Trekking Escapades: Ladakh: Dha, Lamayuru to Alchi, Likir to Temisgram

My excursions were wonderful. First I spent a couple of days in Dha, on the narrow Indus river gorge, only 20 km from Pakistan. The gorge looks like the end of the world with steep desert mountainsides, but tucked away on small terraces are gardens of Eden where communities have been sustaining themselves for hundreds of years. The people there are Aryan and of a different heritage than the Ladakhi's who settled from nomadic herders. The terraces are full of apricots, grape arbors, tomato fields and more, but step out side the lush terraces fed by irrigation channels, and it's a harsh desert. In 1999 Pakistani troups attacked and the wife of the owner of the guesthouse where I stayed was killed by a bomb. There was a memorial stupa outside the guesthouse for her. Quite sad that these people who have peacefully farmed and sustained themselves for ages are caught in the politics of borders.

I heard that the Chinese have staged lots of troops on the border of Ladakh near Pangong Lake in recent days. I'm not sure what their point would be in claiming this harsh land and robbing the Ladakhis of their traditions. I hope that the rumors and fears are unfounded.

After Dha, I went to Lamayuru. I spend two days there. I ended up providing a senior meal to the local senior center. I was searching out some "yos" for my trekking. Yos is popped barley. The village was in full harvest of it's hay crop and I asked a passing donkey man, his donkey loaded with hay, where I might find some yos. I held the remains of my bag of yos that I procured in Leh as an example, since I didn't trust my pronunciation. He pointed to a building a few meters away where a few elderly woman sat crosslegged passing the time where their handheld prayer wheels. I tried to pantomime to them that I wished to buy some yos, and they held out their hands to partake of some of my dwindling supply of yos. So I gave them each a handful. Then I shared some yos with a slightly younger woman, 69yo, who was resting on her way up the hill with a load of hay on her back and offered to carry her load for her. It was not such a big load, maybe 30 pounds, and I followed her up the hill to her adobe rooftop, where we spread out the hay to cure a bit more. I returned towards my guesthouse by the large Lamayuru Gompa, where the manager was coming down the hill. He said that I had just helped his mother! He was grateful. He was on his way to portage some more hay, so I deposited my daypack in my room and helped him. Luckily it was only one more load a piece. AT 11,500 ft, and having spent two days in Dha at 9,500 ft, one big load (45 lbs) was enough for me... the field was maybe half a mile below the house, and probably 2-300 ft lower in elevation. So that was a good accimitization workout for me. Their home had been in the family 800 years!

I trekked from Lamayuru to Alchi, via Wanla, Urshi, Tar, and Mangyu. I met a Frenchman in Wanla who was going that way, so we trekked together. I learned the hard way why I was advised in Lamayuru by the locals, not to trek to Alchi, but rather to Chilling. The Tar La (pass) at 5250m entailed four hours of hard ascent and four hours of hard descent. That was my birtday. I was exhausted by the time we got to Tar, and didn't much appreciate my birthday dinner of poorly cooked rice and vegetables in a tiny kitchen full of kerosene fumes from the burner... no guesthouse, this was a "homestay" where you just stay with a family in a village. And "homestays" were where I stayed for the nine days I trekked from Lamayuru to Alchi, then Likir to Temisgram. Perhaps next year, I'll stage my birtday for a beach!

Many of the villages along the way were in full harvest mode, gathering their barley crop. In Mangyu, the night we were there, they finished and the men were drunkenly singing in celebration, well into the night... well until about 8:30pm, that is! I helped a family there, and they invited me to stay, but the Frenchman, "G", and I had already booked a paying homestay. In Urshi, we stayed in a home inhabitied by only mother and daughter, the father off working in Leh, and the other siblings off to schools in other towns. We helped the woman thresh by carring the sheaves of barley into a clay circle, while 7 donkeys lashed together were chased around in a circle for 3 hours.

