Sensory Deprivation

There is a low empty ‘chhhhhhhsssssss’ in my ears.  The few sounds that there are sound faint and a long way away.  Everything is muted.  The lowing of the cows, the yapping packs of dogs, and the hoots of cars is missing.  And is my nose blocked?  I can’t smell anything.  Not the thick choke of a heavy exhaust, nor the wafts of cow/human/dog shit, neither the jasmine, or incense, or spices and onions.  Has someone pulled a veil over my eyes?  Where has all the colour gone?  The vibrant blues, reds, yellows, pinks, greens, worn by women, and spilling from the markets as flowers, vegetables and paints.   I also have this strange sense of agoraphobia.  No one is next to me, there is no pressure of a small form trying to urge me, and thus them, closer to where ever they want to be.  And I can’t feel people pushing past me, the brief brush of flesh is gone.  There is space, between people, enough to swing a cow.   

The streets are grey and subdued.  There is no one squatting at the side of the road, asking whether I want shoe shine, henna or bananas.  No taxi driver has crawled up to me and asked if I want a taxi.  No one has wanted my photo, or looked at my feet to check I am not floating, and am actually that tall.  There are no children wanting ‘one sweet’ or just a quick game of silliness.  The lively bangra beats are gone, as is the ubiquitous Tibetan chanting, the streets are silent.  There are no disturbing human deformities, or spit up the walls, or plastic across the floor, or smiles from people as they walk past, or cows wending through the traffic, or dogs, and monkeys looking for an opportunity to pilfer.  In the shops, those that work there ask me with a forced pleasantry if they can help me.   In the bars a restaurants, signs on the door tell me that children are not welcome. 

I am home.  Everything is very ‘civilised’, which at the moment feels very bland.  There are no animals, smells, colours, tastes, or people curious, smiling and interested.  Where have all the smiles gone.  Those lovely wide broad smiles.   The only strangers who have smiled at me have been paid to, as part of the company ethos to make the customer feel ‘appreciated’.  No one meets on the streets to talk and pass the time.  Everyone has somewhere they need to be.  All the shops along the high streets are filled with expensive stuff no one really needs, jewellery, the latest fashion fad.  There is nothing of necessity here.  

It’s all same same, but shifted a little left field.  I feel like I am part of a Red Dwarf episode, where they go to some alternative reality, where everything is the same, but there is something weird, like everyone walks backward.  In this case, people forgot to smile.

But there is wine…….back into the numbness.

Leh

I open the large bedroom window, and lean out into another perfect day.  A vista of elegant poplar trees, behind which the rugged low mountains of the Himalayas rise, greets me.  Barren peaks, reddish brown and rocky, dotted with crisp white gompas.  The air is thin, clean and quiet.  A silent flurry of white seeds drifts through the air.  Soft summer snow.  The gentle moan of a cow sounds from a field nearby.  And the occasional distant beep of a horn reminds us that we are, despite appearances, still in India.

We arrived in Leh, the small capital town of Ladahk, which sits 3500 m up in the Himalayas, two days ago.  Having flown in our, well, my, body didn’t have time to acclimatise properly, so for two days I had been experiencing headaches, shortness of breath and mild confusion.  I had been convinced I was in Thailand.   

On our way out, the tiny smiling Ladakhi lady who runs her home as a guest house stops us with a beaming grin.  She is a reminder of old Ladahk, before the tourists arrived and local life was abandoned for quick gain.  Dressed in a thick red smock, tied around the waist with a cord.  Traditional Ladakhi dress, that only the old wear now.  

‘Jullay, jullay.  Tomorrow Dalai Lama come.  You want to see?’  She asks.

‘Sure, what time, and where?’  I reply.

‘7.30, on road.  I wake you.’

