The Ancient Kingdom of Ladakh


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Asia » India » Jammu & Kashmir » Ladakh » Leh
November 8th 2009
Published: November 8th 2009
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Probably because I’d come from Manali which is about 2000 metres above sea level, and come over the higher passes, the altitude in Leh didn’t affect me too much. Leh is at 3500 metres. I still found that I’d get a bit out of breath, and times when I’d suddenly feel a bit like I hadn’t been breathing enough. Other people also reported weird dreams, which I also had to some degree. It was also very cold. I bought another jumper and a thick woollen jacket, which of course became a massive burden to carry around after I left Leh. I spent about ten days there, doing a few tours to surrounding areas and hanging around the town. The weather would be freezing cold at night and quite warm in the day, meaning that if you left the hotel in the morning you’d progressively have to shed clothes as the day progressed. It was in Leh that my camera battery charger broke, so I couldn’t get any photos of the last few days including the thick blanket of snow that fell overnight one night (not a big deal for my American readers I guess but quite a novelty for me). It
LehLehLeh

Ladakh is aprt of India after all
was largely because of this broken camera battery charger that I had to go back to Delhi in the end.


Leh is the capital of the region of Ladakh, which till recently was one of the most remote places in the world. There’s still a bit of mythology amongst Western anti-Globalisation types about Ladakh, which if you believe them was a Himalayan paradise until the late 1960s when “modernisation” came to the area, or particularly 1974 when it was opened to tourists and their dollars. Ladakh’s story is that it was independent for centuries, although I think in reality that might mean that it was kicked around as a suzerainty of various powers for hundreds of years, until to their shock they found themselves part of the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir in 1947, with their access to Tibet (the same geographical and cultural region as them) and Pakistan suddenly blocked off. The people are ethnically Tibetan, mainly Tibetan Buddhists with a significant Muslim minority. Their language is related to Tibetan, from what I can work out it’s somewhat mutually intelligible with Central Tibetan. Like most of the Himalayan plateau, it’s basically a desert, which I like because it combines the harsh beauty of a desert with the natural appeal of high mountains. Leh is in the valley through which the mighty Indus river flows, although even having left China it’s still not that mighty at this point.


The other travellers here are pretty interesting too. It’s interesting how you get different types of visitors to different areas. At this time (mid-October) the place was starting to shut down for the winter. Some hotels were closing for the winter. The one I stayed at closed after I left. It was hard to arrange trips to the surrounding areas because of the weather and not enough interest to run the tours. I’d been hoping to visit the Changthang plateau, but couldn’t find a way to get up there. I suspect for tourists it’s a bit of a let-down anyway since the real traditional parts are off-limits, being too close to China. In that area there are still a lot of nomadic families.


Leh is dominated by the ruins of the Leh Palace which looks suspiciously like photos of the Potala Palace, a medium-sized gompa above it, and to a lesser extent a brand-new stupa built by the Japanese to promote world peace. The tourist influence is obvious from all the shops in the down-town area selling imported hiking gear and others selling kitsch, and by the number of tour operators all over the place.


I got a driver and spent a day visiting monasteries along the Indus river. I visited Hemis, Thiksey, Shey and Stok.


Hemis Spiritual Retreat is a large monastery in the small village of Hemis with a sign advertising that “Interested visitors can stay at Hemis Spiritual Retreat. Neat & Clean rooms are available”. Another sign claims to be the largest Gompa in Ladakh. When I arrived everyone was at prayer and it took a while before I found anyone to sell me a ticket, and then a while longer before someone managed to unlock the temple and the museum for me. There were a lot of children there, I think like in many Buddhist cultures the monastery functions as a primary school. The museum had a fair amount of paraphernalia, including some ancient original manuscripts written in Tibetan, but not much explanation of what they were all about. Photographs aren’t allowed in the museum so I forget what they were. I remember thinking that there were an inordinate amount of animal skins for a group that doesn’t believe in causing pain to sentient beings.


Thiksey Gompa is like a small town of white-washed buildings covering the entire flank of a hill, giving a slightly fairy-tale-castle look. This is slightly spoiled by the modern, sealed, road up one side, making the winding walking tracks on the front somewhat redundant for someone with access to a vehicle. Like other monasteries, this one had a sign out the front saying that it is shut from 1-2 pm for lunch. I arrived at about 12:00, and after wandering around for ages bumped into one monk who told me that it was shut for lunch. When I complained that it was nowhere near 13:00, he said that it had changed for winter. So I didn’t get to look in the temple as I didn’t want to sit around for an hour. The view over the Indus valley was fairly nice. At the entrance there was a modern, Western-looking restaurant/coffee shop, and a shop selling traditional “medicines”, with a computer-printed sign saying “Attention: A remedy to protect against ‘SWINE FLU’ is available here, at the Clinic.” There’s also a large, colourful, modern, sign about “how to help Thiksey Monastery” which tells us that after making an “offering” you can get the monks to pray for you. “Prayers can be offered for good health, success in business, dedication for those who have passed away and for world peace”. Personally I think if they really have a prayer for world peace which actually works then they have a moral obligation to give it a try even if no-one pays them to do so (which obviously no-one has, judging by the state of the world). Also my knowledge of Buddhism might not be up to scratch but I suspect that the historical Buddha would have been horrified by the idea of prayers for people who don’t exist any more.