In Alchi, a rather touristy place with a remarkable Buddhist Temple, G and I parted as he headed off to Leh, and I to Likir. I took a bus part of the way to Likir, having to walk out to the highway from Alchi to get it, then having to walk from the highway into Likir. The dropoff point was like the middle of nowhere... a high mountain dusty desert... but a 30 min walk brought me to the oasis of Likir, a stretched out village with a snow capped mountain backdrop. I wandered into the alleyways of the village and found a group of women carrying loads of barley on their back. So I offered to carry the eldest ones load, assuming she was the mother. One of the woman had a guesthouse where I stashed my pack, and helped them carry a couple more loads till the field was finished. Then we ate lunch and, by hand, plucked a third of an acre of barley by the guesthouse. No sickle was used, but just pulling the plants up. My hands were rough and raw by the end, but I discovered my foot cream for dry cracked feet, worked wonders on my hands.

The next day I set off for the gompa above town for a quick visit before trekking to Yangtang. Here I regretted my cockiness in thinking I had passed the stress test of climbing the Tar La for my 45th birthday. First the gompa turned out to be more like a 60-90 min walk up from the village... it appears closer. I tried to take a shortcut and failed... the bridge leading into a maze of stone walled terraces. Here I discovered my fatique as my mind couldn't cope with the challenge. I soon found the right path up the steep hillside, but found my energy failing. I continued up thinking I could maybe lay down and rest at the gompa. I finally encountered a monk, who's advice was "you go upside". So I ended up at the top of the gompa admiring the huge gold buddha statue. No one came by. So I sat for well over an hour until a British college student showed up. I asked if I might walk down to the village with him. I discovered the rest had done me well, and I felt good enough to walk back. I spent the afternoon in bed resting and realized that I needed more food than I'd been eating, and also that I'd been working hard trekking, hauling barley, etc for 4-8 hours per day at high altitudes the past week. The women were working in the field again, but I declined the urge to help.

The work on a sustainable farm such as this is somewhat ongoing, but not particularly hard. It's at a human pace, not a machine pace. It's nothing like unloading and stacking in the barn a load of baled hay at the pace of the chattering conveyor. The woman chatted as they worked, laughed. Tea was taken at regular intervals.

Another Frenchman, Benoit, showed up at the guest house that afternoon. The next day I set out with him trekking to Yangtang where we enjoyed a delightful homestay with Tashi, Durkha, and their three children. The children walk two hours to and from school each day... the same route we would take to Hemis S. the next day. The youngest boy happily packed his own lunch of tsampa (roasted barley flour) eaten plain, or in tea. Several cups in a bag, put a grin on his face. No gym needed, the night before while dinner was prepared he worked a while on the butter churn, while his siblings and parents rested, made dinner, and/or studied in the large kitchen. His mom took over on the churn for a while after making dinner. "Butter, no butter", she said in dismay. It apparently takes three hours of churning to make butter. All I could think of is the commercial for imitation butter... "I can't believe it's not butter!". The churn was big, holding several gallons I would think, and a strap around a pillar, made the churning action like rowing. It occurred to me how we have consumerized even our excersize in the "developed world". Tashi's family was smiling and full of good heart and spending quality time together.

The next day, Benoit and I trekked to Temisgram. It was not a good day... at first we were in good spirits, making great time, and feeling pretty energetic. But it turned out we misread the map... there were two passes to cross not one. After resting on the first pass for a good long time, we heading down the wrong vally. That cost us some time and elevation. Luckily Benoit realized our mistake. We then planned to stay in Ang, but after 30 minutes roaming the village found no homestay and so headed to Temisgram which stretches out for several miles. In contrast to Yangtang and Hemis S, where every house was a homestay and villagers sought us out, Temisgram seemed to have few places to stay, many closed. Several even turned us away. Our five hour day turned into seven and a half before a woman that spoke no English made it clear that she had a homestay and wanted us.

The next day it was back to Leh... yesterday. I'm both glad and sad to be in the "big city." It's nice to have my own room, and restaurants and stores were I can find food to eat as much as I want and need. But I miss the carless trekking life and quiet villages of traditional life.

I expect to leave in a day or two, but yesterday learned the Leh Manali road was closed due to weather... snow or landslides or both... maybe it will open in a few days. I overheard some tourists planning to leave in a jeep tonight so I am guessing maybe it is open already. The other land route out is via Sringar (Kashmir)... a bit longer. And apparently the buses along that route have been on strike for ten days. Leh is much emptier of tourist than two weeks ago, and many restaurant and shops are closed.