Our guest house is a couple of kilometres away from the town centre.  We have to walk down a small hill to get to the Changspa road which takes us there.  In front of us, as we walk, snow-capped, 6000 metre giants rise from the green valley and prod the clear blue skyline.  The sun casts ripples of relief and shadow across the mountains, making them seem almost fluid.  More poplar trees line the road and the Shanti stupor sits high above us to our left.  The place is a kingdom of mountains.  We are in their court, sat in the natural throne of a Himalayan valley, the skyline a crown of white peaks, circling the lush green vales. 

Along the Changspa road, a military police jeep stops next to us.  From the driver’s side a uniformed man leans out with a plastic bag.  Shaking it at us he urges us to take what is inside.  Apricots.  Small, soft, sweet apricots.  Taking one each, he shakes it again demanding that we take a few more each.  After a smiling thanks, he drives off.  A little further on we stop to fill up our water bottles in one of the local shops.  A sun creased old man smiles a toothless grin.

‘Jullay!’  He says.

‘Jullay.’  I reply, taking the cap off my bottle and filling it from the water dispenser.

Once it is full, I hand over 10 rupees to the old man.

‘Jullay.’  He says.

‘Jullay.’  I reply.

‘Jullay.’  He says again as we leave.

‘Jullay.’  I say.

The word ‘jullay’ is Ladakhi for ‘hello’, ‘goodbye’, ‘please’ and ‘thank you’, and it is possible to hold an entire conversation with this single word.

The street continues, lined with yet more poplars and buildings, small white crumbling squares.  As we head further into town, the guest houses, restaurants, pashmina shops and tour operators build to a crescendo.  Dreadlocked Isreali’s saunter along the streets, looking too cool for convention.  The repetitive rumble of Royal Enfield vibrate with a deep growl along the streets.  All mounted by aviator wearing tourists, Indian and Western alike, living a fleeting dream of dude-ishness, before they return to the starched suits of an un-cool corporate coolie.

Sitting in one of many of the roof top cafes, views of the mountains ever present, and sipping on a sweet jasmine tea, we get talking to a few others who we probe for trekking advice.  Before we leave the girl tells us that the Dalai Lama is in town tomorrow.  At one of the stupas.  The Shanti stupa?  Something like that.

At the end of the Changspa road, the town opens up.  Hefty looking bulls sidle alongside the ever beeping cars.  Men with trolleys of oil barrels filled with water are dragged down the hills at break-neck speed by their cargo.  There are yet more pashmina shops and souvenir shops with honest slogans, proclaiming that there is ‘more junk inside’.  Every other rooftop is a restaurant with wifi that never works and the blandest pizzas known to man.  Shoe fixers sit on curbs with sharp thick needles sewing together local bought trekking shoes that have broken, and women point tubes of henna at me as I pass them. 

The fortress of a palace, a smaller version of the Potala in Tibet, looms large over the town.  A tall edifice, looking more military than regal, staggered up the side of a Himalaya.  It is possible that the Buddhists were feeling a little defensive around the time it was built in the C15th, with the constant threat of Islam, which razed many of the 2000 gompas and stupas that were nestled into the mountains in the region.  Things are a little more tolerant now, and there is a small Islamic community that live in the predominantly Buddhist city, with a pretty mosque, from which one of the most beautiful calls to prayer I have ever heard is played five times a day. 

Next to the mosque a small side road takes us into the mud bricked old city.  Narrow streets wiggle through the renovations being made to the long neglected buildings.  The pashmina sellers are gone.  Replaced by women with  knitted socks sat on steps.  One of the roads leads us up a breathy hill to the palace, which is also being renovated.  Whether it is decaying at a quicker rate than the renovations are occurring is debatable.  Another Archaeological Society of India project.  If they do actually finish, I am sure it will resemble a plaster-of-paris rendition.  It may be better to let it crumble.  There are only two rooms where any of the ambience is left.  Faded paintings of Buddhist demons scrawl colourfully along the walls, and simple geometric representations of flowers repeated along the borders.  Pictures of the Dalai Lama, with his characteristic cheeky smile, hang above the doors.  Other than that the palace is a maze of interconnecting featureless rooms.  But the views from the roof are, of course, spectacular.  The town stretches out, and beyond the polo ground the mountains rise again.  The real royalty of the area, sitting higher and more sublime than any human family could ever do.

