Delilah Leah and Miles

Kelsang Wandu and his wife, Yang Chen invited us into their home. Since we were Kelsang's clients, the fact that he invited us into his home meant a great deal to us. They live in one of the TIbetan Refugee camps outside Leh. Yang Chen and her sister's parents moved there when they left Tibet in 1959. Yang Chen and her sister inheirited the house. Kelsang is from the south. He came to Leh when he was in the army and met Yang Chen. There is a great military presence in the region since it borders China and Pakistan.

Kelsang and Yang Chen live with their 3 children, 2 of whom we met. Their daughter is in boarding school. Their youngest son, Tenzing (many boys are named Tenizing after the Dalai Lama) is 7, 2 years older than Delilah. They got along famously, despite the fact that they didn't speak the same language. They mimicked each other. They had a puppy inside, as well a a large dog outside. Tenzin and I drew together. He drew a dream house that wasn't that different from his home. Perhaps a little bigger, and bigger trees. I looked through his (or his brother's) school book and read several english exercises, essays.

When we arrived it was light out, but since the windows were small it was darkish inside. The "Living Room" (our words) had a tiny 6" x 6" "sky light" letting in some natural light. Evertually a single light was turned on. There were 2 couches. We chatted with Yang Chen's sister, a teacher, while Delilah and Tenzing laughed and laughed. We were all laighing. There were two other rooms in the house: the kitchen and a bedroom.

We were served tea and crackers as Kelsang and Yang Chen carried water and cooked. I'm not sure at what point it became clear to us that our hosts would not be dining with us. Champal popped into the room to explain that is the Bhuddhist tradition of service. They served us first - bread in the shape of knots (the first raised bread we'd had in a long time) , rice, delicious greens with cheese, dahl, fresh vegetables with noodles, mutton, fresh salad, teas. Only after we finished did they eat in the kitchen on the floor. We had very mixed feeling about this, both of gratitude (the food was delicious!) and acceptance, but also discomfort and a sense of loss. We also felt like we were missing out on conversation.

I hope that we continue to correspond with Kelsang and his family. I'm getting choked up.

Yang Chen makes and sells jewelry in the passageway down a few steps across from the ATM in Leh. She taught me how to tell the difference between turquoise and plastic that imitates it (turquoise remains cool long after plastics warm to the touch). While we were there Kelsang began to wear a large coral earring that he made. Turquoise and coral are TIbetan good luck jewelry. I wish I had a photo. It was HUGE!

What fun to write again! This is the Hemis Monastery, the first one to which we went. It has a very large sponsorship from all over the world.

How does a large sponsorship translate into what we observed? Construction and reconstruction. We observed more building here than in others we saw, both in the temple and in monks houses around the compound. In the photo below (from the internet, and the same building as the one in the first photo), the section behind the tall blue flag and pole was missing when we were there. You can see that it's missing in the first photo. The roofline in the first photo is not continuous - which indicates the break from the damage.

Rooftop decoration and an homage to our friend the painter Chris Martin.

Adobe, rock and timber walls. This photo was taken from one of the roofs of the main section, above a prayer hall. I picked up an adobe that was smaller than a CMU and just as heavy. Quite dense stuff.

Ladakh has famously little rain. However, it has been increasing in recent years. It rained for 7 days straight just before we arrived! The day we were in Hemis is the last day that we experienced rain on the trip. The affect on traditional construction has been devastating to some buildings, villages and monasteries, as seen in these photos.

Later - when we trekked west from Lakir we camped in the village of Yang Thang. The village had been swept through by the very high waters of glacial runoff – high water everywhere. Wiped out the roads along the streams, as well as most of the villages. To walk along the stream was very difficult for me on foot, and impossible for the horses. The monastery had been severely damaged as well as much of the village.

Delilah takes off her shoes before entering the prayer hall.

I became intrigued by this decorative lintel and eaves detail which I saw in many places.

What is the purpose? My best guess is something to do with waterproofing the tops of the walls and windows or doors, somehow wicking, or directing water towards the exterior of the buildings.

The builders notch the sticks, gather little bundles of sticks about the size of a bunch of asparagus, dip the ends in red paint, and lay them in place. As I watched this construction site some of the women pointed and laughed at my hair, then still in cornrows. They touched it. They seemed to say "Lay! Lay!" with such delight. It was the first time I heard "Julay!" the friendly greeting.

MIles and Delilah walking among the monks' residences above the prayer halls. I had a hard time imagining monks navigating the paths at 4,5,6 in the morn in the dark.

