Sep 2008

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.