Ladakh Trip: It's not over yet.

Hah - abhi khatam nahin hua.
I'm not back in regular life yet. I'm in a limbo, in the Delhi-Bombay train bound for home; but Routine hasn't yet started to force me back into the groove.

What am I taking back from this trip?

A sense of discpline, a tolerance for extremes?

Trekking to 16,300 feet on burning lungs, deadwood legs, and making it?

Playing a diesel drum by a campfire, singing in the firelit warmth?
The sight of the galaxy sprawled across the sky?
The silence of the monasteries?
The people we met?
That sense of being cut off from everything that tied you to your old life?
How people changed on this trip?
How I changed?

These are things I am going to remember for a long time. There are a few incidents in life, a few experiences, that can alter the course you had been on. Destiny shapers. I don't know where this trip's experience will take me - but I definitely know one thing, that change something it will. I know I'm not the same person who came here. I know I'm moving on a slightly different life-path now.

remember.

And the recap -

Day 1: From Mumbai to Delhi - Train trip
Day 2: Delhi - A short rest
Day 3: From Delhi to Manali. Bus trip, hitchhiking, getting there
Day 4: The Journey Begins - Manali to Sarchu.
Day 5: Getting to Leh: Second part of an epic drive
Day 6: Leh: Acclimatization and exploration
Day 7: Khardung la, Nubra, Diskit, Alchi
Day 8: Panamik and the return
Day 9: Chang La and Pangong Tso
Day 10: Pathar Sahib, Basgo, Likir, Ulley Topko
Day 11: Lamayuru Monastery and the Shanti Stupa
Day 12: Rafting the Indus: adventures and misadventures
Day 13: The Stok-La Trek begins
Day 14: Rumbak
Day 15: Stok La Pass
Day 16: Changma Party
Day 17: Return to Stok, leaving Leh

Ki Ki Soso Larghyalo.
Keep us safe on this journey...

Ladakh Trip: Day Seventeen. Return to Stok.

A long, leisurely walk back to Stok, where As and M, who have taken the last six days to freak out in shopping, setting contacts, and exploring the city.

We return to Ladakh Serai, where after a week, I finally have a full, regular, long hot shower. Emerge feeling extraordinarily evolved, glowing with cleanliness from within - it's like I've taken my soul through a car wash and a five-star spa.


A session in the afternoon with Godfather beer. Everyone knocked flat.

Evening, take St to Leh Market, where she makes up for the deprivations of the last week in a titanic explosion of retail therapy.
Ns decides to head to Dharamshala instead of staying with us; he's taking an overnight return Tavera cab to Manali, who will do the 48-hour trip in a screaming, terrifying, 14. We wish him the best and pray for his soul.

I pack by candlelight, dumping inessentials, guesstimating weight, etc, and sleep, to be woken up at 4 am for my flight. Luggage limit is 20 kg. My luggage weighs 19.8. Am I good or what?
The departure lounge has only foreigners.

The flight leaves on time - no bad-weather cancellations, which would have meant I get to see Kashmir with the rest of the group who's going on till there - until the engines roar, I get pushed back into my seat, and the holiday is finally over.

The last look back... icy peaks below. I feel... yes, sad that it's over finally... yet also, in some strange way, elated. This trip had been on my list of things to do for years. It's happened. And no way is this over. This has just been the beginning... and a list is unscrolling in my head, a list of names that ring with more cold, forbidding wastes, monasteries, peaks, valleys, walks, cold wind and warm fires...
The next 20 expeditions, from Kashmir to the Seven Sisters, are already being planned.

;)

Ladakh Trip: Day Twelve. Rafting the Indus and the Zanskar

We get kitted out on the banks of the Indus the next morning, taking very great care not to get too close to the river - the water's icy cold and extra freezing in contrast to the bright sun.

Once we're off, it's a constant attrition. Lathered with sunscreen that keeps sliding off with the copious amount of sweat we generate while rowing, versus sudden freezing gusts of wind and splashes of water that again are replaced by blistering UV on exposed skin...