Over the other side of town, the Shanti stupor, shines its whiteness at us.  A while later, at the bottom of the stupa, stomachs primed with typical Ladahki fare, we look up at the steep, steep steps flanked by cairns that rise up to the white domed Buddhist monument built to promote world peace.  The Dalai Lama blessed it sometime in the 1980’s. 

We take the first step.  And then a second.  Third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh….My breathing becomes laboured.  Eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve….And stop.  My lungs are burning.  We are forced to stop around twenty times, with heaving, searing, lungs, before we make it to the top, finally. 

The sound of a mellow drum beats with a soft rhythm, and the low hum of a chant reaches us.  The monks are holding their evening puja in a small room opposite the stupa.  We follow the intonation, and enter the room, sitting on the floor, letting the calm of the surroundings settle upon our souls.  Feeling a little lighter we leave the room, and go and look at the view that pervades to the horizon.  From the elevation of a demi-god, we look across the valley.  Breathless.  Speechless.  Awe-stunned.  A silver river runs through the centre, green grows and spreads from its origin.  Further from river, the green valley gives way to the rocky hills, the harsh, but exquisite, barren landscape that Ladahk is famous for.  Depending on the light they can take on shades of red, brown, yellow and grey.  Beyond them rise their bigger siblings, the 6153 m, glacier topped, Stok Kangri and her marginally smaller brothers and sisters.  A tear pricks at my eye.  I am not sure I have been anywhere quite so, so, pah, words fail me.  There is no single word that can stir the emotions with the same intensity of this panorama.  The only thing to do is sit and stare.  The cares slip away. 

A while later a monk and a couple of foreigners sit near us.  We over hear the monk telling them that the Dalai Lama is in town tomorrow.  To visit a stupor.  Sounds like Shanti stupor, but I am not sure.  The imminent arrival is big news in Ladahk. 

A soft knock rouses us from a happy slumber.  The room is bright, even with my eyes closed, the open curtains and east facing room, ensuring sun streams vibrantly into our room.  The picture from our window lit up in morning wonder.   Another gentle knock.

‘Hello.’ Alex calls out. 

‘Dalai Lama coming.’  The guest house owner answers.

It is cold in the morning, the sun is bright, but cool.  Wrapped up in woollen ponchos and thick socks, we leave the guesthouse.  On the road outside the young granddaughter of the guest house owners gives us white scarves to greet the Dalai Lama in prayer.  Old women and men, wrapped in identical Ladahki dress, hobble and shuffle their way to vantage points in which to greet the Dalai Lama.  Others swing scented coals in metal baskets up and down the road.  Tourists with obtrusive camera lenses, poke them at the locals.  A thick furred dog wanders disrespectfully into the cleared road, followed by a nonchalant cow.  Both are shooed with good humour from the scene.  We wait at the bottom of the Shanti stupa.  For a long time.  Almost two hours.  Police come along and check the road a few times.  Someone chalks lines along the sides, to contain the patient people.  The people mill around, unperturbed by the lateness of the Lama, catching up on gossip.  And then….there he is.  And there he went.  The familiar smile, whizzed past in a black 4x4.  We walk back to the guest house, accompanying the owners.

‘I thought he was going to the Shanti stupor.’  I say to the woman.

‘Hee hee!  No.  The Sankar stupor.’  She replies.

I laugh.

Alex and I get back to the room, and sit on the window sill, staring into the peace.

‘What do you want to do with the rest of the day?’  I ask.

 

‘Mountain bike down the Khardung La.’

The Khardung La, 5602 m above sea level.   The highest motor-able pass in the world.             

‘Splendid idea.’

