The pitstop of caravans

Leh city

1. Welcome to Leh
Stark brown massifs greet me as I wake with a start on my flight to Leh. For this wondrous sight alone, I decide to be politically incorrect and thank General Zorawar Singh, known as “little Napolean”, for leading the Dogra invasion and integrating this mountain-desert into the state of Jammu and Kashmir- an event often called an “accident of history”.
As the plane's wheels hit the tarmac, the Ladakhi woman next to me folds her hand in prayer as she comes home. She had been fussing over my clothes, suited to Bangalore winter low of 22 degree Celsius, but too porous for even Ladakh's “warm” weather. She asks me to put on more layers. When the plane settles and the pilot announces the temperature, she laughs with relief, “Oh it's okay! It is only minus 2!”
Leh, the entrance to Himalayan kingdom of Ladakh (“La-Tags”, Land of High passes), rests at 11,500 ft. It is also one of the shortest airplane descents you'll ever experience.
As Promit said when he landed a month later: “Planes don't land at Leh, they park at Leh”

2. And at the airport..
The tiny airport was teeming with Ladakhis. I was one of the few non-natives fumbling for my luggage. People greet each other with a sing-song “Ju-ley!”- a cheery all-purpose word used for hellos and thank yous. Security personnel stalk the perimetre of the airport, their exposed right hands charred black by the weather- an evidence of temperature and altitude. Stepping out, I become aware of entering a surreal world- a world in which the thin air cuts sharp, the altitude-induced wooziness sets in and mountains of impossible colours and bare poplar trees populate the Indus valley.

Indus Valley

3. City
Leh, the central oasis in the high-altitude desert written along the Indus, was once a flourishing trade route of Central Asia. Traders, caravans from Yarkand, used to brave the mighty Khardung La pass, known as the world's highest motorable road that runs north of the city, to enter this hub of Silk Road en-route to Kashmir. Rising above the city, modelled after the Potala Palace in Lhasa, is the Leh Palace. Built by Sengge Namgyal in 17th century, the Palace was abandoned after the Dogra invasion, when the royal family, which had unified the Ladakh region, were exiled to Stok. The Dogras went on to capture Tibet but the harsh weather at the roof of the world killed and maimed thousands of troops. General Zorawar Singh also met his end.

Tsemo monastery

From the Palace, you see Tsemo monastery, built by the staunchly Buddhist king Tashi Namgyal in 1430, sitting on the hilltop. I dragged myself up the steep hill like an ambitious turtle only to discover, to my amusement, a road snaking up to the gompa from the main city. But as I take in the distant wall of the Zanskar ranges, mud houses of the Old city, and the fluttering of prayer flags, the view feels earned- even if the monastery was closed.

The bazaar

I climbed down to the bazaar to pack dinner before 4 pm- the closing time for most shops in winter, the off-season. The bazaar is lined with restaurants and stores selling rare turquoise from Changthang plateau, delicious dried apricots, Buddhist paraphernalia, and army surplus. Monks and military men mill about, women with head-scarves sell woollen clothes or tubers, and shrewd Kashmiri salesmen try to hard-sell the famous pashmina shawls while calling the firangs “gullible goats” under their breath.
It was disconcerting to enter a restaurant to see a Bollywood movie playing on the TV; the presence of our outside world in this strange, hypnotic place put me out of step. Ordering food becomes a negotiation during winter as the restaurants that are open are heavily dependent on supplies brought in by the Army. Expired cartons of juice sit unapologetically on store shelves.
Once the Chinese closed the borders to Tibet and Pakistan acquired control of Gilgit-Baltistan- Ladakh's independence, it's position as a caravan's pitstop on the legendary Silk Route was compromised. It isn't difficult to imagine these white washed mud houses once resounded with the gossip of traders and travellers, their tales of traversing the famous route, the bandits they encountered.
Ladakh was also the last frontier of Buddhism the waves of Islam from Central Asia beat against. Predominantly Buddhist, the region has a large number of Shia Muslims living in relative harmony. All restaurants observe dry days- a time when no meat will be served- on three auspicious days of the Buddhist calendar.