I then went on to another small village called Shey where there is a dilapidated “Royal Palace”, on a short walk up a hill, past a large monument for a young local who died in the USA. The site seems pretty empty, and it was only after I chanced on a man (not dressed as a monk) chanting in front of a
chortenchortenchorten

near Leh
small incense stick that I was able to be let in to see the gilded copper Buddha. Off a few hundred metres are more white chortens and a ruined fort.


After lunch at the driver’s favourite restaurant, a Muslim restaurant that seemed to only serve up meat momos, we continued on to Stok, the official home of the royal family, who obviously have no royal functions any more. Since I arrived at about 13:45 I thought that maybe the reason no-one was there was that like the monasteries they were shut for lunch, so I dutifully waited until some time after 14:00 but still nothing happened. I then worked out that I had to ascend a flight of stairs and eventually came upon a small lady who appeared to be the only person in the entire complex. She opened up a couple of rooms for me, a small museum which didn’t allow photography and showed a few disconnected heirlooms with little or no explanation about them. It wasn’t really worth going there.


On the way down I snapped a photo of what I thought was a small yak. The very-helpful driver slowed down, as he always
Hemis GompaHemis GompaHemis Gompa

entrance to temple
did, after I took the photo. “It’s OK”, I said. “I was just taking a photo of the yak”
“Not yak - dzo” he said. I’m happy because now that I’ve seen a real-life dzo (also spelled “zo” or “zho”) I can feel like less of a scrabble cheat. Actually dzo, yak-cow hybrids, are everywhere around Leh, which is apparently too warm for real yaks! Technically a “dzo” is the male, and the female is called a “dzomo”. According to Wikipedia, unlike most hybrids, dzomo (but not dzo) are fertile, so they can be crossed back with yaks or cows. This means that most cows in the area have some yak blood in them and vice versa. It makes me wonder if all those times I ate yak cheese momos or pizzas at various restaurants in Leh and Delhi, whether it was really yak cheese or whether it was dzomo cheese. I guess I’ll never know.


The problem with going in the shoulder season is there aren’t as many other tourists interested in potential tours. Since I’d been over the second-highest motorable pass in the world, I now wanted to go over the highest motorable pass in the
Hemis GompaHemis GompaHemis Gompa

large prayer flag
world, north of Leh on the way to the Nubra valley. As I think I mentioned last week, Wikipedia suggests that this is not in all truthfulness the highest motorable pass in the world, but Wikipedia is being a spoil-sport. If the Indian government can claim it’s the highest motorable pass in the world that’s good enough for me. After several days of messing around I managed to get a tour for an non-astronomical price shared with one other traveller. This was a two-day tour. We visited a couple of monasteries, but the main highlight of the trip is the road itself and the scenery.


The owner of the guide company whom we booked through told us that because it was Diwali, the road might be partially closed and we might have a hard time raising someone at the military checkpoints, so he came with us at the start, as well as the driver. I guess it was bad timing on my part to be in Ladakh for Diwali, since nothing seemed to be happening for it (for people who live in a cave, Diwali is the equivalent of Christmas for Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and Sikhs; like Christmas
Hemis GompaHemis GompaHemis Gompa

wheel of life. The upper levels symbolise life and heaven, I think, and the lower levels symbolise hell. The three animals in the middle each symbolise something but I don't have time to look it up now.
it’s mean to be a religious festival but has been commercialised and the celebratory aspects of it are celebrated by people who don’t follow one of those religions)


It had snowed in the mountains the night before we left, and the road up the pass was a bit slippery and muddy. Our driver and his boss kept stopping the car (a two-wheel-drive minibus, without snow chains) and looking at worriedly at the ground. Eventually we got to the top though, and they swapped us out with a car that had come up from the other side. This too was a two-wheel-drive but with an excellent driver. At the top there’s a small tourist shop (the world’s highest) selling T-shirts which aren’t that great because they don’t have my size and because the altitude is given in metres, and don’t make great gifts for people back home either because while the front says the usual stuff “Khardung La - world’s highest motorable pass 18380 feet”, the back says “I was there”. After the pass it’s a long down-hill, winding, road into Nubra valley, which is actually lower than Leh (I’ve heard of at least one Ladakhi from Nubra valley getting AMS in Leh)


The Nubra valley has a small forest in the river, it's quite a pleasant view when coming down the steep hill (the hill is steep but the road isn't because they use an inordinate amount of hairpins. We visited a monastery, which was OK, not that much better than the ones around Leh, but from there we could see a massive Buddha statute and some strange procession on another stupa off in the distance. The other place we were supposed to visit was shut (the road was shut, for some military work I think). There's a lot of towns in the valley and even a little bit of tourism infrastructure but not much. We stayed in a nice hotel for Rs 300 and went to the only restaurant that was open in the town (I forget the name of the town). They gave us an impressive menu but then we found out that the only thing they actually had was fried rice. The next day before heading home we visited a hot spring which was a bit disappointing, it was just a muddy area where locals did laundry, I was hoping for somewhere warm to swim or something.