Even a photograph of Buddha is sacred. No flashes please!

Offerings of many colors from interior of Stoknya. The prayer halls are quite dark. One's eyes must adjust. In Hemis, light comes from above, second story clerestories, or a little private skylight directly over the special chair for the lama. I could not access the second stories. As in Stoknya, the light was also indirect. Diffuse. Thiksney was the darkest of all. Prayer halls had many rooms off main room, akin to Christian chapels. Not symmetrical, with many more buddhas. Not just one special room with chapels, but several special rooms. (More like the Met!) Floors were well worn with wide baords, which felt good, varied and polished under sock feet.

MIles in the courtyard of Stoknya Monastery. Much more intimate than Hemis. Hemis was backed up into a mountain in a glacial valley. Upon descent onto the Indus Plain one can see Stoknya in the distance, Stoknya looks like an island in the plain, a fortified island. Some of the walls are crenellated. I was reminded of how Peter Young described "cloud forests" around Bisbee, AZ, that each had their own ecology. From Stoknya looking west one can see Thiksney, which is built where a spur of some foothills meets the flat Indus Plain.

From each monastery one can see the next in the distance. Each of those three has a unique relationship in how it is sited with the mountains.

In the land below Hemis we saw low, broad, dry mortar handmade walls that followed the contours of the landscape. Perhaps they were 3-4' high, and as wide as 12-16'. Carefully stacked flat rocks carved withthe Tibetan words reading Om mani padme hum. Some Tibetans say this to themselves hundreds of times a day to invoke blessings. We would later see very large such carvings into hard-to-reach cliff rocks on our trek.
An unusual flower design.

The beautiful walking entrance to the Goba Guest House, Changspa, Leh. Just ahead and to the left is the flower garden with tables, chairs and an arbor. We stayed here for 10 days; it was our center as we travelled and trekked. WIth a large community of European and Israeli travelers (and one American!), we made it our home away from home.

The south side of the house and the flower garden.

The edge of the upper terrace of wheat, over the vegetable garden. You see the cold frame in the background. This photo, to the west, is away from the city. You can see the stark difference between the irrigated land of the guest house and the dry foothills. Many of these photos remind me of Sydney and Miguel's home in Chimayo, New Mexico, a place that we love where we feel at home.

We met for breakfast in the garden, and exchanged stories and information about treks and buses and restaurants and yoga classes (only 2 in the city, the better one with an American teacher). Once we began to eat breakfast in this idyll, we began to feel connected, like we belonged to a mini-community. People would hang out during the day as they acclimatized, or during down time between treks, or if one family member was trekking and others were not.

We met a wonderful family from Israel with a 4 year-old daughter named Ofir. It took a little while for her and Delilah to cleave to each other, because though all the parents could speak English and communicate well, Ofir did not, so Delilah and she communicated in other ways. I was so impressed at how many activities, toys and games her parents brought for her: 2 decks of cards, activity books, paints (we had paints too), a speaker system for their iPod. We ate several meals together and she and Delilah spent one blissful day in the garden and Delilah really needed that. She needed to have at least one kid friendship that lasted for a few days. Ofir's family went off the the fabled Nubra Valley (where there are 2-humped camels) when we were trekking. Oh to hear Ofir's sweet voice again! again!

The garden looking back towards the allee.

This photo (someone else's) is of the mountain that we saw from our window. The tallest is Stok Kangri. When we were there there was a little less snow. Stok is a 6000 meter peak that is one of the easier 6000 meter peaks to climb. I met a German woman who had spent most of her weeks in Leh preparing for the 4 day trek to climb Stok. She was travelling alone and met the woman who would become her climbing partner on another trek.

Foreground view from our window which show's some of Goba's wheatfields (Stok wasn't clear in this photo).

Dawa is the proprietor with her husband and his parents. Their season is only two months long due to cold weather, so they put a lot of effort into those 2 months, and really turn their home over to the guests. Their service was gracious. 4-5 years ago Changspa had no restaurants and all the guests ate in at Goba. Now that there are many restaurants (making pizza and pasta among other things) in the neighborhood only a few guest eat in. We did so 3 nights, and they were the best meals we had in Leh.