4. Villages
The landscape is dotted with monasteries overlooking each village like a spiritual guardian. The monastery and the village often share the name. During my period of volunteering as a teacher in a school, I heard cheerful stories from children about how their brother became a monk. One of the kids escaped monkhood because his grandfather, who was carrying him to the Lama (high priest), was much slower than his father, who was carrying his brother. I ask whether monks can renounce monkhood and a staff at the school says: “They can, but there is a derogatory word for those who do it.”
The villages here are one of the most self sufficient societies you'll see. Nothing here goes to waste-a lesson, with oncoming climate change, we must learn. Food that cant be eaten goes to the animals, the houses made of rammed earth and wood perch precariously on mountain slopes so as to not waste arable land and the human waste is used as compost. Armed with toilet paper, I was prepared for my first experience with Ladakhi dry compost toilet-a long drop where you shovel earth, ash, dry leaves on top of your waste. Most toilets have boxes of newspaper sheets helpfully cut out for you. I found it funny that the pandemonium that surrounds a newspaper production comes to this-a wrapper for vada pav, or in a toilet in Ladakh to use as substitute for toilet paper.

The Shanti Stupa

5. Shanti Stupa
My hostel was close to the “must see” Shanti Stupa, which left me less impressed. Constructed as part of the Peace Pagoda mission by the Japanese and inaugurated by the Dalai Lama in 1991, the stupa seems alien, pristine, with murals of the four stages of Buddha's life, without any of the weathered character of the region. Then I saw the panorama of the Indus valley, an ant-line of army trucks going up on a distant mountain towards Khardung La and the magnificent Stok Kangri as the setting sun played with the colours of snow-peaked brown mountains. Magic. It wasn't difficult to imagine why “Maryul” (red land) was Ladakh’s ancient name.

Stok Kangri

As the darkness begins to set in, the Shanti Stupa is lit up against the clear night sky and the speakers play the chant of Om Mani Padme Hum -“Hail the jewel in the lotus”. I was filled with reverence for the place which resists definitions because they cannot truly capture the beauty, the timelessness and the stillness that seeps into your very being. The caravans may have stopped coming, but the lure of Ladakh remains.

Lights out

Notes from the Involuntary Blue Sheep Division

I. The beginning
"So the guide asks us to be quiet"- Promit is animated, using his hands to recreate the scene. "And gets our elephant round the tree, and then we see them. A mother and her cubs. The moment she sees us, she picks up her cubs-"He uses his hands again, to indicate cubs being carried by the scruff of their necks-" and leaves." We let his anecdote from Bandhavgarh National park sink in, and add to our wonder and excitement as we headed towards Hemis National Park, a conservancy for snow leopards in Ladakh. He was boasting of being lucky with big cat sightings, ("Jim Corbett, Bandhavgarh, c'mon man!") and we were hoping his luck would could come in handy. Spoiler alert: It didn't.

II.
"What do we have to do to find the snow leopard?" Promit asked Mingyur, one of our students at SECMOL, the school we were volunteering at, in Ladakh. He wasn't going to miss this opportunity. “Do we have to go early morning or in the evening?”
"You just have to be really lucky", Mingyur told us earnestly. "I can't guarantee you'll see the snow leopard but I am sure you'll see some blue sheep."

That's the bend Otsal asked us to cross.

III. Crossing the Indus
We tried. Really. Otsal (another one of the students), gave us a specific point from where we had to cross the ancient river. Before the river bends. Isabelle gamely goes in, carrying her bags on her head.
Aakanksha, on the other hand, had other worries- which, come to think of it, I can't really mention in print. Too bad, you guys are missing a hilarious story. Anyway, so Isabelle goes in, except- near the middle of the river, the water is at her chin. Our driver is on the other side, waiting. He calls me, "Should I just come to Secmol?"
Watching Cotey's fruitless endeavour to test the river's depth with a stick, and Isabelle in the middle of the river, I made my call. "Yeaaaaaah this isn't going to happen. Pick us up from Secmol."
Crossing Indus: Aborted.
Damn it, Otsal.
In retrospect, Cotey, in his Professional River Opinion, theorised we couldn't cross because of the glaciers melting in spring.

