Sanctuary Of Random Keystrokes

The reason why we were back in Ladakh withn 8 months of having been here was because a visit to lake Tsomoriri had eluded us the last time. Thanks to the unexpected snowfall in and aroud Leh, that wasn’t going to change this time either. But in Ladakh, the journey is often as rewarding as the destination. With Tsomoriri beyond our reach, we decided to simply drive down as far as we could in the general direction of Taklang La Top. During summers the road traffic from Manali comes into Leh from that general direction. It would be 3-5 weeks before those roads would open and that meant we got practically no traffic on the way.

The mountains just a few kiliometers after leaving Leh rank in my mind as the most interesting creatures of their species. Having travelled all around Ladakh, we were already used to barren landscapes, but these sharp and jagged ranges that we were passing through seemed downright hostile to any life. They came in different colours too – while the more ‘earthy’ shades of brown and ocher are all too common, the colours here had a decidedly mauve tint to them.

Once we were past these mountains, we saw the first, reassuring signs of life in a herd of yak grazing on a patch of pale grass.

While it was cloudy and cold, it was by no means cold enough by yak standards. Indeed, one of them stood on a small sheet of snow – meditating, drawing in the cold.

A few minutes’ drive from the yaks, was a small farming community tilling their fields and sowing wheat. They used horses to pull their ploughs instead of the more common oxen. After a short conversation between our driver and the people here, I was invited to try my hands at sowing wheat (which basically involved throwing a fistful of grain at a patch of just-tilled land). Awkard and touristy as it was, I handed over the camera to the wife, and joined in with a childlike glee. It hardly took anytime for me to realize that this wasn’t the job for me. I took possession of the camera again, and clicked a few pictures.

As we continued our journey towards Taklang La, the landscape turned desolate once more.

The valley of farmers grew distant and the road began to go loop around a mountain. Soon the condition of the road deteriorated to a point that it was impossible for us to drive any further. We got off our car and walked for a bit. We spotted a flightless bird and our driver, seeing our interest, offered to catch it so that we could photograph it. I misunderstood him as offering to catch the bird so that we could cook it and was quite taken aback – not that I would’ve approved of him catching it for something much less sinister like photographing it either. Fortunately, the bird was not flightless in the same sense as penguins and ostriches but more like hens are. It swooped down into the valley and drifted far away from us.

On our way back we stopped at a river which was still nearly frozen. It can be a bit unnerving to stand *on* a large water body – probably not the best place for reflecting on the meaning of the English phrase “on thin ice”.

For the remaining journey to Leh, we took a slightly different route. We saw endless fields on either side of our road that had rows upon rows of pylons that ran all the way to the distant snow-capped mountains. The sight might not be as majestic as the Taj or the Pyramids it evokes the same awe.

The weather had now begun to turn gloomy. We came across a monastery that stood atop a small hill in the shadow of a large mountain. Dark clouds hung low over the mountains but the monastery caught distant light that seemed to impart it with a radiant glow. Moments like these necessitate the invention of the device that we all call God, for even atheists like me are moved enough to seek someone higher to thank.

Well, this conculdes my travelogue from our visit to Ladkah in April. I thought that this grand saga would remain unfinished in the same vein as Schubert’s 8th symphony, Duke Nukem 3, Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series and more recently, Textmate 2. I’ve tried to fit my photos into the narrative rather than the other way around, so expect to see some more photos from this trip in the coming days.

When I drew the curtains off our ground-floor room’s windows I saw a sea of white. My first reaction was that I had been struck by the opposite of blindness; though once I put on my glasses it became evident that I was merely looking at what was left from last night’s heavy snowfall. We swaddled ourselves in whatever clothes lay at hand, grabbed our cameras and scrambled out of our room. Having never been exposed to such vast quantities of snow, we were worried that it would all vanish before we had had our fun.

Snow-covered mountainous landscapes evoke images of regal, grand beasts such as snow foxes, polar bears and snow leopards in one’s mind. A confused cow is all we had to be content with.

Everyone at our guest house was busy scraping and shoveling the snow away. In fact, practically every household in Leh had someone on their house’s roof clearing the snow away. It was almost like Sakranti in Gujarat or Independece Day in Delhi minus the kites.

The snowfall had caused the weather to clear up. The harsh Leh sun felt very welcome. Stray dogs had by now overcome their surprise at the sudden change in their landscape and had found themselves warm, dry, sunny patches of road to sleep on.

We had our brunch at a café near our guesthouse while looking at tiny streams of water from the melting snow dripping down the café’s ledge. We spent most of the day wandering purposelessly in the market.

