Number 9 Dream
While I knew that Japan was driven to such desperation during World War II that they resorted to Kamikaze, I had no idea that a similar suicide unit existed for navy as well. The unit was called ‘Kai Ten’ and basically used torpedos modified to accomodate human ‘drivers’ who would ram them into the enemy ship.
I came across a fictional autobiographical account of a Kai Ten ‘driver’ in David Mitchell’s Number 9 Dream. Each paragraph of that account sent a chill down my spine. And to think that someone lived through it…
Wikipedia has more if you have the stomach for it.
As an aside, the Kanji for Kai Ten (the phrase roughly means ‘the turn toward heaven’) is 回天. While I am not sure I can explain 回, it’s quite easy to logically explain the origin of 天. The Kanji for big (huge, enormous) is 大. It is simplification of drawing of a man with his arms outstretched. (How big? This “大” Big). Add a bar or ‘roof’ on top of it and you get Kanji for ‘big-roof’ or (figuratively speaking) sky though it’s used more in the sense of ‘heaven’.
Poster Study #1
I don’t know where I am with my phone’s camera. It’s 5 MP - which is a good deal more than my first point and shoot (and I used to be quite happy with that once). But now I am too used to a real view-finder and a real (satisfying) shutter release sound to be able to compose properly with this one. We’ll see how it goes in the coming days.
I imagine a mirror between two posters that turns reflections into sketches. 
Stick no bills. 
Yet another scary Facebook privacy thought
I recently got an Android phone. One of the apps that I enjoy playing with on it is ‘Google Goggles’. You take a photo with the phone’s camera and then Google Goggles fires a search to get you more information about the thing you just clicked. It’s often eerily accurate.
Facebook allows your photos to be tagged by others. It’s only a matter of time that they plug in face recognition. iPhoto does it, Picassa does it, I see no reason why Facebook won’t (if it doesn’t already).
So you take a photo, use something like Google Goggles for Facebook, and voilá you have (depending on the user’s privacy settings) details of the person you clicked!
It isn’t called Facebook for nothing.
Ladakh in April - Day 2 - Shanti Stupa and around Leh
We woke up early, feeling remarkably fresh and rested. Our breakfast on arriving at Leh had been at the guest house owner’s cozy little drawing room. This morning we decided to give those legs a little exercise and ventured out looking for a breakfast place. We settled for a small restaurant called Gesmo that had begun operating just 2 weeks ago. Their menu had practically every major cuisine, and; quite remarkably for a setup their size, they even ran a small bakery that churned out delicious cookies, cakes, rolls and croissants.
Somehow during our visit to Ladakh last year, we had missed out Shanti Stupa (longish story involving tired lungs and closed food shops during a ‘bandh day’ so we’ll leave that out for now) and thats where we immediately trooped to after breakfast. After walking through lanes surrounded with closed shops and deserted neighborhoods we found ourselves staring at the face of the hill atop which the Shanti Stupa is. You can either take - as wikipedia informs me - “a series of 500 steep steps” or take a road that snakes around the hill and drops you within a few yards of an uphill walk to the Stupa. Gesmo must’ve put somthing in our breakfast, because against our usually sound judgement, we decided to go up the steps.
After what seemed like an eternity, the Shanti Stupa began to loom before our eyes. While the pristine, white stupa impresses you, the surroundings of the stupa leave you spellbound. The snow-covered mountains all around the stupa, the low-hanging clouds playing with sun to create an everchanging patchwork of shade and light far in the valley below, make you wonder if you are standing at the portal of Heaven.
Ladakh in April - Day 2 - Shanti Stupa and around Leh 1
Ladakh in April - Day 2 - Shanti Stupa and around Leh 2
Ladakh in April - Day 2 - Shanti Stupa and around Leh 3
Ladakh in April - Day 2 - Shanti Stupa and around Leh 4
Ladakh in April - Day 2 - Shanti Stupa and around Leh 5
On our way back we chose the easy walk down the road over a shorter but a little more strenous climb down the stairs; though at this stage we would have ideally preferred to turn into a ball and simply tumble down the hill. The afternoon was cold and cloudy and streets as deserted as they had been during our walk to the Stupa.
Ladakh in April - Day 2 - Shanti Stupa and around Leh 6
Ladakh in April - Day 2 - Shanti Stupa and around Leh 7
Hot food and a short nap are the best cures for cold, weary bodies. Though your snug blanket seems like the best place in the world to be in, a sense of guilt at frittering away your time in your room while you could be out gawking at mountains, draws you out again. This time we hit the main market to buy a few knick-knacks and somehow found ourselves chatting with this old man selling all things Apricot.
Ladakh in April - Day 2 - Shanti Stupa and around Leh 8
We purchased a packet of dried Apricots from him and tried bargaining with him in English.
100 Rs That’s too much - 80 Rs?
Kya? Kitna? Urdu main boliye. What? How much? Say that in Urdu please
Assi Rupay Eighty Rs
Assi? Bahut kam hai. Eighty? That’s too little
Phir Nabbe? Ninty then?
Chailye Nabbe de dijiye Alright, ninty will do then!
