree from the slopes they hug. Or inundated by seasonal waterfalls tumbling over with impunity, so that bus becomes boat for heart-stopping moments. It heaves to the right and then to the left, then right again as it teeters on the edge. One half-panicked eye leaps into the bottomless ravine and, seeing no road punctuate its slide, the rest of the body instinctively swings away from it in a futile dance of counter-balance and correction.

This is, easily, one of the scariest rides I've taken. Single-lane roads that barely hold a bus magically accommodate oncoming traffic as well: large, loaded lorries, and jeeps-in-a-rush carrying passengers who will go trekking Read More...