Bend after bend on a dirt road where on one side of the car the land dropped away at the roadside hundreds of meters and on the other side giant stone walls lay hidden in the fog. More curves and yet more, mountain passes, and then the drop-off and the stone walls switched sides. Twenty-three hours of this, always withthe same driver, on one of the most dangerous roads in the world.
I thought it wasn’t going to happen, but it did, I survived! At 11 pm I arrived in Leh, in the Himalayas, in India, completely out of my head due to the altitude, the driving and maybe because I thought I was going to die a few dozen times. Alone in the streets, knocking on all the doors I could find, only at 2 am did I come across a guest House with a free bed. There was no mattress, but that was not the point, I tried to sleep on top of the wood, surrounded by dust, but to no avail as I was really sick. I went to use the internet to find a better guest house, but my computer didn’t work, it had broken on the trip. I went knocking on several doors until I found a guest house further away from the village, and the mother and daughter took care of me while I was ill, first from altitude sickness, and then with a urinary tract infection. Almost a week of this before I finally managed to go exploring.
In the center of the village I found this beautiful guy selling seeds and spices. I asked him several times if I could take his photograph, but he didn’t understand and so I ended up photographing him anyway. Later I went back later to deliver the printed photographs, and since then it has been my rule to always offer the printed photographs to these people who are more part of me than they can ever imagine.
This as all the other articles on this site are translated by my good friend Devo Forbes!!
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