We head off to find a tour agency that will drive us to the pass so we can tear down it at insane speeds on mountain bikes, back into Leh, surrounded by the panorama of the mountain gods.  

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The content on this website is copyright of Wendy King - © Wendy King 2012 All rights reserved.

www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following:

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You may not, except with my express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.

The Trouble with Tourism

I am trying to imagine that I live in a picturesque English village.  You know the type, chunky sandstone brick cottages, hanging baskets, quiet village green and local shops where everyone knows your name.   Around it is centuries of history, castles, monasteries, and forts.  All of this set in exquisite natural surroundings, rolling hills, green pastures, weeping willows, and slow meandering rivers full of trout.   Now I am trying to imagine that every year, in the 4 best months, when the sun shines, the flowers bloom and the temperatures are pleasant, that my idyll is overrun by blue skinned giants.

Along with their blue skinned, looming presence, they seem to have money, and lots of it.  They seem to think that it is pretend money rather than real money with the way they bandy it around.   Without a quibble they are happy to pay £100 a night to stay in a rudimentary room with no modcons and shout about how wonderfully cheap it is.  Shouting of course in a language that we villagers have had to learn to be able to communicate with them.  The only words of English they know are ‘Hillo’ and ‘Har rar yow?’.  During these months we watch them come and go, paying £50 for shoddy meals three times a day, and then they have the cheek to get all stuffy over an extra pound added to their bill, or try and barter a miserably low price on a piece of locally crafted ornament that took a person many hours of their life to complete. 

They walk down the streets naked, with no shame or care for the fact that we wear clothes, meeting in loud groups in front of our peaceful places.  At night they want seedy places to hang out, play their music loudly so that it disturbs the locals who have to go to school and work the following day.  And then they want vast quantities of cocaine, flagrantly snorting it up and down the streets, with the attitude that they can pay their way out of any trouble if need be.

It is thought perfectly alright by these strangers to take photos of us, patronisingly considered curiosities, without asking.  To scrunch their faces in disgust because our gutters are not as clean as theirs, our infrastructure isn’t as cohesive or developed.   And to pick each others arses in public, which is not considered a faux-pas where they come from.

I have to try and think like this.  To try and understand why we are often treated as cash cows rather than people in the places we visit.  So that I don’t put a taxi drivers head through the windscreen when he shouts at me that because I am rich, I should pay 25% more than the agreed price, and begins a war of attrition, to see whether my principles are greater than his desperation.  I wonder if I would do the same, seeing the big wealthy blue people, laden with gadgets I can only dream of owning, while I struggle to pay my children’s education fees, have never taken a holiday abroad, and only have 4 months to earn any decent money, before my lovely village is free from the blue beasts……. 

But then, as a blue giant, parading around with an expensive camera, a laptop, and the ability to pay 4 times more than the going rate for a shit meal, without a single hair of my eyebrows quivering, I wonder why it should be me that has to pay these extra costs.  Ok, so I am rich, relatively speaking.  And I am happy to pay tourist rates, which are grossly inflated when compared to local costs.  But why should I be held responsible for people being unable to afford school fees or to pay back the loans they have taken out on taxis/shops/bikes etc.  And why should I be given a guilt trip on my relative wealth, and be manipulated or blatantly lied to, when someone feels it is their right to extract more money from me.  If the prices are not enough to cover their costs, they should put them up, not shout and con the money from my pocket.  Is it not down to the government to make sure infrastructure and the economy is balanced so that people don’t feel so lacking.

For example:  We had been told of a beautiful place in the neighbouring valley where the Buddhist monastery held pujas in which the tourist could watch.  It seemed like an experience worth having.  As the puja was held at 6.30 am, it was necessary to catch a taxi.  There is a taxi organisation (cartel) operating within Leh, where prices are ‘fixed’, all offered in a little yellow booklet.  Fixed in this case, means still vaguely negotiable.  But they have to be arranged through a travel agent.  We agreed a price with a local agent, who called the taxi driver to (apparently) agree terms.  There was a lot of mirth, in Ladakhi, for the employees of the travel agency during that phone call, but we didn’t bother ourselves with it.  It wasn’t until we were dropped back at our guest house, after our visit to the monastery that the trouble started. 