IV. Trip 1
Five of us- Aakanksha, Sejal, Cotey, Isabelle and I- were planning to scour Hemis High Altitude National Park, for the endangered big cat in its natural habitat.
The national park, named after the biggest and richest monastery in the region – the 400-year-old Hemis, has four gates. Mingyur directed us to the trail most likely to attract the elusive animal- the path from Zingchen to Rumbak village. Thus, we set out, our expectations modest. If not the snow leopard, we were certain that we’d see a big, blue sheep.
During our half-an-hour drive, we followed the river Indus from Spituk village till the point where it cuts a deep gorge near the national park entrance. We disembarked at Zingchen, a hamlet surrounded by intimidating cliff faces, interspersed with a frozen stream and patches of snow. Dzos , a mixed breed of yak and cow, and yaks were grazing. I imagined the snow leopard, deep in slumber atop the cliffs of seemingly shattered rock.

Trip 1- We Get Lucky
A Ladakhi woman, perched at the edge of the stream with bags that looked too heavy and too big on her, seemed quite amused by our enthusiasm. She was heading for Rumbak. Our driver helped her with her bag of supplies as she crossed over and we were secretly relieved that we'd have someone to follow. We were walking into the park, armed with water, chocolates and “tingmo” (bread) with little to no idea of where we were going. We jumped over the small stream and thus began our trek.
Even with someone to follow, it is easy to feel utterly lost here. There are no signs of civilization, apart from an occasional horseshoe, or decorated ibex horn you'd find in little pockets of the cliffs and hollow telephone poles that whistled in the wind. Cloistered by jagged rock faces, only the sound of the angry gurgle of the stream trapped underneath the thick sheet of ice accompanied us.
We followed the Ladakhi woman-who we had begun to call 'Acchey' (big sister)- upstream to campsites where men, who had sat for days on end to spot the snow leopard, generously gave us tea and ‘kulcha’. As we walked ahead, we found more men, patiently looking through their telescopes. During winters, they say, the animal comes down to Rumbak village.
“The leopard was sitting near our campsite two days ago” they told us.

Straight ahead, the nallah. 

Trip 1- Lo behold, path to Kanda La nallah!
Every turn was a blind curve. The rock faces had now given way to massive, loosely soiled brown mountains with trails for sure-footed grazing animals. As we climbed steadily uphill, we passed a frozen waterfall adorned with Tibetan prayer flags where Acchey offered her prayers.
Finally, after 3 hours of walking, we spot a snow-clad peak in the distance. Bracketed by the brown mountains, reaching upto the impossibly blue skies, the peak was a sight to behold. We sat there, marvelling. By now, we had forgotten why we came here.
We walked towards the snow-clad peak as though we had found our Star of Bethlehem. We reached a junction with two paths-one called the Kanda La Nallah was towards the pristine peak and on our left, was the path to Rumbak village. There was a map of the area there, with animals you are likely to spot drawn much bigger than the mountains they inhabit. (In retrospect, Cotey said : “Why are we looking for the snow leopard? We should go where the giant duck is,” ). As it turns out, we did see the “giant duck”-the Himalayan snowcock picking through snow on the frozen stream we walked alongside.

