How to make the best momo soup in the world - recipe!

I sneaked in to the kitchen of Tenzin Dickey Tibetan in Leh to see how they make their potato and cheese momo soup for which they ought to be world famous and millionaires. And this is how it's how it's done. Teenage son chops veggies. Mom makes momos of course and then dad cooks them.

Momos

Mix water and wheat flour to make a dry dough. Use one cup of water for 250 grsms of wheat flour.

Flatten it very thin. Use a glass to cut little round thingies.

Fill the rounds with mashed boiled potato and Indian cheese.

Mom uses her nails to foil them into nice neat momos.

Broth

Chop veggies small. Tomato, spinach, cabbage, carrot.

Spice it up with fresh garlic, soy souce and fresh ginger.

Add a reasonable amount of water.

Bring to boil. Add the momos and boil for five minutes.

If the soup needs more kick you can add some chili souce.

A portait photo special from Leh

There's one thing that will strike you in the Ladakhi town of Leh. That's the looks of the people.

As Leh apparently is the closest you can get to Tibet in India, people look more Tibetan or Chinese than Indian. In fact, they look nothing like the Indians.

See for yourself.

And hey, they wear those sunglasses for a reason. The sunlight here is vile. And pilot glasses are cool!

The other unforgettable journey: 21 hours from Leh to Manali

People taking the bus from Leh to Manali were told to show up on the Main Bazaar of Leh at midnight. The bus was to take off at 1 AM.

When I arrived a fight had already errupted. A European couple was having it with India.

"You try to tell me I didn't pay?" the young man with an akward yelled.

"Do you think in home country I care for 1000 rupees? That is 15 euros. That is nothing. Why would I try to cheat you?"

Her girlfriend went on:

"I hate this country! Every day someone cheats us. Every day we are fooled. Everyone is a liar and thief. And now this!"

The two were volunteer workers, who'd come to India with good intentions. This time they truely were being cheated. They had payed 1600 rupees (25 euros) each for the ride. But they had paid it to two different guys in the same agency, first paying a thousand as a reservation fee and then later the rest. And now their receipt only said they'd paid 2200 rs and a thousand rupees were missing. Strangely the men were both there to see the bus leave. More strangely the men admitted each having received the money. But as the couple only had a receipt for 2200 that was not going to be enough for the ticket collector, a third man from a different agency.

There was pushing. The girl, who worked for a volunteer organisation for female empowerment, tried to hold back her enraged boyfriend. Insults were flying from both sides. The Indians looked hurt.

"Europeans fight for every rupee even if it is not much money for them", one of the men said and was right. Many of us do, often only out of principle. It is humiliating to pay too much.

I did not see how it ended. My bus left, and the two tried to get on a minibus that was waiting behind the bus.

Five minutes into the ride I was about to fall asleep on the surpsingly comfy seat.

That was until the driver turned on the music. I did not know whether to laugh or cry. It was Hindi pop at it's loudest - almost like standing next to the loudspeakers at a rock festival.

The Indians didn't seem to mind. They were all falling asleep. For 15 minutes I tried to think it was funny. Then I had enough. I voiced my anger to the driver. But he wouldn't hear me, would he. Miraculously the young man already asleep next to me woke up and understood what I wanted. He went up to the driver.

The pop was turned down. I congratulated myself on silencing an Indian bus.

The silence lasted for about 10 minutes. That's probably how long the driver thought it would take for the party crashing stiff Wessie to fall asleep.

I tried yelling but it was again of no use. But to my surpise the sweet boy who by now was drewling against my shoulder woke up again and heroically went up to the driver.

Silence. Finally. On the next stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere the other Wessies thanked me for my persistance. I wondered why they hadn't said a thing. Did they think it was the Indian's right to ride in a bus louder than a disco? Was I wrong to try to make the ride bearable? Or were they just wimps? I don't know.

I woke up at sunrise to see that we were driving off road. We'd reached the Moray Plains at the altitude of 4500 meters. At what seemed like a short distance there was a curious looking mountain. We were driving towards it. Driving. Driving. The moon like plateau went on forever. After about an hour we actually got close to the mountain. A crater surrounded it.

That's when the man sitting in front of me got sick. With the rush of strenght that upcoming vomit gives one he tore open the window and did what he had to do.

I tried to cover myself with the window curtain and waited for the man to close the window. But he didn't. It was below zero degrees outside but his sickness was stubborn.

For the next five hours I kept closing the window until he'd open it again for his session.

Every now and then we stopped at the tented camps by the roadside to get some chai and noodles. No toilets anywhere. Nothing to go behind. The ride was starting to remind me more and more of a rock festival.

At around 5 o'clock we had a flat tyre. By then we had been travelling for 16 hours.

Reading was impossible in the bumpy bus. For a while we watched a Hindi movie in which a chubby chick wearing a miniskirt and a revealing top was robbing fat men with the aid of two tall helpers who were dressed up as rap stars. I couldn't tell if the boy next to me, who was awake for change, thought the girl was hot or not. I just knew that I laughed at different scenes than he did. At the end of the film the other helper, holding a pink umbrella, danced with a young girl. I'm sure I was not hallucinating.

The end of the film was the end of entertainment. It got dark and cold again.

That's when the lady sitting in front of me got sick. The same theatre I'd experienced in the morning began at fresh. She however managed to vomit on the window pane and made sure I was not going to touch the window again in order to close it. I chose to freeze.

Finally, at 10.30 PM we reached Manali. We had been driving for 21,5 hours.

