Leh

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18-31 July

After resting for a few days from the overnight bus trip to Manali I jumped into a share jeep for a 20-hour ride to Leh, the historic capital of Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas.

Ladakh is a very, very arid place with a blistering summer sun and one of the coldest winters on the planet. The Ladakhis basically work and grow crops for four months out of the year and then "eat and sleep for eight months", as one local taxi driver told me. Last year in Dharamsala I met an Austrian man who was working on a Ph.D. in medical anthropology (studying Tibetan medicine) and who had wintered over in Ladakh a few years ago. He said it was one the bleakest experiences he ever had and that for 5-6 months nobody ever bathed because they couldn't stand to take off their clothes!

The geography provides an interesting parallel to the culture in that the only life clings to the narrow irrigated valleys and as soon as the slopes get too steep to hold water all life stops abruptly until the next valley that can sustain water and life. It all works to provide some stunning moonscape images though, and the Indus River valley is justifiably famous.

I traveled to Leh with a young American named Will who was my next door neighbor in Dharamsala. Originally from Minneapolis, Will is studying neuroscience at Stanford University and was in Dharamsala on a grant to study the connections between science and Buddhism. We had many good conversations about psychology, neuroscience, meditation, and how the mind is perceived form the two different traditions.

Besides wandering around Leh for several days (trying to find the best coffeehouses!) I took a short sidetrip to a nearby monastery named Thiksey. This was a working monastery that is beautifully maintained and with very good access for tourists. The monks are almost constantly performing ceremonies, chanting, playing instruments, etc. so it was nice to see all of that. During their lunch break I took my own lunch on the rooftop and met a few young monks (about 8 years old or so) who were photographically inclined, which brings me to:

Unsolicited Travel Advice #5 (?): If for some reason you can't/don't want to take photographs of the local people, one way to get around it is to hand your camera to some local people and have them take photographs. You get very candid/unusual results, the photographers have a lot of fun, and the photographed subjects don't feel used or put upon. The little monks took photos for about 20 minutes and, although some of the photos are a little blurry or crooked, they managed some good portraits.

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