Trip 1- Rumbak. And 'bak'.
Trudging through slush and snow, the first houses of Rumbak appeared fairly soon, sitting like steps on the mountains. There were horses, donkeys, dzos, and a massive purple mountain in front; snow outlined on every one of its ridges. Acchey told us that that was the path for Stok La- the pass to climb Stok Kangri (20,182 ft), the highest mountain of the Stok Range.
On our way to Acchey’s house, we walked on a narrow pathway, dotted with occasional dung heaps and cows.  The landscape was like an imaginative child's drawing-brown, purple, pastel pink mountains; meadows where horses, cows, yaks grazed, where the “giant duck” hopped on pebbles and where both the sun and moon hung like extravagant ornaments in the clear blue sky.
The path to Stok La was in front of me and I wished we had more time, to go further, to experience what this last Shangri La had to offer. I was looking around through my camera's lens to see what I could at a distance, when I spotted movement on top of the mountain in front of the village.
There was a flurry of activity in that moment. I could hear shouts of panic atop the mountain behind the village-where my friends had gone.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god!”
Cotey had accidentally started a mini-landslide while descending. Boulders, which changed direction with every impact, were heading toward Aakanksha and Isabelle  who were trying to scramble out of the way, zigzagging. Luckily, the boulders missed- but the mountain has been christened “Mt. Blindness and Death” since. (Refer to Aakanksha's piece for a better clarity of why the mountain was named so).
The movement I had caught was in the mountain in front of me.
It was-
“Blue sheep!” our driver pointed. Neither blue, nor a sheep, a herd of these goat-like creatures were crossing indent in the mountains.
“Blue sheep?” I asked, just to make sure. He nodded. I checked later in the Wildlife Map and Google, and yes, it was unfortunately, the blue sheep.
After their climb and the desperate attempts of my camera to capture the blue sheep, we went to Acchey's house for lunch.
After lunch (with a delicious pickle I wish I knew the name of!), we trudged our way back to Zingchen, formulating stories behind the blue sheep's misleading name.

V. Trip 2- Stupa- making
 The second trip on this trail was with Promit. Except we ended up making a detour and climbing a mountain instead of going to Rumbak. On the way, Promit, Sejal and Cotey made a stupa with shales we found on the trail.
"Please Mr Stupa, let us see a snow leopard" Promit prayed.
(We didn't. Screw your national park luck, Promit)
"Yeah, like one snow leopard for each stupa we made" was Cotey's prayer.
(There were four stupas. Fat chance.)
"Impermanence is the nature of all things" was Sejal's contribution.
(It's the lack of oxygen. It does things to you.)

The trail ends here! or goes up the mountain, really.

VI. Climbing the Mt.Random
We ended up taking a detour and followed a trail...of grazing animals. Why I am so sure of that is that the trail disappears midway- and goes up a mountain. And the fact that it was precariously thin. I was staring into the drop- the thorny trees below were not a comforting sight.
I was slow. Slow with the trail, as well as climbing. I have never trekked before. And my first time doing that was bang in a high altitude park. I wasn't confident-of my foot, or the general strength.  So while I was climbing the loose soiled shale filled mountain-to the spot where my companions were setting up lunch, I was freaking out. I had never felt that afraid.
I remembered a colleague, a climber, telling me why he loved climbing. "I love that you are at that point between life and death."
It sounds romantic to hear, sure, but at that point, all I remembered thinking was, "How can he enjoy this?"
I was careful as a person-overly cautious. The fact we were climbing a random mountain, with no locals with us, when the evening is going to set soon....
(Sejal on the other hand, was singing "Deshi Deshi Basara Basara" -you know the theme where Batman climbs out of Lazarus as background music to my climb)
I gave up right at their level. I didnt know how to walk straight to them on a slope. Cotey came to help.
And then I munched on whatever food they had left for me, letting my raw fear of toppling over and dying sink in, the height sink in, subside and realise.
Ah...I get it now.

VII. Physical imprint of silence
Cotey and others went on ahead- for the area that would be the Advanced Base Camp of the mountain's summit. I knew my stamina. I stayed put. I was sorely tempted and climbed few metres after them, except my camera bag weighed me down and I was too scared to descend to the  The Table- where we had had our lunch. So I sat.
And it was being in a vacuum. No vegetation to break the wind, no rustle...absolute silence. I was more aware that I was in the territory of a snow leopard then.
"It was like being in a photograph- the silence" Sejal told me later. Perhaps the feeling of being in that landscape is best described that way.

VIII Snow leopard hair?
Cotey and others descended from the mountain with a bunch of white hair which we believed was of the snow leopard. Mingyur destroyed our excitement once we were back.
"That's blue sheep hair"

Chopped/edited version: 
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/486191/in-search-wild.html