There are long stretches of flat, calm water interspersed with sudden, dramatic rapids. We float down 24 km of a dream, through hot sun and cold splashes, between gigantic mountain ranges on either side. It's dead silent, no traffic, just our breathing on the raft and the occasional rapid. Not much conversation happens - we're too out of breath. It's killer, this kind of exercise in the thin air. The wind, at specific places along the gorges, finds acoustic perfection and moans eerily.

We also stop for a bit on sandbanks, take the occasional break, search for likely loo spots, but mostly sit and gasp for air before we're off again. But don't get me wrong - it's an amazing experience. We've travelled Ladakh by road, by bike, by foot, even by camel for a bit. But doing it by the river is an experience apart. More than ever, I want to do a river expedition. The rapids are - good, between a grade 2 to 3+ in places; but Tons was more fun. This is a very relaxing activity, really - lots of opportunities to sit back, soak up some sun, feel the breeze, and watch the ravine unroll past on the river's shimmering surface.

After a long time, we reach a point almost at the end of the journey - the confluence of the Indus and the Zanskar. Just before the joining, there's a large, flat calm area, the perfect opportunity to go overboard and swim around for a bit, chilling, cooling off after the long paddle. We leap off, almost shrieking with the shock of cold water on sunwarmed skin, before the acclimatization kicks in and we're floating in bliss. The guide tells us not to get too far from the raft - and we're soon about to find out why.

The Indus is a decent, well-behaved river, fairly mature by now, and fairly cool after a long trip through the warm sun. The Zanskar is an exuberant, brand-new roaring rush, straight from the snow-melt and shady gorges.

The confluence is the point where the comparatively sedate Indus river meets this foaming high-speed monster, and there are strong currents and near-vertical temperature gradients. Ns and Rc decide to warm up by swimming, and splash straight outwards. The guide notices, and yells - but they're quite a bit away now, and in the chill, are finding the return tough going. Also, it's not just tiredness - the current is picking up, and swimming against the current only exhausts you and carries you out even further. It's touch and go for ten minutes, with us rowing frantically and them splashing back equally desperately, before we haul them bodily aboard - and in the next two minutes, the raft sweeps into the Zanskar and all hell breaks loose, rapid-wise.

Twenty minutes later, we clear the worst of it and look back - at a scene of potential disaster. We, in the first raft, had been lucky in getting all our people back aboard before hitting the Zanskar. The second raft... hadn't. Rp had gotten swept in, and was fished out after nearly five minutes of desperate rowing, blue, rigid, near-hypothermic. The good thing was she didn't panic, and floated, instead of struggling; that's why she just had to deal with the cold only, and not drowning as well.

It's not just a question of going from cold water to colder water. The shock of transition is as great as the one you get when, after sitting in the sun for 2 hours, you jump overboard in the Indus (which, remember, is still a mountain river 11,000 feet above sea level). I stuck my hand into the Zanskar, and the water's chill had knives in it.

Finally, on the beach, we stood and shivered for a while, then baked, then ate a packed lunch and headed home.


Magnetic Hill is another interesting landmark. There's a point along the road where the road appears to be heading downhill away from a large hill. Legend has it that the hill has such large deposits of magnetic ore that it can haul a car against the slope towards itself, if it's kept parked in neutral on the road. It's a hoax - it's an optical illusion that makes the road look sloping away from the hill, whereas actually, it's sloping towards it.

When we reached there, someone was testing his 4-WD on the slopes - and we had the shock of our lives when we saw the 'magnetic' hill apparently hauling an SUV, tyres screaming, dust and rubble churning, up a sixty-degree gradient.

There was a super wind, though, which can easily knock you ass-backwards and blow you away, rolling through the dusty plateau like something out of a cartoon western.

This point in the post also marks the debut of The Professor with his quote of the day - if someone ever calls him during a class (he runs a coaching institute), his standard excuse for not talking - 'Baat nahin kar sakta, abhi mera period chalu hai.'

