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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