I think it's probably good for me to rest a couple days before taking the 20 plus hour journey out of Ladakh. Not sure if I will stop in Spiti on the way, or go directly to Manali and the hot springs of Vashisht. Or if the road that way proves impassable, through Sringar. My "ultimate" destination for the next leg is Dharamsala.

Surprise in the USA!

I arrived in Delaware a few days ago after my 40 hour journey from Rishikesh, India.

My sister picked me up from the airport with my 8 yo nephew who didn't know about my arrival. He stoically said, "It's Uncle Rob!"

Later that night we visited my parents and I hid in a big cardboard box for my Mother to open. She was truly surprised! And truly happy to see me! It was the best gift I could have given her for her upcoming 80th birthday!

My niece arrived for her Thanksgiving college break the same day. And we've been enjoying family time for the last 5 days or so.

The culture shock has not been as bad as I expected. I try to see it as just being in yet another different place and surroundings. Let it just BE how it is. Oddly I have found rubbish bins to be strange. I was chewing gum the other day and I kept wanting to just throw it on the ground or someplace, which is the appropriate action in India where rubbish bins are few and far between. It strikes me how clean it is here in the suburbs. I went bouldering with my nephew and brother in law yesterday and though there were a few bottles and litter around the park which my brother-in-law found incomprehensible, it seemed immaculate to me.

I feel a bit claustrophobic since so much of my life in Asia is more outdoors. The places I have stayed have no central heating, and so the outdoors seems closer... seeping in through the less tightly constructed walls. In Asia I notice the bad air from pollution of burning rubbish and less stringent vehicle emissions regulation. Here I notice the bad air of wall to wall carpets and tightly constructed buildings. Her in the suburbs I am surrounded by trees, but the focus is inside the house.

The jet lag hits me about supper time everyday and I find I can barely keep my eyes open after that. I stand bemused in front of the refrigerator trying to find breakfast or lunch. It's been 8 months since I did any food preparation with the cheap availability of food on the travel circuit in India and Thailand.

Being in the USA brings up the consciousness of "what am I doing with my Life?"... expectations, judgments... that don't come up on the travel circuit where people just BE and DO outside the peer pressure and cultural expectations of their own country. The issue of abundance comes up more quickly here in the USA considering in India I could easily live on $5-10/day. I try to live my life as one of complete trust that doing what is in my heart will always be supported by God/Universe. And really when I reflect on my life, that has always been true, and yet I fall into the fear based paradigms of our culture easily.

On the flight over here, I considered really living on the edge and just returning to Asia and trusting that things would work out even though I would arrive with barely enough money for a return ticket to the US. In the travel books about vagabonding, people have different approaches to world travel. Some work and save up in their home country. Others arrive penniless in some foreign destination and find work/living situations on the fly. Some develop work opportunities that can travel like journalism, blogging, photography, tour guiding, etc.

I've been researching selling my photos and writing to stock photo companies and/or magazines, self publishing on the internet, and other ways to generate income. I've been looking into internet possibilities to generate passive income. The site http://workingnomad.com intrigues me. I was really excited about the possibility of publishing on demand (P.O.D.) like on lulu.com until I found negative reviews on that sort of thing on the self publishing websites. A previous Reiki client emailed me and I managed to provide her with a distance Reiki session that she was quite happy with. It was a nice reminder of the "mystical" experience.

I find it best not to think too much... not to think about "here" and "there". Such thoughts boggle my mind. No sense of home or place leaving me feeling homeless or at home wherever I am. Too many familiar things around the world for me. If I think about it I can miss something from India or Thailand or San Francisco or here. If I think about it I can see the absurd differences in the way people live. The streets here in suburbia so quiet and orderly and clean. The streets I traveled a few days ago over there full of dust and noise and masses of humanity. Here a honk is a relatively rare blast of anger. There it's an ever present announcement of presence.

I perused a copy of Rolf Pott's Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel in the bookstore the other day. Two things in the book jumped out at me. One was Pott's most traumatic experience... too many choices! He describes how looking in the ads for air travel in Bangkok provided him with so many cheap options to travel to so many places that he went into shock! I feel that way often as I realize that really I could do anything. I could settle down. I could travel by the seat of my pants. The more I trust in God and Universe, the more options are possible. And the harder it is to choose. The more I learn how to meditate and generate my own inner peace, the more I realize that my choices don't matter. And the harder it is to choose. The second gleaning from Pott's book was that much of culture shock is the impossibility of relating to and communicating experiences from across the world to those that haven't experienced it.

