Leh Diary@Day4

September 7, Monday: Chill and Shop

We all got up late, as today was reserved for strolling around town and gearing up our energy reserves for the trek ahead. We headed off to the market at about noon for lunch at the Chopstick Noodle Bar. It serves Chinese, Thai and Tibetan food. The place is neat and chic. Most importantly the food was great :)

With food and fuel taken care of we began checking out the shops and their wares. The Leh town has about 3 main streets. Most large shops are owned by Kashmiris and sell carpets, pashmina shawls and jewelry. The smaller shops owned by Ladakhis offer clothes, woolens, stone jewelry and local bric-a-brac like prayer wheels, musical bowls and copper daggers. They are lined with interesting touristy t-shirts proclaiming “yak yak ladakh”; “tin tin in Tibet” and “I trekked from Manali to Leh”. Ultimately, we picked a couple of traditional wool caps, a muffler and a turquoise pendant. We found a shop selling homemade apricot products and added some jam, oil and scrubs.