Ladakh has many known ingredients : chaotic and stressing cities, total traffic-chaos, striking contrasts between rich and poor, the 'begging'-problem, misery, the beauty of the people in their simplicity, the staring of their deep-brown eyes, the many flavors and colors, ... all of this covered with a sauce of mysticism and religion.

Preparation

We needed six months to compose a new recipe with mountains in it, Kashmiri's, gompa's, lama's, chang and the friendly Ladakhi's. We prepared it in three weeks.

First course

As an entrée we took the city of Srinigar in Kashmir. After some inquiries we decided to have this, maybe risky, residence as a warm up in our menu. On arrival in this green paradise we saw lots of soldiers and Kashmiri. Fortunately we met some very nice people who owned a really beautiful sculptured boat on the Dal-lake. The boat was called 'Garden of Heaven' and it was no problem to rent a small room here.

The next morning, Altaf, our shikara-driver, drove us to a floating garden and the vegetable-market.
Indian people don't care about 'time'. In stead of 7 AM they woke us at 4.30 with the following question : "Good morning Sir, what's the time on your watch ?" But you get used to it, don't you ?
During a cycling-tour around the lake we enjoyed the magnificent rice-fields, tea-plantations and ... soldiers.
Once back on our 'Garden of Heaven' we were troubled by some fellows who called themselves 'business-men' and who brought some "very useful stuff" for "very cheap prices".
We soon had enough of this entrée and wanted to taste the principal dish. First the waiter refused because of a strike of the public services in the city. We also heard some tall stories about the route to Leh : bus-driver taken as hostage, two people killed (tourists!), but later on it appeared that they just wanted to frighten us. Nevertheless this incident caused a bitter tang in our delicious dish.