Last week I mentioned some of the strange road-signs on the road from Manali to Leh, and other roads around Leh. Except for one or two warning about leprosy (“LEPROSY IS CURABLE” or something like “ANY SPOT WITH REDUCED SENSATION CAN BE LEPROSY”) , they’re put up by Project Himachal, “the mountain tamers” who built all the roads. There’s various versions of the ones mentioned last week (e.g. “SPPED IS A KNIFE ....” or “LOVE THEY NEIGHBOUR....”) plus some I hadn’t seen before:

IT’S A NICE WAY TO LIVE
JUST TAKING WHAT NATURE IS WILLING TO GIVE
NOT FORCING HER HAND
WITH HARROW AND PLOUGH


SIMPLICITY IS THE PEAK OF CIVILISATION
- JESSIE SAMPLER


BRO CAN CONSTRUCT ROADS ANYWHERE EXCEPT FOR THE SKY (I think BRO is “Border Roads Organisation” - apparently they can construct roads on the sea, the moon, etc.)


LIVE FOR YOU TODAY, DRIVE FOR YOUR TOMORROW


WHY HURRY?


LONG LIFE, SLOW DRIVE


HALF HEARTED EFFORT DOES NOT PRODUCE HALF RESULTS, IT PRODUCE NO RESULTS


NEVER DEPEND ON OTHER FELLOW, HE MAY BE DEPENDING ON YOU
HemisHemisHemis

the town around the gompa



LIVE WITHOUT WISDOM, COURAGE AND DEPTH IS SIMPLY A BLIND EXPERIENCE


Again there were the cheeky ones ... is it coincidence that “PLEASE HORN” ended up directly opposite “BE GENTLE ON MY CURVES” ?


And this classic, written over three lines like this, on a massive flat rock with plenty more space (the sign-writer had obviously drawn the borders of the sign before writing the text)
HORN.
EXPECT THEUNEXPE-
CTED

(a case of 'do as I say, but not as I do!'?)




On the way back it snowed quite heavily and the road up the pass was covered in snow. Our driver was skilled at this and it wasn’t a problem but everyone else wasn’t as great so there was a long queue of cars trying to get up which slowed things down a lot. Some bright spark in front of us either didn’t have four-wheel-drive functionality of diff locking on his vehicle or forgot to turn it on, and had a snow chain on one back tyre. This meant that the unchained tyre was just spinning like crazy and not much else was happening. A tiny sedan ahead of us was full of probably five tall (southern) Indian men, tourists, who seemed to be struggling, I wonder if they’ve seen snow often.


It’s hard to get alcohol in Leh. There’s a couple of bars but they’re very seedy. At the restaurant/cafe where lots of tourists hung out one day one of us was hanging out for some alcohol. Lonely Planet suggested that most places will serve it discretely in a mug if you ask for “special tea”. So one of the guys asked for “special tea”. The owner overheard and laughed and came over and started chatting to us. They can’t sell alcohol, he informed us, because gangs of Buddhist youths go around beating up shop-owners who do so. I don’t understand how the one or two little bars manage to stay in business then, I guess that’s why they’re so discrete. According to our new friend the restaurant owner, there was a time a few months earlier where someone died violently in a different part of J&K and someone declared a general strike. It went on for days and any restaurants that opened were mobbed and the proprietors beaten up. Apparently tourists were going hungry
stupastupastupa

in the middle of nowehre near Hemis
without anywhere to get food. These troubles are all apparently done by Ladakhi Buddhists. The Ladakhi Muslims are a minority and so keep their heads down, at least in the Eastern areas (such as Leh).


After ascertaining that nowhere in Leh could sell me a battery for my camera nor a battery charger, I decided that I had better get out of Leh or I’d be in danger of staying there forever. So I took a flight to Delhi, because suddenly the idea of a $AUS 70, one-hour, flight seemed a lot more appealing than three days of bus rides on bumpy and dangerous roads. So I spent another week or 10 days, I forget, in Delhi, which is the story of the next blog. But I did end up back in Leh, which is a story for two blogs after this one.



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birdbird
bird

there's a lot of these little quail or whatever they are.
gravesgraves
graves

I don't know the name, but these are where ashes are placed after cremation. These were on the plain below Thiksey


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