Ladakh : July 18-23, 2006
Once the wedding date was finalized as 7th July 2006, the first thing that came to my mind was to choose a place for the trip to follow. Some of the clear pointers for us were that we wanted to visit a place in India ‘ONLY’ as both of us believe that our country has so much to offer and we haven’t explored even a bit of it. Also, I did not want to spend the special moments on a foreign land. We were also certain that we did not want to go to any of the ‘regular’ places in India either. Some of the options considered were Ladakh, Kerela, Pondicherry, Lakshwadeep, Middle East and Kashmir. It was easy to choose Ladakh as none of the other places was fit to visit in Summers/Monsoon. Kashmir was already ruled out as Adi didn’t want to take the risk on our ‘first’ trip together 
The first thing to do now was to book the flight tickets, as among so many players in the market, only Indian and Jet flew to Ladakh. Economy tickets were all sold out, but the good news was that Executive class was just about 1000 bucks more for each side. After a lot of net surfing, mailing and making umpteen calls to get the best package, Smita’s network worked! Made a deal with Dawa, a travel agent in Leh who helped us customize the trip and gave a price accordingly.The package came out to be 20k approximately, which included, stay in a 3 star Hotel (Hotel Mandala), day excursions, camp stay and breakfast. A pretty decent package at a reasonable price I’d say.
Day 1 (July 18):
Came 18th July and we boarded the much awaited flight to Ladakh. Before that, had a huge breakfast at the airport in executive lounge. Was a ‘good’ bargain for such a small price difference between economy and executive class. The flight stopped over at Srinagar on the way. Security was very tight everywhere and the aircraft was checked thoroughly at Srinagar. The flight to Leh is quite picturesque with a view of snow packed mountains spread………………..
