Mick Canning

Ladakh is high. If you fly in from Delhi (the only way to enter Ladakh for 8 months of the year), you travel from around sea level to 3500m in no time at all. Ladakh means 'The Land of High Passes', and is aptly named. Leh, the capital, at 3500m, is one of the lower areas of Ladakh. It's all uphill from there. Winters are incredibly harsh and the summer growing season brief, yet the Ladakhis traditionally are self-sufficient in everything they need - food, clothing and shelter - and have only recently collided with the western consumer society. In contrast with most of the rest of India, the religion and culture of the majority of the people there is Tibetan Buddhism.

 

The Roof of the World - View across the Indus valley at 3500m, Thikse, Ladakh. (Photo L2)

 

Friday 8^th April 2005

I’m in Ladakh and, hey, wow!

At the airport for 4.30am, to find the flight postponed until 8am, due to weather conditions. It all looked ominous, but just after 7am we were told to check in and after numerous baggage checks, body checks, baggage identifications, etc, we were away at 8.30.

I’ve heard the flight described as one of the most spectacular in the world. I’ve also heard it described as jaw-dropping. I can imagine that it could be bowel-dropping. As we approached the Himalaya, clouds steadily built up and we flew through with tantalising glimpses of great snow-covered ranges below, through the occasional gaps in the cloud. After a while the turbulence built up and we were buffeted quite considerably. Then as we began to near Leh, we slowly lost height, the turbulence increased and we got more views of peaks at under-carriage height. Once we had dropped out of the clouds and the whole valley lay spread into the distance surrounded by snow-swept mountains, it was indeed jaw-dropping.

Then into land after three slow circles around the airstrip. The outside temperature was 2C, we were told, but it certainly didn’t seem that cold.

Once we’d gone through the formalities of registration and baggage reclaim with the refreshingly friendly ground staff, I walked out into the front of the airport and found a taxi. Yousef charged me RS 100/- to go to my choice of guesthouse (The Ti-Sei) and left me his mobile number. He also gave me all the usual (sensible) advice about taking it easy for a day or so.

I’m now sitting in a splendid light and airy room, looking out across the vegetable garden (covered in this morning’s snowstorm) to lines of bare poplars, traditional houses and some splendid mountains, also covered in snow.

Cairn at top of mountain north of Leh (Photo L13).

After a Ladakhi lunch of apricots, apple juice and water, headed north past the Shanti Stupa towards the first line of hills. Reached there at 1.15pm and stopped there for a breather. Silence. Apart from the pounding of the blood in my head. Absolute silence. After a few minutes the call of the muezzin drifts up from Leh, from the Jama Masjid. Then a few bird calls from the crags. Perfect peace. A perfect desert landscape, with pockets of snow. I’m sitting on a boulder, warmed by the sun, my feet in patches of fresh snow.

 

Gompa just below Leh Palace, Leh, ladakh (Photo L9).

Later, I’m walking around the market. How strange to go around market stalls and shops in India, not getting pressured and hassled at all. Even by the Kashmiris! At times it seems almost unreal. You wonder whether suddenly it’s all going to crash around you and normal India will be resumed as soon as possible. The longer that you spend here, the more laid back you become. I don’t think you can help it! Everyone strolls around smiling and Julay-ing you and each other. I know that Ladakhis consider it the height of bad manners ever to lose one’s temper, but it really does seem unreal. I think it would be easy to just sink into the ambience of it all and find you’d suddenly missed your flight out and had overstayed by weeks, or months…

Andrew Harvey said, and I’ll have to paraphrase because I can’t remember the exact quote, ‘The wonder of Leh is that there is absolutely nothing to do. Nothing to do except slow down, switch off and just observe. Just be.’ I understand that, now. I realise that that is what I have been doing the last few days without realising it. It was only three mornings ago that I was feeling jaded, by golly!

 

Man spinning prayer wheel, Leh (Photo L15). To Ladakhis, their religion is not somehow seperate from their daily life, but an essential part of it.

 

Breakfast at the Budoshah. I don’t know why I eat here (I certainly don’t always), unless it’s because the morning sun warms the corner that I’m sitting in. I’m the only person here and when I walk in the waiter always seems frightened to see customers. When I’m eventually given a menu (and everything is always ‘off’ - it’s a Kashmiri restaurant, so two thirds of their dishes are chicken or mutton. The day before yesterday, people were being told ‘no chicken no mutton’.), I ask for scrambled eggs on toast. I’m told no, they can’t do it. Fried, boiled or omelette, yes. But the cook obviously can’t scramble them. And black coffee. ‘Pot?’ How big is the pot? I ask. ‘Ah…I get one’. He disappears into the kitchen, never to return. I sit back and contemplate the Ladakh Mountains in the sunshine, prayer flags waving lazily beside the temple. With luck, another warm day. After the usual internet trials, I think I’ll catch a bus to Thikse Gompa.