I consulted with Dawa about where to locate and build another building for guest rooms. We laid out a building on the opposite side of the flower garden/arbor/breakfast meeting place. It is to be L-shaped so that the existing building and the new building will face each other to some extent. The rooms will all have views of Stok. It will be built to that it can eventually have 2 stories, and 10 more rooms. She said that to build in the traditional way, of mud bricks, is easy to maintain. If the walls need a repair, they can be repaired modularly. If the building were built of concrete, if there were a problem, it would all have to be taken down and rebuilt. (she has experience with both kinds of construction.) The thick walls of the mud bricks keep the buildings warmer in the winter. The building will be built in this wheatfield.

Their temple is on the roof of their home. Note the beautiful carved lintel and door. They also have a library with ancient scrolls!

Enat Sidi told me about Goba. She also told me about a particular well in the garden in which she did her laundry. I looked for the well several times when I was there, in vain. This part of Changspa has something like the acequia system that we admire in New Mexico, where neighbors share a water source and it goes to different property, or different parts of the property at different times. Finally, on the last day we were there, I found the well I had been looking for!

The landscape looked different as soon as we dropped down from the last pass. Stupas, or chortens, as they are called in Ladakhi are the white cultural artifacts that mark the landscape and fields. They can be in multiples or stand alone objects. Most that we saw were solid, built of rock and plaster. Those at Alchi Monastery were hollow with paintings of the cosmos for contemplation on intricate inner ceilings.

Some stupas are "punishment stupas," built in order to redeem the doer of the deed. The badder you been, the bigger the stupa. Others might say hail mary's. Perhaps the word stupid comes from the sanskrit origin - meaning heap. It was difficult for us to discern between the holy stupas and the punishment stupas, except in their proximity to monasteries.

These white plaster object sculptures were among the curvy, feminine, oh so green wheatfields. Poverty was less visible in Ladakh than in the south. Ladakh was cleaner with less garbage in the streets. I was so happy to eventually see a public trashcan in Leh.

Leh is a polyethelene-free zone. When I heard this, I was ready to pack them in my suitcase. As much as I like to say no to plastic, I couldn't imagine being without a plastic bag for so long. Was I allowed to bring plastic into the region? How would this be enforced?

Turns out stores don't give plastic shopping bags. They typically package goods in incredibly thin tissuey bags, or in "bags" made of newspaper, like glued origami projects.

I had plastic water bottle anxiety (who doesn't?) On the one hand, I was told even on a trek to buy bottles and give them to the guides, who don't usually pack water. I began to imagine the never biodegrading heap o' bottles. I looked around and saw people DO buy and drink bottled water. Pressurized and boiled water is also available to refill water bottles on the street and at most guest houses. I found a Tibetan pharmacy (glass jars of little spheres of herbs) and did both - buying and refilling in order to buy less.

Imagine a polyethelene-free New York!

Now that I have about 1 month's worth of perspective, not to mention a few photos that I've downloaded and grabbed from the web, I'm going to write again.

Kelsang Wandu, our driver, is on the right. Changspa (MIles thought Changspal), his helper, our translator (who I developed a crush on) is on the left. We met them at about 6:30 in the morn. I was unhappy to see that the car had no right mirror, and the left mirror was turned in, and our luggage blocked the rear-view mirror. Beyond imagining the dynamics of driving on the right side of the road for us Americanos, driving in the mountains is a very active sport, because of how many various speeds the vehicles are traveling over the narrow roads. Kelsang seemed incredibly comfortable with this handicap of no mirrors. Eventually I felt comfortable with it too. He's a good driver.

They introduced themselves by saying "hi, we're Buddhists." Dashboard alter:

I had a sense as we headed to Rothang that as soon as we went over the pass, we wouldn't see anymore green; that the landscape would change drastically, and that I had to appreciate it (green wet stuff) while I could.

The change was more gradual than I anticipated. It remained green and wetter than I would have liked when we were so high. Though on one hand we felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, every so often, and at some passes, roadside chai-noodle-cracker-curry-chapati stands would pop up under tarp tents.

The changes were gradual, but there were many distinct landscapes that we passed through. The American west came to mind. The Grand Canyon came to mind. I had been taken with the name "Keylong" on a map. It was a town in a gorge on the side of a river valley cut like a gorge itself. I was happy to get through it into a "view". We fell short of our first night destination of Sarchu. We holed up in Darcha, which was a bend in the road with some rock foundation, tarp tents set up. Quite cozy. I think the proprietors of this one gave up their beds for the night for us. I later met a woman who had been on a month-long trek with Darcha as the ending point. It was hard for me to imagine Darcha as a dstination, since we were only passing through and all. Notables: we learned the custom of asking where the toilet is, though sometimes there is no toilet, the idea is that the villagers go in the same general location, near the donkeys or down by the river.

tarp-tent ceiling panel:

One of hundreds of very funny road signs on the Indian highways that kept us paying attention and laughing. This one says: Peep, peep, don't sleep

Very soon after we left Darcha we ran into our steering-column mishap (see earlier blog entry: http://leahkreger.travellerspoint.com/7/) and became temporarily separated from our camera. Hence I surfed the web for these. This is not my photo. This is not my motorcycle. However, these are the landscapes which we drove through. Generalization: motorcyclists take the best photos. Thanks to them.