When we reached the hotel, our arms and legs were solidly aching. And after a superb late lunch of mix veg, yak cheese, mushroom, broccoli, spinach, and soup, our jaws were aching as well.

In the evening, we paid a brief visit to the War Museum. It's a small building, Army-run, housing a small collection of items from the Kargil and earlier wars - Mostly captured enemy weaponry, equipment and documents, and some of the kind of equipment we use.
There were AK-47's, UMGs, small-arm pistols, a pair of rocket launchers, mortars... and a whole selection of Pakistani Army documents, id cards, ration books, and letters. Protestations and diplomatic talk can fly thick and fast, but the truth sits here, quietly but leaving no room for arguments - the insurgents that occupied Tiger Hill, Drass, Kargil, and the rest, were Pak Army regulars. They carried army documentation, and army weaponry. Photos not allowed; you'll have to imagine it.
There was a look on the face of the officer who was showing us around - a bitterness, but also a kind of humour. The look of someone who has seen the arguments and debates, who knows what the truth is, who knows it may not be publicly acknowledged - but also, the look of someone who knows that whatever the public may choose to believe, makes no difference at all to the life he will lead here. He knows what he has to do, what his duty is; he's not looking for approval or acknowledgement. He will do what he has to. The Great Indian Public can think whatever it wants.

Another cultural programme was scheduled, so watched that for a bit, then headed back to the hotel - where, for the third time in our visit, the same group was presenting the same programme, this time to some new arrivals over there. There's a limit to how much culture we can take... help!
Accepted a packing challenge from Rc, and packed up all my stuff - for a eighteen-day holiday and trek - in ten minutes flat. Rc's jaw, hit the floor, and stayed there for a while. I amaze myself, sometimes.

This trip... is becoming interesting. It's cabin fever. Take a group of people out of their lives, put them in close proximity with each other, in stressful conditions, with no chance for escape, for a long time. You can hear the pressure cookers starting to whistle. And the next few days will be a trek - no diversions whatsoever. You could seriously make a movie out of this, a novel, a TV show.
Rocking script it'll be, too.

Ladakh Trip: Day Eleven. Lamayuru, Shanti Stupa

It's early morning - really early - the sun just about came up a little while back. Perched up there is Lamayuru Monastery.

Lamayuru's surrounded by an expanse of really weird rock formations - some kind of soft rocks, carved and shaped by the wind into disturbingly organic shapes. They have a soft, melted look, and a very... fleshy color. I keep expecting them to start undulating, conveyering us into a giant waiting maw...

They call it a 'moonscape'. Coincidentally enough, the real moon puts in an appearance as well, floating dreamlike over the crags.

The Buddhist Flag -

The five colours of the flag represent the six colours of the aura that emanated from the body of the Buddha when he attained Enlightenment.

Blue (Nila): Loving kindness, peace and universal compassion
Yellow (Pita): The Middle Path - avoiding extremes, emptiness
Red (Lohita): The blessings of practice - achievement, wisdom, virtue, fortune and dignity
White (Odata): The purity of Dharma - leading to liberation, outside of time or space
Orange (Manjesta): The Buddha's teachings - wisdom.

Lamayuru probably comes the closest so far to the classic Tibetan Monastery that I'd imagined - based on, mostly, what I'd read about in Tintin in Tibet. Remote, high, silent, yet also sunny, bright, social... the bustling hub of the surrounding villages.

Inside, we came across a very unique event - a group of monks creating a mandala. It's about four feet across, composed of multi-colored grains of sand sifted in a fantastically detailed pattern, concentric designs narrowing to a core... Mandalas are a key part of meditation practices. Plus, they're employed for focusing attention of aspirants and adepts; as a spiritual teaching tool; for establishing a sacred space; and as an aid to meditation and trance induction.
This one is a part of a ceremony coming up in a few days - it will take about a week to make, last for about four days, and then be wiped clean after the ceremony. Transcience.