It then occured to me that what was Hindi to me, was Urdu to him. The two languages are not as far apart as sometimes their scripts and the tensions between India and Pakistan make them out to be. I was reminded of this essay that a friend had forwarded a long time ago. Or perhaps it was this essay shaping my thoughts here.
Also, notice that we suck at this bargaining thingy - not that we wanted to drive a hard bargain with an old man trying to make ends meet.
We had remembered a small café from our last visit that sells ‘proper’ coffee. Coffee in Leh usually comes in two varieties - bad and very bad. The main recipe in both cases involves powdered Nescafé dunked in fat-rich milk saturated with sugar. The best you can do is ask for sugar to be excluded, but they’d still insist on calling it a cappuccino. This little café offers no cappuccinos, lattes or espressos, but it does serve very good (and fresh) French press coffee. With very little looking around we found it again (its name eludes me now, but i’ll try and find out. Update: It’s called ‘Cafeteria’. Doh!) The terrace of the café offers a beautiful, panoramic view of the Leh Palace and the mountains surrounding it. It was still too cold for people to be sipping their French press coffee at the terrace so we settled for the next best thing - the second floor with windows wide enough for me to stick my camera out and take some pictures in the fast fading light.
Ladakh in April - Day 2 - Shanti Stupa and around Leh 9
2023-05-20: Fixed broken link to “The poisonous potency of script: Hindi and Urdu” essay.
Ladakh in April - Day 1
Within days of returning from our last visit to Ladakh, I had started keeping an eye on the temperatures there. The moment the maximum temperatures in Leh began to touch double digits, we decided to pack our bags for a quick vacation. The tourist season in Ladakh begins with the opening of the roads from Manali to Leh - which usually happens around the 3rd week of May. The weather in April is too cold; and as we discovered, too mercurial, to visit Ladakh. On the other hand, the town is a lot less crowded. And although only a handful of shops are open, it’s easy to find restaurants serving good, multi-cuisine food.
We flew to Leh from Delhi after spending a day there. Now Delhi at this time of the year is nothing short of a blast furnace. While flying from Delhi airport during summers I had seen travelers to Jammu holding thick jackets, pullovers, mittens and mufflers, and shuddered at the thought of having to even touch all the winter wear in the sweltering Delhi heat. This time I wasn’t a distant spectator but an active hoarder of all wintery clothes. Ironically, for someone visiting Leh in non-peak season, we couldn’t get window seats - thanks to a large contingent of tourists on our flight. As we flew closer to Leh, from the furtive glances at the window from my aisle seat I could vaguley make out tall snow covered mountains. When we landed, the temperature outside was 4ºC. The mountains surrounding the runway, the azure sky with patches of drifting clouds and an ineffective but bright sun made for a mesmerizing view. We stood there soaking in the scenery while buses after buses loaded the passengers and took them to the terminal barely a few meters away from the runway. The bus ride is a security measure (the airport is used by the Indian Air Force so you wouldn’t want passengers straggling away) and a convenience (walking uphill to the terminal after landing in the thin, oxygen deficient altitude of 11,000+ ft can take a herculian effort).
We were at the same guesthouse as our last visit. The garden where I’d spent considerable time clicking flowers during our last visit, was nothing but a bare, barren patch. It had been readied and seeded for summers but at the moment nothing grew here. The only exception was a lone, young, apricot tree at the entrance which was decked with delicate, pinkish-white flowers.
Ladakh in April - Day 1 1
The rooftop restaurant at the guesthouse was closed. The loos upstairs hadn’t been assigned a gender yet.
Ladakh in April - Day 1 2
Ladakh in April - Day 1 3
The calendar outside the restaurant kitchen was stuck on October’09 - even time freezes in Ladakh once it starts snowing. In my mind this restaurant’s utility lies more in the views of the Stok range that it offers than the food. The former was still being served fresh. Though again, it was a very different view from our last visit. The range was covered in snow, and menacing clouds obscured the tallest of peaks.
Ladakh in April - Day 1 4
Ladakh in April - Day 1 5
Ladakh in April - Day 1 6
Even people born and brought up in Ladakh take it easy when they return from the plains. Half a day of rest is mandatory while anything between 24-36 hrs is recommended for occasional visitors. Consequences of hurrying things up could be anywhere from headache, nausea, fever to even loss of consciousness. That said, we knew from our trip in August that even after those hours spent resting, you never quite acclimitize. It takes much longer than the 5 nights we were to spend here for the body to fully get used to such high altitudes. We slept through most of our first day.
Temperatures in Leh dip quite sharply after sunset. Not even two layers of heavy blankets would stop us from shivering. Since electricity supply in these parts is not very reliable, the guest house didn’t provide any electrical heating. Though they readily made available this LPG powered, industrial-strength room heater (aptly called Superheat).
Ladakh in April - Day 1 7
And on cue there was a power cut. As we sat huddled in the ruddy glow of this somewhat noisey and very picturesque heater, it was not hard to wonder if we had done the right thing by visiting Leh in April.
Ladakh in April - Day 1 8
p.s. The heater was turned off after a mere 20 minutes of usage. The huge LPG cylinder that powered this contraption scared us a little. And given the general oxygen deficiency we didn’t want something else competing with us in the same room.
Back…
Back…
…from yet another memorable trip to Ladakh. I am sure the mountains will haunt me in my dreams for days to come.