The next day I woke up with a cold.

Leh: 10 small things I liked

Okay. So Leh did not quite do it for me. Saying this is somewhat unfair as I did have the best potato and cheese momo soup ever (60 rs) at Tenzin Dickey Tibetan, was looked remarkably well after at the Julay guesthouse (200 rs, hot shower), visited some pretty cool sights and all in all actually had a pleasant, hassle free stay. So what was wrong?

It could be that Leh is really touristy. The whole of the city center is filled with souvenir shops, travel agents and over priced restaurants serving pizza and banana pancakes. To the credit of Leh's tourism industry it has to mentioned though that the people in the field are astonishingly unpushy.

It could be that riding the jeep here from Srinagar took some of the awesomeness of the sweeping views away. After 15 hours on a Jeep it was not new anymore.

It could be that coming from Srinagar, which I just adored, Leh felt a little lame. I was warned about this by the Northern India connoisseur Toxic Waste man a.k.a Aleksi, an early contributor to this blog.

It could be that I could not organise a trek that would have suited my wallet. As it is the end of season here, getting a group together was too hard. And going on my own would just have been to expensive (I was offered to do a two day trek with a guide for 7000 rupees, which is more than a hundred euros).

It could be that my expectations were too high. I had wanted to come here for years and unlike Hampi last April, Leh just did not live up to them.

Here's what I liked in Leh.

1. Visiting the Tibetan monastery at Thicksey and talking to the 10-12 years old monks, who told me about their life in the

monastery. Basically they pray and study and get to visit their homes a couple of times a year. I cought them playing a game which involved throwing rocks but then an older monk came and told the boys to quit.

The monastery itself dates back to the 16th century and is truly beautiful in all its ruggedness. You won't see this in Thailand.

2. Riding the 20 rupee public bus back to town from Thicksey was interesting. I had to stand most of the way and I can tell you the bus was not made to measure Wessies, not even women. I kept bumping my head to the ceiling, which for some reason I thought was funny. A taxi would have cost about 800 rupees there and back.

3. The people. Most friendly.

4. Getting the potato and cheese momo soup recipe from Tenzin Dickey Tibetan and visiting their family run kitchen to see how the soup is done. I'm so gonna try the recipe when I get home.

5. Watching the film Ancient Futures at the Women's alliance even though it made me feel guilty of coming to Leh and thus contributing to the further decay of local culture.

6. Some of the souvenir shops actually had pretty cool trinklets. I particularly liked the leather wrapped Buddha pendulums.

7. The semi-dried apricots. Delicious. The ladakhis seem to make everything out of apricots, including juice, cream, oil, tea and nuts, which actually are the bitter tasting seeds.

8. The view from Leh Palace to the town. Few can compete with that one.

9. Having a cup of java at the Booklovers Retreat in the village of Changspa. The place is basically like Starbucks but with a Himalayan setting, and no relation to any chain. Oddly enough it was rather inexpensive as well. And has Wi-Fi! And Tin Tin cartoons to read!

10. The local juice made from seabuckthorn, a berry that grows in the Himalayas. Possibly the best juice in the world.

Srinagar to Leh in one go - a very bad idea

I have only myself to blame. I was told to spend two days on the road from Srinagar to Leh, making a stop half way at Kargil.

Seven o'clock in the morning at the Srinagar taxi stand I found out that I could do this trip in a one very long day. I thought it was brilliant. I'd get to Leh late in the evening but I'd save one day.

The journey began well. I made friends with Natasha, a cool English gal, and a funny backpacker guy, who at our first fuel stop somehow managed to find weed that was growing on the empty lot next to the petrol station.

The smirk on his face was priceless when he showed us what he had bagged.

The first 10 hours of the drive went superbly despite the fact that for some reason we did not stop to eat anywhere and we were getting rather hungry. But the views were gorgeus. I envied the few people we met travelling this road on an old Enfiel.

Then it got dark. The load of trucks that passed by on the tiny road were no longer a source of nervous excitement. They were hell. On the other side there was a rocky wall and on the other a 300 meter fall.

Five hours passed in relative silence. Then our driver got a phone call after which he asked us if we had booked a guesthouse in Leh. Upon hearing that we hadn't he insisted that we'd stay for the night in Nimmu as we would not be able to find a place to stay in Leh that late.

It was about 11 o'clock. We were and hour away from Leh. We refused flatly.

Half an hour passed. Then our driver told us that the road to Leh was blocked because of an truck accident. We certainly did not believe that. This guy was obviously getting a comission from the guesthouse he wanted to take us to.

A little before midnight we reached a queue of trucks. We still did not believe that we could not go. We were only about 15 minutes from Leh and the day had been exhausting.

So we walked up to the other end of the queue to see what the problem was. And yes, there was indeed a truck laying on the road, blocking all the traffic on the tiny mountain pass.

Embarrassed we walked back to our Jeep to tell our driver that we'd stay in the guesthouse for the night.

Once we got there, it turned out that we were not the only ones wanting to stay there. What was left for us at the Chamba View guesthouse was a room which did not even have beds not to mention mattresses. The windows were broken and the Himalayan night outside was freezing cold. They only had one blanket to give us. Thank God I had a sleeping bag.

For this hideous room they charged us 300 rupees. But we had no choice. That night we had a very little sleep.

The next morning we woke up to a glorious sunshine and drove the last 15 minutes to Leh.

It had been quite a journey.

If you are to travel from Srinagar to Leh I strongly recommend doing it with the stop in Kargil.