We also had a chance to sit in during the morning prayers, for a while. Chanting, drumming, rhythmic cymbals, incense... but most of all, the monk's voice, rolling out sonorously across the hall, word-perfect, never hesitating or stumbling or even pausing for breath... a sense of age-old continuity. An oral tradition's live demonstration.
In some way, also a brief reminder of Sharmaji.

By late morning, we leave, after spending some more time in the shade at the monastery, and a quick breakfast at a roadside cafe downstairs where Yg met a tourist and evoked much merriment with his name.

A long drive back, to the Shanti Stupa at Leh by late afternoon.

The Shanti Stupa is a recent construction, all brand-new spotless white plaster and paint, a giant white egg-like dome perched on top of a small hill overlooking the capital. In fact, the resemblance to a decorated easter egg is quite uncanny, the dome being ringed with colorful friezes showing incidents from Buddhist history.

There are layers of walkways around the central construction, and a large open courtyard in front. And a classic demo of how the mountain-dweller's mindset differs from the plains-dweller; the guy born and brought up on flat ground will put a railing around any surface over six feet, to stop people from falling off. The Ladakhi will look at a six-hundred-foot drop right under his toes and not see anything out of the ordinary.
Which is why the courtyard, and the bordering precipice, has no guardrails at all. It makes for awesome views, a sense of being a part of the scenery instead of just an observer.

It's back to the Kaal, a lazy book-reading-in-the-shade, playing-with-boisterous-alsatian-pup, dozing-waking-reading-dozing kind of afternoon.

In the evening, we head back to the market, where I suddenly find myself the designated guide for all the new arrivals, pointing out interesting shops, best bargains, souvenirs, negotiating deals, and bargaining. Discovered an army surplus store, where I picked up a super-tough, skin-tight, awesomely warm army sweater. It's not for the pot-bellied or out-of-shape; it's designed to keep you warm, not make you look good. Sticks to your body like glue, squeezing... and super-warm. Also picked up some boots and an original thangka.

Yg aquired a bike, and spent many happy hours ferrying all the girls back and forth, heading off for rides; the return-to-college emotion was shining off his beaming face like sunshine.

Decided to skip the hotel dinner in favor of mutton roechowtses at the Summer Harvest in the market; why come to Ladakh and then eat Delhi food?

The night draws on, but we aren't sleepy. At all. We're instead ringing in Yg's birthday, smashing cake on face, and getting into a full-on daru session that continues till 1:30 at night, complete with emotional speeches, the works. St gets royally smashed and has to be navigated back to room without waking up the rest of the hotel; later in the morning we heard from the roommate the horror stories of puked-in bathrooms, nearly puked-in beds, puked-in shoes, and other such fun and games that are such a part & parcel of Saturday night hostel life...

This has been the best holiday ever, so far. And it's not even halfway done yet!

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Next: Rafting the Indus

Ladakh Trip: Day Eight. Panamik and the return

Back on the road after, we greet the morning with the sight of a 32-truck convoy of Shaktimans rumbling past while our Sumo crouches in a corner trying to make itself as small as possible (no mean task for a Sumo Grande, but next to a Shaktiman, easily accomplished) before heading to Panamik. There's a distinct difference between the way the Air Force drives it's trucks, versus the Army. AF drivers are a lot more cautious... the army just barrels through like they own the road. Oh, wait, right - they do own it.

Panamik is around 9 km from the beginning of the Siachen glacier. We can stand now, in the hot sun, drinking in the peaceful idyll ,and look towards the east... at the faint outline of a mountain, hidden in the clouds, where a brutal, bloody war of attrition plays itself out. A sense of surreality.
The hot springs at Panamik literally are. The temperature at the source, where the water bubbles out, must be close to boiling - it's definitely way hotter than anything the geyser at home at it's max setting can churn out. Too hot to touch, or even to get close to. The rocks around are slippery, not only with the poisonously-green, virulent algae and moss growing wild in the unexpected warmth, but also with the sulphur coating - chemical from deep within the Earth's crust, making a natural soap.