Graph of altitudes of the road from Manali to Leh. For clarification: There were 5 passes, 2 of which were coupled together.

Photos don't do it justice.

Soolong Valley is above Manali, and equipped for horseback riding, paragliding and yak skiing (that is an aside - the Lonely Planet has an hysterical description of just what constitutes yak skiing). We drove in a taxi (no speak english) into an unlikely tourist town, shacks by the side of the road, not even selling what we thought wer ubiquitous choices of crackers, biscuits, potato chips, chai, perhaps curry and ramen noodles. We did see paragliders coming in to land, so we knew we were in the right rut. We were approached by a broker of sorts. Negotiations were tough, since we didn't know where we wanted to go, just that we wanted to go. We were taken to a beautiful "temple" a few kilometers away, a waterfall with some construction at the bottom of it it to accommodate pilgrims that we began to pass pilgrims coming down the valley as we were going up.

View from the valley

A proprietor inspecting the concrete pour on her new venture

A Brit motorcycle club after they arrived from Keylong over the Rothang Pass (about 4000 meters, depending on what map you've got). 34 motorcycles, 3 women among them, traveling with 2 first aid jeeps. Their luggage arrived first. They must've just got through before the roadslide we encountered the next day as we headed towards Rothang...

Valley above Manali

About Jewelry the dog: He immediately cleaved to Delilah upon entering a beautiful park behind our hotel. He then proceeded to protect us as we walked through the park, for instance, scaring away the monkeys. THough I so wanted a photo with Deli and monkeys, her relationship of convenience with this dog was gratifying.

About the leash. At one point in our preparations for our trip I got concerned about loosing Delilah in REALLY REALLY big and dense crowds in Delhi. My cousin suggested a leash. Upon mentioning it to Delilah, she got very excited about it, and though through many conversations my fears were allayed, she remained interested in the leash.

It came in handy in Manali because the ROADS WERE SO NARROW. NO SIDEWALKS. COWS, DOGS, CARS, MOTORCYCLES, and, as I mentioned before, VELOCIRAPTORS ZOOMING ABOUT. With the leash I could reel her in away from the traffic.

Park behind our hotel.

Protest mentioned before in the town square of Manali.

Our first introduction the Buddhist culture on the trip. A temple right in Manali. Had the first of many very large prayer wheels we would see. This one enclosed in a room not much bigger than the 8' high prayer wheen. Always spin clockwise.

Detail.

Dragon detail

Prayer flags above Manali

Monkey

I was extremely excited to see a snake charmer, though this one was one of the most rascally of the hawkers, asking for exorbitant amounts of American money for each of their 6 people though as the photo shows, they started our with 3. People in India don't seem to have change, so it seemed difficult for 2 people to split a tip with one bill. For most of our trip we had to actively pay attention and seek small change.

I didn't get my curiosity about cobras satisfied. Hawker # 1 was too busy trying to put a python on me and asking for money, how could he have known that I had a python as a pet for many years, and it wasn't really a novelty to me at all.

Blank books you will soon be seeing for sale in Miles's store.

One of many.

We're "safe" and sound.

Delilah collapsed in London, I think just feeling so comfortable in a friends' house. She still has a fever and her first earache (yeow!)

We're moping around here. We got our car back today. We still don't have our dog. Apparently the woman craing for him likes him so much she wants to keep him a few more days.

Some photos:

Rickshaw in Delhi

Auto rickshaw. We called them velociraptors in Menali. (remember the movie Jurassic Park?) They were about head height for me and Miles, and just zooomed around, quite frightening us sometimes.

Running around le Corbusier's High Court in Chandigargh

Hindu pilgrims on side of road on last flat before we headed into mountians. I was intrigued: these folks had no bags with them, no bottles of water. They generally waved as they passed other Hindus with orange or red flags (as our driver had). This was near the landslide that happened a week before we arrived. Many, many bike riders, motorcycles riders, jam packed cars going on a pilgrimage.

