Engineering the trip

The planning started almost 2 months before the start date. Initially we had thought of going only to ladakh for 7 days. But later we changed duration to 12 days and planned to visit whole of kashmir. As 21st and 28th of september 2009 were holidays, we had to plan accordingly to go during these days. This would require us to take leave for only 6 days. This was because there was another long weekend during plan was to utilize the holidays that were

We had to be atleast 6 people to make the trip cost effective. Me , bui, akash and adarsh were in . So we had to find atleast 2 more people. Mayur was in Canada, so we hadnt asked him. He agreed immediately as soon as he came to know. Then adarsh's cousin also wanted to come.
So within 4-5 days , the group was decided.

Then came the most tricky part: getting leave from office. With Akash and Adarsh planning to go home after trip, getting 15-18 days of leave was always going to be a hurdle. Eventually we convinced our manager to give us long holiday. But 20 days before the trip, everyone's team got changed. We were apprehensive about our managers canceling the leaves but thankfully that did not happen.

Transportation was the next thing we had to solve. Most of our friends had been to leh by bike, but going on a bike would be too tiring. So we decided on hiring a taxi from delhi. So after days of searching travel agent from internet and calling them up, we decided on the person who offered cheapest fare. Plane tickets were done a month before. We had booked the tickets around a month back for to and fro. Me, bui and mayur were to return together on 29th september while adarsh and akash would return on 4th of october.
According to our estimate, the journey would be of around 3500 km.
We had always thought of booking the hotels beforehand but it never materialized.

While planning we referred 2 books. 1 of them was driving holidays in the himalayas by koko singh. This one mainly covers Ladakh region and is quite comprehensive. The book also has a map of ladakh region.