The obligatory group snap

"God made Ladakh - and we connected it to the rest of the world" - Border Roads Organization.

A brief stopover at Leh. I finally figured out what the prayer flags mean - Blue for Space. White for Clouds. Red for Fire. Green for Water. Yellow for Earth. And there you have it - Ladakh in a nutshell.

Awesome views of the valley on our way back - dusk falling, space-blue sky, and the trees swaying against the blazing sunset clouds.

It's been exactly a week since I left, to the minute. We've seen Delhi, Manali, Rohtang, Sarchu, Leh, Khardungla, Nubra... Buses, jeeps, camels, tents, monasteries.
It still feels unbelievable.

The Hotel Kaal. A new hotel, wooden traditional facade, flagpole. Hot showers, aahhh... and an awesome dinner spread...

This is our welcoming committee, a four-month-old, extremely boisterous alsatian pup named Kimmer. The bugger's going to be a monster when he grows up - check out the size of the nose, ears and paws.

Kimmer

I approach...

Growf!

Nah, I'm just kidding - I'm just his latest chew toy. But seriously, though, he will be a monster; later tonight, when I came back in the dark after taking a couple of snaps of the moonrise, he vocalized such a deadly, deep, primal grown from the shadows I damn near pissed myself. To quote Pratchett - it was a growl that went straight from the ears to the little bundles of nerves in the spine that handle the legs, and pressed a little switch called Gibbering Terror. Completely bypassing the brain.

Monks Gone Bad

Some new guests have arrived - including M. and RSS in all his glory, a black cowboy hat, three week's supply of Gold Flake and an unconscious imitation of a monk's maroon-saffron color preference.

A brief conversation back home, now that I have network again. Skerzling, says my area locator. I find myself looking at it and smiling... everything's so new, different, exotic, even in the most mundane things.

I want to introduce another character we have encountered during this trip - Amit Kaushal, a.k.a. Kevin. Kevin is our local trip coordinator, and is arranging for the hotels, the vehicles, permissions, etc while we are here. Kevin has a lot of quotes to contribute...
On the firang kids we'd met earlier - "Bigade hue nawabzade"
"The Karmapa will be staying at this hotel on the eighteenth... you should come. Meet him."
"We've had lots of personalities stay at this hotel... Kate Moss, Melanie Griffith, Cindy Crawford..."
When asked if he'll wake up in time to send the car - "Every morning, I wake up sharp at 5 when the plane from Delhi flies in. That is my alarm clock." Vision of airplane honking on horn as it flies over Kevin's house.
Night falls, and it's time to rest some more. It's been an easy day - but we need to conserve our strength. There's lots more to do, coming up...

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Next: Pangong-Tso

Ladakh Trip: Day Six. Acclimatization in Leh

Unfinished stories are dangerous things. This month, it will be close to a year since I went for the trip I'm writing about. A year ago, I stopped the story half-way, abandoning my fictional self at Little Tibet, deep inside the Himalayas - tired, stiff, hungry, light-headed on the rarefied air and excitement. A year passed, with office, daily commutes, work, friends, etc. Not that it's been boring - in fact, it's probably been one of the most exciting and eventful periods of my life. Yet somehow - none of it made it's way to here. Maybe because my protagonist is still up there, frozen in time... it's time to bring him home.
It's time to continue the story.

Leh is 11,500 feet high, almost twice the height of most hill-stations I've been to in my life. The air's perceptibly thinner, the sky bluer, the sun more dazzling - literally closer to heaven in the very real as well as the metaphysical sense.
This means that I, born on the Doab plains, barely a couple of hundred feet above sea level, need to let my body get used to the climate. Acclimatize. I've packed my diamox and other such anti-nausea stuff, but let's keep that in reserve. Use the oldest and best technique to deal with change and recovery - sleep.
Last year, on a similar trip, I'd coined the phrase 'Chandro-isms'. Tonight marks the first appearance on this blog of a similar creature - the Rocky-ism.
Rockyism # 1: Tonight at 7:30 you are cordially invited to my ureter. Yurt. I meant yurt.