We had agreed the full taxi fare, with no waiting charges for 2 hours.  The taxi driver however insisted that we were to pay for waiting.  In my urgency for the toilet, I left Alex to deal with it.  He returned an hour later, clearly irked.  The taxi driver, not at that time realising Alex’s stubborn peculiarities had shouted at him expecting him to cough up, and throw the money at him in a resentful ‘you’re wasting my time’ gesture.  But Alex has time.  Plenty of time.  The taxi driver argued that he knew nothing of the agreement, pulling out the little yellow booklet, and telling Alex to claim the money back off the travel agents.   Alex refused.  So they went to the travel agency together, which was conveniently not open.  So he waited.  As did the taxi driver.  For an hour.  The taxi driver kept informing Alex that he, Alex, was rich, and as such should pay the waiting cost regardless of any agreement, because he, the taxi driver was poor.  Alex disagreed.  Finally the taxi driver called the agency, who at last told Alex not to worry about the extra costs.   They would cover it.  It was apparent, if not obviously to the novice traveller, that both the taxi driver and agency were in cahoots to extort an extra couple of hundred rupees out of us, thinking that we would rather pay than waste our time trying to pay the agreed amount.  This has happened with mind-bending frustration regularly through all of our travels. (Except for me in this instance, who had returned to bed for a little nap while Alex protected our vulnerable pockets.)

In Leh there has been a tourism gold rush.  Four years ago there were a few restaurants, guest houses and tour operators scattered about the town.  Now the streets are lined with them.  The locals, seeing the money the tourists bring in, saw opportunity.  Opportunity to escape the hardships of farm life, to make a quick buck.  The problem is almost every local saw this, and almost every local invested in this, taking out huge loans to buy whatever it is they needed to take advantage of the brief tourist season.   But there aren’t enough tourists to cover their costs.  Now many are struggling, having given up local ways of life.  Importing goods that they used to produce themselves.  And the responsibility is being put upon the tourist.  They should pay, they are rich.  No we shouldn’t pay.  So there isn’t enough gold to go round, but who really is to blame for that?  Those looking for a quick fix to their lives.  Perhaps if the energies placed in trying to extract a few extra rupees from the resentful visitor, they would be better placed trying to overcome the gross corruption of government who syphon off any of the monies that should be going towards education and infrastructure.      

Unfortunately, the local communities have been so keen to impress tourists that they have shifted their whole way of being.  Ladakh used to be a place of hard graft during the summer months where work in the fields took place, so that there was enough food for the cold winter months.  And then during the cold months there were festivals after festival, and it was party season for the locals.  Now the festivals are slowly being shifted to the summer, to amuse the tourists, and bring in extra revenue.  Traditional live of self-sufficiency is being abandoned in favour of cheaper, lower quality imported goods so people can chase the easy money around town, flogging pashminas and overly priced jeep tours around the attractive places.  On the plus side, apparently the Indian government is paying more attention to Ladakh, now the tourists are, and improving the roads.  Aside from that I am not sure tourism is bringing much more than avarice and frustration to the area.     

(This attitude, if not the particulars, in my opinion, is common place within India, and this blog post is not meant as a comment exclusive to Ladahk, but India as a whole.)

Copyright notice

The content on this website is copyright of Wendy King - © Wendy King 2012 All rights reserved.

www.wanderingwendyswonderings.blogspot.com

Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the contents in any form is prohibited other than the following:

·         you may print or download to a local hard disk extracts for your personal and non-commercial use only

·         you may copy the content to individual third parties for their personal use, but only if you acknowledge the website as the source of the material

You may not, except with my express written permission, distribute or commercially exploit the content. Nor may you transmit it or store it in any other website or other form of electronic retrieval system.