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| Rugged landscape of Ladakh |
After an enthralling ride via Zoji-La and pumped up visit to Kargil War Memorial with the River Indus continuing to flow along-side us, we reached the hustling Kargil town at around 12 noon.
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| Entering Kargil town, crossing River Indus |
My immediate yearning reaching the town was to have momos/dumplings (my absolute favorite which I had been craving for a pretty long time). The hotel which was booked for us was Hotel Siachen which was right at the marketplace, so in a way accessible to any restaurant if you are not keen to have food in the Hotel Siachen itself. We were quite exhausted, perplexed whether to do some sightseeing in Kargil or not.
Leaving that aside, we freshened up and suddenly realized that all of us are starving terribly so we left the hotel to search for a nearby restaurant to gorge on food (momos for myself). We did come across a very popular restaurant right near the end of the marketplace (I have forgotten the name) but unfortunately it was full & there was no space for the 6 of us (also, they had ran out of momos :P). So we tried our luck at another restaurant nearer to our restaurant. The first question on entering the restaurant was from my side to the attendant was whether they have momos or not, to which, much to my jubilation, he replied in the affirmative. Myself & my brother ordered 2 bowls of thukpas while the rest of the squad ordered simple daal & chawal. Now, I hadn't given much importance to this aspect but the people there (and within the restaurant itself) had a very strange odour exuding from them. I couldn't decide the source of the stink but it came crystal clear when the thukpas arrived. The restaurants there had no chicken items, all they had were lamb items. So we had ordered lamb thukpas and the malodour was intolerable. I just took one bite and couldn't put anymore inside my mouth. Thankfully my brother finished up the two bowls. Poor me - I had to share the daal & chawal with the rest of them (the daal was equally disastrous).
