What a shit show today is.  Yesterday I posted HERE about how I completely fucked up and did not get my permit on time for my tour today.  I thought I had solved it all.

Then last night I get a message asking me what time to pick me up.  Um, who are you?  Driver.  I thought somehow maybe it was a driver for tomorrow morning to Stok, which I was planning to go since my full day tour was now in the garbage.  I told him I had a driver, he sent me a screenshot of my booked tour.  OH okay, so I tell him I spoke to (insert name) about my woes and that’s that.  Right?

WRONG.

This morning, I am up to go out to reception to give the dude my passport so he can get my permit.  He begins knocking on my door.  It isn’t him.  It is the dude I spoke to yesterday?  Maybe?  Ready to pick me up for the tour.  NO we spoke didn’t we?  Turns out it was not  him.  My mistake.  I had spoken to the tour company owner and then to another guy, who I assumed was the driver. He was not the driver.  The driver was the one who confused me by messaging me last night.

Or so this is what I have pieced together at this point anyway.

The driver decides he is going to go get my permit.  Okay.  I give him my passport and he tells me to be ready by 2:00, which is earlier than the time the hotel quoted me.

I am planning to be ready by 1:30 but he came knocking on my door at 1:20.

He must think (rightfully so) that I am a moron.   But I cannot possibly be the first tourist to make this mistake?

Off we go.  Some views from the drive:

First stop is Alchi Monastery.  It was beautiful but you will just have to take my word for it since you are not allowed to take photos.  I have some photos from the drive and outside the monastery.

Then to Likir, which was the reason I booked this tour.  Since we were so late I thought we were only going to Likir.  I am glad my driver was a trooper and took me to all the places, but I would have been thrilled with just this one.

This sign spells Likir as Liker but every other place I have seen it has it spelled at Likir.  What is your name.

I am not sure what these ghost monks are.  Google isn’t helping me, maybe because I am calling them “ghost monks” but I have never seen this before.

The thing that made me want to see this monastery the most is the statue of Maitreya Buddha.

Majestic Likir doggo.

From here we went to Basgo castle, which was another stop I was not planning to take since we left so late.  Bless this driver.

The castle didn’t really seem like much of a castle, but the views were incredible.

There was a small temple that was locked, but my driver found a guide to unlock it.   It is very common to see offerings such as candy and soda (I even saw beer one time) but I have never seen anything so Easter-y.

And because I am twelve years old, I found this statue giving the middle finger to be hilarious:
We also stopped at the confluence of the Indus and Zanskar rivers and I saw doggos.

Oh and the actual confluence of the Indus and Zanskar rivers.

There is so much beauty here.

From here we went and stopped for one of the worst dinners I had while traveling here.  There were so many flies in my face.  I tried ordering plain fried rice but the language barrier killed me.  He listed off every type of fried rice and every time I shook my head and said “no, plain” and he just kept going through the rounds again until I settled on vegetable.

After eating, we went to the Guphuks view point

Finally we returned to my hotel at 7:00 PM.  Not too shabby considering how late we left.

I need to find hotel dude so I can pay tonight since I don’t know if I will be able to find him tomorrow.  But I can’t find him.  So I think to look up the hotel phone number from my reservation and I attempt to send him a message on Whats App.

What the fuck.

This guy is saved in my phone BUT AS THE TOUR GUIDE I SPOKE TO ABOUT NOT BEING ABLE TO GET MY PERMIT?

How is this even possible?  I don’t understand how the fuck this happened.  Where on earth would I have even accidentally gotten the hotel’s phone number from had I not been looking at it?!  So that explains quite a few things that had confused me earlier and now confuse me more.

And I will leave off with a story:

Yesterday, I was walking down a street.  Literally down.  There were steps because it was pretty steep.  A dog is coming towards me.  Dogs in Leh are not friendly.  They aren’t unfriendly, they are just completely not interested in humans.  But this one is wagging his tail and I am so excited until his head dips below and step and pops back up with a rat in his mouth.  NO NO NO NO NOOOOOOOO.

He turns and runs in the opposite direction of me and I can see the rat’s tail hanging out of the side of his mouth.  I am so horrified.  I don’t know if it is because I am watching a dog about to eat a rat, that there was a rat, that if not for the dog, I might have been murdered by the rat?

Yikes.

Stay tuned for more from Ladakh!