Showing posts with label Leh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Leh. Show all posts

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Drat..


Where did I put my down socks ?

Cold season in Ladakh comes in three different comfort zones : most rooms never get anywhere near warm in daytime , the south facing shelkhang room with large single pane glass windows quickly become about as cold as on the outside at night , but quickly heat up in the morning sun, and a few places , like the SECMOL campus , with solar heating it´s surreally warm long in to December : sleeping with a single blanket , and your hands on the outside.

When you start to have to sleep with the laptop in the sleeping bag it´s time to shift from sleeping in the shelkhang.

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Ecumenic Cafe



Ladakhs peaceful co-existence between Muslims and Buddhists at it´s best : four table tea stall in Leh with panorama views of the Kaba in Mecca and the Kyi Chu river in Lhasa , Tibet.

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Sunny and blue

... almost summerish down here in Leh , easy to forget the snow falling yesterday or the jeeps that had to turn back in the Khardung La.
Taking a jeep out tonite. A bit blue as always when leaving Leh. One last cup of kawa at Tashi's...

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Aspirin and kora



A week in Leh now , all too easy to settle in to a comfortable pace : breakfast with kombish, homemade apricot jam and Yongchens yummy spiced mint-tea.

On arrival I was fit to wrestle a yak , second day (after stopping the gingko ) I was down to a small dog. Today : maybe a donkey.

Went to Thikse monastery yesterday , on a crammed, shallow breathing only, minibus. Later I met four of the ladies ( in traditional Ladakhi gos plus Calvin Klein handbags) in the upper story of the lhakhang, where the top part of the Buddha statue projects. A monk was giving a long explanation of the paintings, statues and more , richly interspersed with the ooohs! and aaahs! from the ladies. One of them held the green personal health record book from the Men Tse Khang , the Tibetan traditional hospital , and made notes in it. Yes. Health - all aspects.

Same ooohs! and aahs! later on in the clay modelers studio, where the artists were busy making a statue depicting the yabyum sexual position , from the same ladies that probably never would dream of showing their legs.

Later I had a nice talk with a monk in the new dukhang ( assembly hall). Talked about changes since I was here : the new , glassfitted windows dukhang : warmer in the winter... but also the changes from the outside : the pressure from tourist groups that has resulted in a series of locked rooms and signs : please dont drink alcohol, curse or sit on the abbots throne...
" Not many real monks today" - competition has crept into the mindset of many Ladakhis today. A book* I recently finished argued - with a lot of convincing stories behind it - that the social qualities of the Ladakhis were as much a product of the trading that practically every ladakhi family had to engage in to make ends meet. This trading involved the need to be able to make verbal agreements that would span over long time , up to a year, and crosssed distances fro a coupe of days march to other countries : the salt plains of Tibet and the trading houses of Yarkand. The chang of todays tourist driven economy saps this fabric because the relations are much shorter , and with the increased number of tourist involved, more impersonal .

A nice talk as I said , and without the setting of the sadly necessary signs I would have asked if I could take a portrait of the monk. Now it feels uncomfortable taking photographs of anyone I've met the first day.

Back on a even more crammed minibus , where it was easy to see that Ladkhi life still works : every time new passengers were let on an intricate dance takes place to make sure that those that need a seat really gets it.

Will hopefully get a Inner Line Permit today, onwards to Nubra tomorrow.

-
*Janet Rizvi. Trans-Himalayan Caravans: Merchant Princes and Peasant Traders in Ladakh