Leh:
Ours is the last flight to Leh from Delhi for the day but surprisingly it is not full. Perhaps the tourist season hasn't begun. But my camera person colleague Arif Radhu, a local from Ladakh points out that perhaps many people have already taken the early morning flights.
As the pilot points to various landmarks like Tso Murari and Pangong Tso lake, the Hemis monastery, my mind goes back to January 2010 when an NDTV team had the opportunity to travel to Eastern Ladakh to places like Chushul, Demchok and Tangse.
I am wondering how much forward we can go this time.
As we land at Leh, the sun is bright as ever but there is chill in the air all right. At 12 degrees Celsius it surely calls for a jacket and experience reminds me that as the day progress and the sun goes down, the temperature will dip in direct proportion.
Arif tells me it had snowed just three days ago. Expect the night temperature to be somewhere in the vicinity of zero to 2 degrees, he says.
In Ladakh it's not just the weather that is chilly. India-China relations, always fraught with tension, are distinctly frosty at the moment with Chinese troops having intruded and encamped nearly 10 km into Indian territory at the remote Daulat Beg Oldie area for a week.
As we drive into the city, bustling with the usual morning briskness, I get to hear from the desk back in Delhi that the Chinese have finally agreed to have a second flag meeting at the border. So, even as we got into the hotel, the two delegations would have started their pow-wow at a pre-designated Border Personnel Meeting point.
The question uppermost in my mind as we dump our bags in the room and head out is: how and what access will I get to the latest information, newest development. Under the current policy neither the Army nor the ITBP are authorised to speak. The Ministry of External Affairs will be the nodal agency to share any information, if at all, we are constantly reminded.
The attempt is to downplay the latest faceoff. In Leh itself, life is normal as it ought to be. DBO is some 150 km away and common citizens in Ladakh have no concern over the standoff. Our hotel manager says army is capable of handling the situation but also goes on to add that one can never trust the Chinese.
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