fear not! we're in kargil!

With all the war history and a name like Kargil, we expected a huge daunting walled dome-shaped city with a huge daunting crazily-guarded dome-like citygate. The last thing we expected was a small quirky town on a single main street.

The only thing that exceeds our expectations is its 'muslim-ish', extremely extremely devout and as we reach amidst Ramzan, its twice as staunch. With 25 odd mosques in such a close proximity; the sunset skies are continously filled with the sweetest sounding prayers.


This town had some crazy_nice signage all owing to the loveliest handdrawn graphics and typography.



sweaty gym!



Our favourite was this 'english cow' paint_job for this restaurant. Later we found out that the guys running it [and almost all of Kargil] have the nightingale voices, due to all the dusk-dua-chanting.

Food here consisted of the same leh items: moq moq, thukpa etc but each with a meaty twist. Getting anything that didn't have a hoof or tongue seemed quite a task.



The only place [with the upside down eyelashes] that serves vegetarian food [and only vegetarian food] was this punjabi place with a typically proud and paternal sardarji. He told us stories of bullets flying past his heads and bombs exploding around his kids during the kargil war. Amazed we were that it all just happened in that same street, outside that very window.


Most tourists just stop for a chai break before heading on to srinagar or zanskar. So it wasn't surprising that we seemed to be quite the sight for the locals.The people in Kargil look exactly as they should they should, considering their geographical position. Halfway between the ladakh mongoloidism and the fair islamic prettiness. Halfway between the mountains and the lakes...






In the river passing by the city, we caught this dude constantly [constantly] staring at a girlie, and she giving out coy smirks at regular intervals as she washed clothes. In an otherwise rather orthodox town, this suddenly seemed like an absurdly loud hurrah of love...