Leh Palace (Photo L11). Very similar to the Potala in Lhasa, although smaller, this was the home of Ladakh's royal family from the 17th century, when it was built, until the mid 19th century when they moved to the palace at Stok, on the other side of the Indus Valley, as a result of an invasion by Kashmiri forces.

 

Gateway to Gompa at Leh Palace (Photo L14).

 

Old buildings on the outskirts of Leh, ladakh. (Photo L3) Traditional Ladakhi buildings closely resemble those of Tibet. In fact, there are so many similarities between the two areas, that Ladakh is often referred to as 'Little Tibet'

 

                                                             

Temple Door at the Monastery at Thikse, Ladakh. (Photo L4)

 

Statue of Maitreya, the Future Buddha, at Thikse Gompa. (Photo L8). This statue, 2 stories high (15 metres) in it's own temple was completed in 1981.

 

I was first shown the giant statue of Maitreya Buddha, which is fairly modern, then the fourteenth century gompa, which is very dark, unfortunately, because it was stuffed with thankas and statuary. I had to tell him about my family, job and anything else he could think of. That was quite hard going, and I don’t think we totally managed to get through. A pigeon flew into the gompa and started a discussion (not literally, you understand). In Ladakhi, pigeon is (I think) Po-ro, fairly onomatopoeic. In Arabic, I told him, it’s Bulbul, also onomatopoeic. Possibly it is the same in Hindi/Urdu.

 

The Wheel of Life, Tibetan Buddhist wall painting, Thikse Gompa. (Photo L7) The Wheel represents the cycle of being, the various realms of existence, and the three poisons (desire, ignorance and hatred).

 

View of the Stok Mountains, Part of the Himalaya Range, above farms and poplars on the edge of Leh, Ladakh. (Photo L5)

 

Outside, my hosts are planting their potatoes, today. It’s been fascinating watching over the last week, as they’ve dug over the whole vegetable garden (about an acre), then divided it up into a total of about fifty smallish and four large plots, all neatly divided with earth walls, between which are carefully dug channels to the stream that runs along the side.

Then, over the last couple of days, half of the plots have had compost dug in and the channels opened one by one to flood each plot for a set time, then closed and the water allowed to soak into the earth.

The first of the large plots is now being planted with potatoes, presumably saved from last year’s crop, and some more digging is commencing at the far end of the garden, where so far there are no small plots.

I’ve just noticed what’s happening at the far end of the garden. It’s going to be one huge potato patch. Dad is digging, Mum is planting, whilst Granny is sorting the potatoes ready for planting. The little girl is happily employed in making mud-pies, like small children anywhere in the world under these circumstances!

The village of Chanspa, at the edge of Leh (Photo L18). The prayer flags hanging from the roofs and the chortens in the background immediately mark this out as a Tibetan Buddhist society.

 

The monastery at Thikse, Ladakh (Photo L6). Virtually the whole of the hill is covered in buildings belonging to the monastery, whilst the Gompa or temple crowns the top. Founded in the fifteenth century by monks of the Gelugpa, or 'yellow hat' school of Tibetan Buddhism, to which the Dalai Lamas belong.

12.45 and I’m sitting on a rock in hot sunshine at the foot of Thikse Gompa. The bus ride here was remarkable. Where else in India would you find that they don’t bother charging anyone for just going a couple of stops, or that they’d wait a few minutes whilst a passenger nipped off the bus to buy some bread? All along here, passed all this desert scenery, so similar to Oman. And so many fairy-tale castles and palaces and the like hanging precariously to the tops of cliffs.

 

Building at Thikse Gompa (Photo L16).

If it is so beautiful now, in winter, then what must it be like in the other seasons? I’d dearly love to come back to see! And after all the heat, dust and pollution in Delhi, well, need I say more? I’ve not even been asked once for baksheesh, either.

 

Mandala painted onto roof of entrance to Shanti Stupa, Leh (photo L10). The Shanti Stupa, or Japanese Peace Pagoda, is one of more than 70 built around the world by the Japanese Buddhist Nipponzan Myohoji Organisation, which was run by Fujii Guruji. They were built to promote world peace.

 

View of Stok Mountains from village of Choglamsar (Photo L12).

 

The River Indus at Choglamsar (Photo L19). The Indus originates in Tibet, near Lake Mansarovar - a lake sacred to both Hindus and Buddhists - and after flowing through Northern Kashmir, including Ladakh, passes into, and flows the length of, Pakistan, to the Arabian Sea. So, ironically, the river that gave its name to the state of India, flows mainly through Pakistan.

 

Trees on the edge of Leh (photo L17). Trees are highly important to Ladakhis - they provide timber for building, fuel, food in the form of walnuts and apricots, and fodder for animals. In all of Ladakh, the only trees that grow are willow, poplar, walnut and apricot.