Ten hours flat out, and today morning, I can walk without gasping. Good deal. Now, I just need to take it easy for a day or two and I'm fine for the rest of the trip.
We went one better. On the Sixth Day, we rested.
Which means not running around all over the place, but also not sitting on our asses at the hotel. It means a nice, pleasant, relaxed day of roaming around at the monasteries near Leh... Shey Palace, Thiksey Gompa, and Hemis Monastery.

Shey Palace was built in 1633, and is the first one on our route out of Leh. Under the clear blue sky, the whitewashed clay brick walls shimmer in the bright sunshine, glaring radiance.

Spectacular views from the top of the palace, overlooking the Leh Valley. There's a sense of... I don't know how to describe it. All around, in the far distance, there are mountains reaching up for the sky, the valley spread below, and there's this silence, cool breezes and hot sun, wisps of cloud... there's a timelessness. A sensation of how nothing has changed for hundreds of years... but it's a calm pool, not stagnant. You can't imagine anything stagnant here... it's a place that has found it's niche in time. That's really all there is to it.
And the constant hurrying through our lives we do, everyday, seems a lot more hard to understand, standing on the terrace and looking out at the Leh valley. Listening to the wind, turning your body to bring the shade-chilled half into the sun's warmth.

Prayer wheels line the gompa's walls. Cool shade, faint grind of wood on stone and plaster.

Ancient walls, dazzling white, reach into the blue.

The sun glares down, shimmering off the rocks and the walls - combined with the slight dizziness that hits on the first day of acclimatization, it's a dream-like, unreal feeling.

Om Mane Padme Hum.
Ubiquitous, everywhere.
An integral part of Ladakh.

Golden chorten with a silver halo, brilliant sunshine.

A three-storey high statue of the Buddha, built first and surrounded by the building later. In this arid cold desert, flowers are not offered; instead, translucently thin silk scarves, decorated with prayers, are draped on and around the statue.

The ancient and the modern, coexisting together.
And somehow, it's just not incongruous.

The second prayer room. We witnessed an interesting little incident here - a tourist, armed with a guidebook, wanted to see the third prayer room. The monk in charge told him that there was no such room. The guy started and kept insisting, until finally he was unceremoniously shooed out by the exasperated brother in maroon. 'Agli baar thappad lagayega, saala...' was the little gem that was shared with us at the end of the story when we asked him what had happened... These guys rock.


The room of a thousand and one Buddhas. 1001 paintings adorn the walls and ceiling of this chamber; I've visited one of the most famous Buddhist temples worldwide, the Temple of Dawn in Bangkok, and even there the imagery, the finish, the sheer atmosphere compared to what I felt here was nowhere near as good. The room spoke of centuries of love, dedication, and reverence.


Thiksey Monastery. A large hive of structures atop a hill, one of the larger monasteries of Leh. It felt larger, cleaner, bigger... swankier. And a lot more visited; definitely more tourists around.
The tranquility I sensed in Shey gave way to a feeling of being in a school outing, not helped by the fact that a large group of twentysomething Europeans was paying a visit. I also realized how being too much into trekking can affect and damage your fundamental priorities in life. I stood there, admiring the structures, and several beautiful young women walked past. My eyes automatically followed them - that's normal, yaar - but I was horrified to find that, while I might have been watching admiringly, my mind was going... "Man check out the compression straps, the pockets and loops, the wireframe support, the raincover... that's one damn nice daypack." It was an orange-black Dexter, if you're interested.

I couldn't resist this one -check out the reflection on the photo.
The Dalai lama's eyes glowing.

A bird's eye view of the Leh Valley from the roof

Stark contrasts - and a dramatic example of what irrigation can do.

