Traveling Tintin style

One of the best afternoons we had in Ladakh was when we went from Shey to Leh on a very crowded bus.

Surprising, maybe. But not if you take the "on" literally: we rode on top of the bus.

Up there were Marty, me, two German guys, and an older and impressively adventurous woman from Hong Kong. And a lot of big canvas bags. It felt very daring, especially because we don't know the regulation height that arborists use here...



Yes, the landscape is tilting sideways, definitely, not the bus


The landscape we were riding through, as seen from a ruined fort in Shey; of course, the low-hanging tree limbs aren't visible from here

Grinning while gripping the side rail and whatever was in those canvas bags

Apart from surviving that, one of the other high points for me was finding a rooftop cafe (Cafe Jeevan) that had a large collection of Tintin books. Tintin, of course, is the intrepid Belgian reporter whose cartoon exploits have been translated into dozens of languages. I think I actually own the entire oeuvre, so when we'd go to this cafe, I'd pick one out for Marty and one out for me, making sure to give Marty the books in the right order -- no sequels first!

Eventually we figured out that the cafe also had espresso. Good thing it didn't have beer; we'd never have left.

OK, for Tintin riding on top of a bus might be tame, since he often seems to find himself on a plane wing or at the very least on top of a train -- but you can only take the cartoon hero lifestyle so far.