Off to Shingo La.

[sajith]

Shittin' at home
Mindin' my own bushiness
Lookin' at old photos

Oh yeah, right, I might as well post them in my yell-jay.

Can't believe it's been five months since. Time's been flying away while I was not looking. Life's moving through its certain rhythm of crests and troughs, and I've been growing particularly lonely and pensive of late. I miss moving around with these people, I miss all the laughter and leg-pulling and discussions, which could range in anything from to stellar bodies to shit, and long, very long hikes.

That said, I'm going to miss a lot of my friends, soon. Sigh.











One of the bridges on the way is reported to have been collapsed after the rains, so we are taking a particularly longer route today, through the villages of Testa and Kuru. Testa is Tenzin's village, and he disappears there. People move faster and disappear, and I've been deliberately walking slow. Now that Tenzin is missing, there's no one to take care of the slow-walking uncles that're trailing behind.



These folks wanted me to take their photograph. After taking the picture, I realize that it's the last frame of the only roll of film I've got - I've so brilliantly forgot to gather extra rolls of film from by luggage, which is being carried by some horses, and I've no way to find those.

And this is Zanskar. There's no random vendor waiting for visitors with rolls of film and other touristy material.

And so we walk on, to reach a vast riverbed. There are round pebbles spread over the vast area, there is a green meadow at the other side of the river, there's a snow-capped mountain in the edge of the landscape. I imagine all the nice landscape photographs I could have made and curse myself. Some horesemen come across, returning home from another trip. When I stop to greet, they yell at me to move faster. Streams on the way are already hard to cross, and if it rains, I'd be stranded nowhere.

***

On the way there's a bridge made of wood and stones and rope. An elderly lama is trying to cross, but there's a heavy wind, and the bridge has no handrails, and the river down is flowing wildly unlike anything I've seen before. The bridge appears to be mildly swaying. The lama is apprehensive, so when I look he says "hawa, hawa." I extend my hand, he readily reach for it, and I see that he's far more powerful than I am.

(Lama Tenzin - yes, we have another Tenzin here - moved with us for the rest of the journey. He stayed with the horsemen in their rudimentary tent, kept reading a book of scriptures at the end of every day when everyone else rested, offered a friendly smile to us every now and then, and moved as fast as young Tenzin.)

After crossing the bridge, we reached a small village, and it's been already a good part of the day. We asked a man working on the field if there are any tea shops around, he immediately stopped what he was doing and invited us in. As we sat around a stove on rugs in a second-storey room of the house, he made black tea in a stove, with dried doung as the fuel. His name is Kitu. Kitu has six childen. The elder one is very motherly and runs the house very responsibly. The second kid looks autistic. Kitu's wife arrive home anxiously, with a small bundle of medicines in her arms, with a hospitable, shy smile. Apparently someone on her way has told her of the visitors and she's been rushing home.

After all the travelling, this is the first time I see the inside of a Zanskari peasant home. It is a simple construction, made of simple locally available material, mostly mud and woods. But I wonder, where do the wood come from? There are no construction-quality wood in Zanskar as far as I could see. There are glass windows overlooking the hill and the valley on two walls of the room, and the view is nice. The roof is made of mud, reinforced with twigs.

As I write this, it would be winter in Zanskar. I imagine those people sitting in there around the stove during these long winter months, drinking chang and tea, maybe reading a book of scriptures, looking at the vast landscape of white sorrounding them, talking in mild tones, sharing old stories again, sometimes scolding a particularly annoying kid, sometimes worried about the dwindling supplies for cattle, sometimes worried about someone's illness. There'd be hardly anything to do in the outdoors.

And when we ask Kitu of the price of tea and biscuits, he's very confused. The elder child says that they don't want money for tea. Money isn't really a measure of anything here. There's not much you can do with money, for the simple peasant folk of Zanskar at least. There's no electricity, no roads, no shops, no consumerism, no greed, no TV, no unasked invasion of manufactured plastic celebrities. Hardly anything to indulge yourself in with money here. All that might start to change when the highway finally arrives and rich people from the plains start buying up land for their skeing resorts.

As yem-pee-three music flows and I type in stuff on my laptop, I feel for the little family out there in the Himalayas, fighting to survive a long winter.

And I regret forgetting extra film. The children wanted their photo taken. I hid the camera.

***

After the village there's another stream flowing wide and wild to cross, which was quite difficult after the night's rains. Haider and gang finally arrive and help us across, but rush away afterwards. We finally find the camping ground Haider has demarcated for us. Vivek, Hitesh and Praveen, the fast walkers, are missing and do not show up even after it is really dark. It starts to rain and it is too cold out there. We think up all sorts of possibilities, but we are not really worried, trusting Dr Chang's survival skills. Eventually the three musketeers show up, late in the night, guided by a villager and there is much cheering and joking.

And this is the baby yak our horsemen are taking along from Testa. They're to sell it at Darcha. I'm told that the price is Rs 3000.



In the morning, we again start for the next camp, which is on the base of Shingo La mountain pass. Following day we cross the mountain pass, which is at the highest altitude in Zanskar. There are difficult streams on the way, on crossing which, fastly flowing pebbles hit and hurt your legs. The lama is now coolly hopping over all these streams.









At the camping ground, there's a restaurant, complete with a menu cast in stone. We sit and drink tea and eat maggi noodles until Haider's done with setting up the tents. The owner of the place is grumpy with a fever and running nose, and he's not eating anything on account of the fever, so Dr Chang gives him some medicines and advises him to eat something.

Comments

[yathin.livejournal.com]

beautiful.

[sajith.livejournal.com]

Thank you Yathin.

[midendian.livejournal.com]

Lovely post!

I like photos 10/11/12. That's a beautiful arete, and just a spectacular glacial landscape in general.

[sajith.livejournal.com]

Thank you mid.

It is a pretty impressive monolith (called Gombu Rangjum) that catches the eye even from a distance. It was an overcast day - I wish it was sunny, the sky was blue, etc, for a better picture.

[zeeshanmn.livejournal.com]

Wonderful description once again. I asked you this before, but what film (Fuji slides?)?

[sajith.livejournal.com]

Thank you Zeeshan. These are Kodak Ektachrome, ISO 100 slides.