Farmlands and natural environment, and a knife-edged terminator.

Warmth seeps out of everything inside - the rugs, the colors... what I would't do to be in this room when a howling winter wind blows outside the windows.

And East meets West. The Marlboro Man in Leh.

Protector

Prayer items - the bells, the drum, the books, lamps.

The Hall of Protectors. This was a dim, close room, with no windows, a single disturbingly heavily-reinforced door, and filled with large, brooding statues. An indefinable sense of power, of menace. The statues were dark, rough, heavily armed, and all hooded. It gave me a sense of being in a roomful of hunting falcons. While the hoods are on, they're dormant. You can walk among them, approach them. Yet, in the flickering light of the single oil lamp, the shadows would... move. You would breathe shallowly, and tip toe, and keep your distance lest you inadvertently touch one... and it twitch in response.
The protectors are supposed to ride out in defence at the time of the Apocalypse. In that room, They didn't feel like statues - there was too much belief crackling in the air. They felt alive, asleep.
For now.



Hemis Gompa
Hemis is some distance out of Leh, and when we arrived, was completely deserted. We'd arrived during lunch hour; an unexpected advantage, because we really got a sense of the peace of the place. In the others, there was a faint whisper of traffic from the road, since they're actually adjacent to the Manali highway; Hemis, it was pure silence, crystalline and perfect. You could hear individual leaves whisper in trees.

The real deal

A traditional prayer wheel, built for use, not display. Leather and wood. This prayer wheel is not to be admired by tourists; it's a working wheel.


I wandered around the empty monastery, exploring the passages, halls, stairs and courtyards. It was an eerie experience. Complete silence, the sighing of the wind, occasional birds... everything was so old. Cracked, peeling, twisted wooden pillars and floors, stone walls and yards, stacks of dessicated firewood... prayer flags, sun-bleached and faintly stirring in the breeze...


We sat around for a while, talking. We met a caretaker, a guy called Sonam - a very popular name for men in these parts - and he told us about the history of the place, himself... he's been here his whole life. Born in the village, studied at the monastery, working here...


There's also a museum here, with some very interesting artifacts. You aren't allowed to take photographs; but it's an amazing experience. Traditional clothing, ritual items, little slices of life; and as I was wandering through, I had saw an incredible sight. Innocuously tucked between a painting and a suit of clothing, there was a large, three-foot golden silk banner in a glass display case. It was the letter written by the Dalai lama certifying Nima as his official successor. I though of the history that revolved around this single item - China, Tibet, the displacement of the Tibetan people, worldwide movements... and here it was. Right here, a few inches away from my fingers. In real life.
How many more such things are all around us, which we never come to know about because we don't know what they signify?

There's a school associated with the monastery - here's some children from there, playing in the afternoon sunshine. Monks in training.


Back by late afternoon, we napped and and headed out to Leh Market in the evening.
All the shops are similar. Silver jewellery. Yak-bone artifacts. Brass curios. Thangkas. T-shirts. Woolens. Embroidered bags. Cameras and batteries. Beads.
Interesting thought - centuries ago, the white man traded land from the natives of the continents he landed on by offering beads and narcotics. Now, it's the other way round, as money, clothing, and equipment changes hands in return for souvenirs and keepsakes.
Talking of narcotics, did you know Himachal is the world leader in high-quality weed. There's two types - Malena and (milder) Garda.
Make lots of interesting finds - a T-shirt with the route we took to get here printed on it. (Bulk orders! Bulk orders!). An original Thangka shop, beautiful mandalas in water-colors, hand-painted on canvas.
As it gets darker, the air chills, fills with a faint touch of kerosene fumes and the hum of gensets... and lights blossom in the chilly dusk, steam rises from hot chai and momos. A tiny island of warmth, brightness, and chatter blooms in the vast dark chill night of the Himalayas.

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Next: Khardung la, Nubra Valley, Diskit Monastery