Sidewalks that were shaded, had patches of snow that were now turning into slippery ice. In other places snow and dirt’s unholy matrimony was already begetting mud. By the time we were back (late in the afternoon), the cows had trundled back home and the landscape had drunk all the snow and turned ochre again.

As much as we had enjoyed the snow, we slept with a silent prayer for better weather the next day.

Within minutes of driving from Leh you find yourself alone. Initially you encounter a lot of army bases of varying sizes but soon the only reminder of the army’s presence is the near-perfect road that you are driving on. Shortly we were moving along the Indus river:

A visit to Alchi was the only thing on our itinerary. That gave us a lot of time to enjoy our journey. We drove down to the bank of a river on the way and collected colorful round pebbles. Some of them had been soaking the morning sun and were pleasantly warm to hold in our frigid hands while those that had languished in the shade were hail-cold.

The moment we passed the ruins of the 11th century Basgo monastery we found ourselves stuck in a traffic jam. Traffic jams in the mountains are not as much traffic jams as they are stalemates that can linger from 30 minutes to 3 hours. We almost look forward to them because they allow us to step out of the car, stretch our legs, and even go for a short stroll. This time our car happened to stop at a small village courtyard that had a cluster of apricot trees in full bloom. Between admiring and clicking those delicate flowers we forgot that we were on moments borrowed from our main journey and had to run to our car as the traffic started moving.

We were visiting Alchi on a friend’s recommendation who had mentioned the spectacular Apricot blossoms at the monastery complex. We were about two weeks too late. Most trees there had shed their flowers. But it took hardly any imagination to deduce how beautiful it must have have been.

While looking for our way out of the monastery, we ran into an old monk who insisted that we were going around the monastery in an anti-clockwise direction. He took us under his wing and made us do three clockwise rounds of the monastery.

On emerging out of the monastery, we were eager to walk in a straight line and told our driver to pick us down the road after a few minutes. It was 1 in the afternoon and the local school had just finished. Kids returning from school were enthusiastic about having their pictures taken. The brother in this brother-sister duo posed for me while the sister posed for the wife:

By this time, breakfast was already a distant memory. None of the restaurants we had seen during our visit last year had opened yet. We decided to continue our journey back to Leh and keep our eyes peeled for restaurants on the way. As we got closer to Leh the weather had turned a little ominous. Eerie light illuminated distant mountains. Barely-existent flakes of snow occasionally swirled down from fat grey clouds overhead.

On reaching Leh we bolstered oursleves with hot food and a short nap. In the evening I went to our hotel’s roof-top restaurant for a cup of hot ginger-honey tea. The mountains of the Stok range visible from here, were cloaked in clouds and mist. But what I’ll always remember this evening by, is this picture of a small monastery atop a hill aglow in the dying sunset against a dark, grey sky.

Quite literally.

The long, hard mountain drives were beginning to tell on us. Our destination the next day was to be Tsomoriri lake, with a short detour to Tsokar lake thrown in. But the very thought of the seven hour drive gave us cold feet (and it wasn’t even winters yet – ok bad joke). We decided that a vacation that would require another vacation to recover from wasn’t worth it at all. So we spent the next two days in Leh – taking leisurly walks to the market, shopping for a souvenir or two, sampling different cuisines, and reading books borrowed from the guest house’s reasonably well-stocked library over a cup of ginger honey tea in the evenings.

Of course, I spent a good deal of time photographing flowers at our guest house’s garden – something I’d been yearning to do since the day we arrived here.

Soon the morning of our departure to Delhi arrived. Our visit to Ladakh had been full of pleasant surprises, but one last surprise awaited us yet – His Highness The Dalai Lama was on the same flight as us! It caused quite a stir amidst the passengers. Everyone wanted a picture of or with him, some others wanted his autographs – a few pulled out a book written by him, while others grabbed whatever surface a pen would leave ink on. The Dalai Lama made sure that everyone got a chance – he walked all the way to the last seat greeting everyone and doing the best he could to give everyone an opportunity to take a photo.

Nice, law abiding citizens that we are, we had checked in our cameras’ batteries into our check-in baggage. No one at the airport had seemed to know what the correct policy was – the airline staff and the security staff had had contradicting views so it had seemed best to not carry the batteries on board. But given the number of functional cameras we saw being fished out, it would probably have been alright had we taken them with us.

The wife had taken the window seat this time. But it was impossible to not crane my neck and peer through her window for one last look at the beautiful Himalayas.