I find people ask me simple questions, for which there are no simple answers. "What do people do for fun there?" It's a 10 minute answer. There is less separation between work and play in India. Children work younger, more responsibility at a younger age. Adults play later. Work is communal. Fun. Kids have fun kicking plastic bottles like soccer balls. Or sometimes play cricket or badminton in the street. Discos aren't big, but people sing their prayers together on the Holy Ganges.

So often trying to converse about my experiences is a non sequitor. It's like a bird asking a fish what kind of worms they eat. Maybe the fish eats worms. But it's an entirely different experience in an entirely different context.

In India there isn't the judgment that manual labor is "bad" and better replaced with a machine. Wait a minute, there is the caste system so there is a judgment. But machines are infinitely expensive. People make gravel by hand. With a hammer. Some even happily. Shovels usually have a rope for two- person operation: one works the handle and the other assists with the rope. Western values of Human Rights are legislating human-powered/walking rickshaw wallahs out of business, but not human-powered/tri-cycle rickshaws.

Meanwhile Americans suffer from carpal tunnel, back problems, and obesity sitting in climate controlled offices staring at computers. To the Western mind anything is better than digging a ditch by hand. And then comes the new generations sitting at a desk all day and paying to go workout in a gym later. And the Third World chases the "West". In Sikkim and Laos I saw TV satellite dishes on most every bungalow. Cell phones interrupt meals in the dung strewn alleys of Varanasi. And the barber in Rishikesh appears to live with his family under a sheet of poly plastic next to the barber booth/stall. Cows milked by hand in a manger along a back alley in the city of Varanasi give creamy unprocessed milk and curd that seems so wholesome from street fed cows. Unlike the watery processed milk products in the US. But then I read in the news about an investigation that has found Varanasi milk from some sources full of toxic chemicals from illegal drugs to increase milk production in these medieval mangers.

I watch the people Christmas shopping at the Mall. For the price of a large TV or a fancy computer, a family in India could live for a year. A room in a suburban house here has more stuff in it than a whole farm village in Sikkim. I remember the village family that put me up one rainy evening in Sikkim. They had a few clothes, a pot or two to cook on, some tick mattresses. Some livestock. Maybe a couple of shovels. There was no clutter in that house! The price of my sleeping bag and specialty outdoors clothes could easily pay for all their material possessions and probably buy a goat as well.

I saw a man using a leaf blower to blow fallen leaves towards his lawn tractor to suck them up. In India I've seen lawns in botanical parks cut to a 1 inch height with a machete. On the hill farms I've seen people use nothing more than a hand sickle for cutting and gathering fodder. Not even a rake or pitch fork. The money from the suburban man's lawn equipment could likely support a family for a year in India.

I watch my niece and nephew eat meals carefully and politely with silverware. In India they "play" with their food and eat it with their hands. The dahl (lentil stew) is mixed with the rice with the hand and scooped up into the mouth. Like many things in India, it's the opposite of suburban USA.

I wish I had more pictures of simple local scenes and culture in India. Just a simple street is such a different experience.

My brother-in-law asks why I go there? why do I want to go back? The answer is I don't know. I feel called to go there. It's not easy. It's full of crazy experiences. And somehow all that craziness is a gift. I guess part of that gift is learning to surrender and keep your center. There are also things you can do there that you just can't do here, like walking barefoot in the mountains from village to village and not seeing a car for days. There is a gift of experiencing another culture and gaining perspective on your own. There is a gift in experiencing ways of life that are centuries and millenia old before they disappear in the abyss of modern technology and "development". There is a freedom gained by being outside of your culture and your preconditioned cultural thinking.

Speaking of perspective, I saw an episode of Planet Earth - The Complete BBC Series, a DVD series by the BBC, the other day and it had some of the most amazing photography I have ever seen. There is also an interesting DVD called Riding Solo To The Top Of The World about an Indian man's solo journey and film of himself motorcycling to Ladakh; you can see the trailer at http://www.dirttrackproductions.com/trailers/ridingsolo/index.html.