Temple in Mandi

Books! En route between Mandi and Manali.

Roadside tea

With Hookum, our first driver from Delhi-Chandigargh-Mandi-Manali

We're back on western soil. Delilah is doing remarkably well considering she's been 3 weeks in unfamiliar lands. However she awoke at 5 last night (11 am India time) with a frog in her throat. We're keeping her warm. We'll see what that means for our hopes and aspirations for the day.

A note about the plane ride: they are not what they used to be. Virgin has this in-flight entertainment system with more than 60 choices on it. So Miles and I both watched 2-3 movies on the flight. Delilah was GLUED to the kids' channel. To walk up and down the aisles is to see 80-90% of the full flight with their own private TV's on. Whatever happened to reading?

Speaking of reading, Miles did photograph and will comment on bookstores. Perhaps more interesting than bowels...

What can I write about now? The experience of Varanansi was intense. It seemed so chaotic after being in `ladakh for a while, and being at the Taj Palace Hotel. From the airport we drove through rural roads, then into the city, and were dropped at a bank, a landmark. Someone met us and carried our bag (singular, at that point, we'd checked most of our luggage in Delhi) through the narrow "streets". Yes, they were sometimes 4 or 5 feet wide, yes, with garbage, yes, with cow patties, yes with bikes and motorcycles. After the winding and smelly lanes I began to see sun, and imagined we were getting close to the Ganges, and finally the view spilled open to the Ganges. I was so relieved to get out into the open I couldn't imagine at the time going back through the narrowness until we really needed to, upon our return to the airport.

Varanasi (where the Varuna and Asi Rivers flow into the Ganges) has a series of steps, or ghats into the water upon which Hindu devotees bathe themselves daily. Generally it's possible to walk the entire length of the city on the ghats, however, since we arrived just after monsoon, the water was very high. The ghats instead were discreet sets of stairs, and one could go from one to the other by boat, though we saw some young boys doing brave rock-climbing traverses on the vertical walls of buildings, sill to sill. Ornament to ornament.

Our first boat ride negotiations were lame, I was having a hard time trusting the natives. We paid more for the guest room that the internet advertised. We were having trouble trusting.

I was often tempted to make comparisons between regions, or between peoples we met. I'm uncomfortable with this; they verged on stereotypes. For instance, when we spilled into Ladakh, the land of the stupas, I felt more calm. I saw less instances of poverty, less garbage. Where we got back to more heavily Hindu population, life felt more chaotic and not as attractive (though all these areas had muslim population as well, we came into less contact with Muslims, I think). This was a little confusing and painful to me, since I practice yoga and feel affinity with some vedic teachings. I felt like: what, if anything, do `i have in contact with this? By the 2nd day in Varanasi I felt much more comfortable. We began to connect with people, we learned how to get around. By the end of a second day, we were chanting at the puja sites, and by the third day `i was making an offering (marigold blossoms strung together) to the Ganges.

We arrived into the heat today.Could be compared to Venice... there is a river.... but it's a stretch. I love the smell of cow dung in the morning.

The city is on the west side of the Ganges (pronouced Ganga) and across the wide, murky and holy waters lies green fields. The airport cab drove adeptly through chaos to an ATM, which was our meeting point for the guide who would take us through winding narrow streets to our guest house on the river. I was so eager to see the sunlight when we appraoched the banks. THe river just looks so much better for getting around than walking in the winding, wet, narrow, up and down pathways.

Our room is "super deluxe" in name only. There is an AC. We'll see if it works now. After napping we awoke to boys jumping 4 stories into the Ganges. Naked butts and all. Many seem happy to be photographed. We've been given the bacteria count for the river and probably won't even go near it with our feet. We then negotiated (badly?) for a ride to Asi Ghat (the ghats are the steps that extend into the river). I won't tell you what we saw floating in the river, suffice it to say that it cut through any illusions I harbored about a charming city. It got real fast. We did see a burial for someone without so much money: a body wrapped in orange cloth, and pushed off the prow of the boat about 100 feet out. No burning for that man.

Trusting the people who are helping us is such a factor here. Trusting the hotel, the guides. Our boatmen were 4 teenage boys, whom we will meet at 6 am for the famous dawn boat ride on the Ganges.

I'm thinking of my friend Lilia a great deal here, Shiva is particualrly special to her, and this is Shiva's birthplace.

Love, love, love