ATM run , interrupted

Step 1 : Jump off the bus at Kunzum La.


Proceed up to the prayerflags at the crest , at N 32.40939 / E 077.62674 (altitude 4662)


Drop down to Chandra Tal , at 4296 meters , after 15 klicks.

If you get rain and sleet in front of the ATM two days higher up the valley, choose another machine and walk back .

Losar

Morning.The Rs 100 room has a faint reek of urine from the attached toilet, and the window has no latch and is held shut by a cinderblock.

... and I read of Alain de Botton fighting over a piece of dessert in Barbados with his girlfriend.
Travel , Botton tells us is both created by and undone by anticipation. We rush in to the plane , as in to a new relationship , with images of perfgect beaches .. and mar this by bringing in our own imperfections in to the picture.
We fight over a piece of creme brule' as the sun sets over Far Tortuga.

Many would say that this is a gloomy outlook , condemning us to lives of quiet despair in Teg & Clapham ,but Botton surprisingly brings in two prophets of gloom to refute this : Baudelaire and Edward Hopper. Both had the same yearning for the starting points : Baudelaire could wax on indefinitely about over modern boats and railways , and Hopper found many of his motives im waiting rooms, roadside diners and the like.

Anticipation may be wildly unrealistic in travel , as in romance, but in difference to the rest of the the dream industry it leads us to new places.
Thanks Joe in the next room , for lending me the book, thanks to the sister who gave it to him , and goodbye T. who came and went again in in the matter of a day.

As yoy may have guessed , Losar ( a three dhaba town with a police checkpost , altitude 4108 meters) is no obvious contender to Barbados. The small temple ( rather unceremoniously shut with shop-style steel shutters ) holds the reamins of Serkhong Rinpoche in a silver stupa , there are some rare photographs of Dalia Lamas tutors, and som good torma. There are nice walks. The dahbas makes the tired old Eastern Europe joke mandatory : never mind the menu , just tell me what you've got.
Imagine our surprise when we ( Joe , Neil & I ) as the only passengers remained in town after the bus left was told that no , no roooms .. you must reserve ahead.After getting rooms in the cinderblock palace ( to the considerable surprise of the other patron ) we had supper and turned in for the night.
Later : singing ! music ! (overdressed) women !
Next morning , we ask about the party ( feeling , of course , a bit miffed about being left out ) .
"No party "
"But the music , singing ... "
"Oh that .. that's the film team. "

Looking for the Lama

Bookswap : I come out of Ki Gompa with the monasterys history (bilingual ) and leave a book by Gedun Chopel : Guide to the Sacred Places in India , a pilgrims handbook .. with train maps.

In the mid-70's a Swedish progrock band released a song which no one remembers for it's title, but with a refrain that still brings a whole generation to a standstill, in a variety of reactions .
All together now , in different shades of sentimentality , sobriety and defiance : " Who can you reeeally trust ? "

The title was looking for the Dalai Lama , and few if any reacted - in a time where anti-colonialism was a catchword - to the practice of taking a living Tibetan person and turning him in to a metaphorical tool for internal Western conflicts.

Tibet was at a safe distance , eight years before the supression of the Lhasa revolt and fourteen years before Dalai lama received the Nobel Peace Price. It was partly put there by the agenda of the Swedish left , who averted their eyes to anything but the Indochina war - and kept it averted after the defeat of the US.


The song was about looking for truths , and not leaders - a message that not only had bearing on the generation toting pictures of chairmens and party leaders , but remains valid in a present context , where many look for not the method of Buddhism but the prepared answers. Buddha in a box , retail price.

A long time after the melee of the 70's ( yes, sex was more fun before AIDS) reality will intrude on similar attempts at using the Dalai Lama. Meanwhile there is the real ongoing search for lamas : Tibetans looking for Gedun Choeki Nyima , the Panchen Lama abducted by the Chines government eleven years ago : a dress rehearsal for the grand event to come : the passing of the present Dali Lama. So far the the Panchen Lama rehearsal has not run smoothly . Two years ago I was in Shigatse and could see the Tibetans systematicaly ignoring the Chinese apppointed Panchen (Zuma Panchen , fake Panchen in Tibetan) : lots of pictures of the 9th and 10th , with fresh flowers fruits etc. - and two pictures of Zuma Panchen - with a naked shelf below.It is no coincidence that there has been no serious attempts to establish him in Tashilunpo monastery .
The 10th is obviously hugely popular , in spite of his long time in the People's Congress in Beijing . What Tibetans remember him for is coming back and saying that nothing of what had been gained was worth all the sufferings of the Tibetan people , and the famous letter before that. There is another level though , which links Spiti intimately in to this process : before the great speech and the letter , Panchen Lama made a religious ruling that effectively limited Chinese power. The ruling was that the next re-incarnation of Rinchen Zangpo , one of the most important figures in Tibetan religious history , would be found in the " Western Lands " , i.e. outside Chinese control. This is where he is found now , in the monastery of Ki. The Ki monastery monks have by tradition studied in Tashilunpo (shigatse) monastery , and this link was re-affirmed when the Rinchen Zangpo become head of the commitee to identify the present Panchen Lama. This game will continue : recently the Communist Party declared that all reincarnations are now subject to official state approval , and invalid before that point. Meanwhile the Ki monks will continue to go to Tashilunpo monastery - but now in south India . All major Tibetan monasteries now exist in two mirror versions , one in exile , one under Chinese control. Welcome to the twilight zone of Chinese religious politics..

Now we\re cooking

The stove is in full swing now , amy-lais prayer wheel has also picked up speed ,Suchung and his wife are doing complex exercises with atta flour and another old woman has entered to run a load of butter tea through the butter churner : shlorp-shlorp-shlorp.
The TV sputters in to life now and then , ;pouring out bollywoodism, commercials and thrilling cricket results.
Meawhile I"ve landed in the bachelors corner , with a good buzz going from the arrak.

Somebody says something about the inji : I'm just past it , and join in the laughter with out understanding anything.

The 3D exercises with the atta flour turns out to be tingmo : not the big Princess-Leia-hairdo on steroids I'm used to from Manju ka tilla , but delicate , convoluted shapes - think Escher in bakery.

Dhankar

Wake up to the sound of ... rain. Crazy.

Got out of the bus two klicks out of Sichiling, and had one of those what-am-I-doing-here moments as I stood alone and watched it going away. Next moment a jeep stops, and Sonam from Tabo pops out his head. As they prepare to go away , another jeep stops to talk with the other .. which turns out to be Kesang from Kaza. More two-hand handshakes.

Dhankar perched high on the ridge , some six hundred meters above : I set out feeling a bit queasy. Halfway up I meet Yechung Dolkar , who assumes responsiblity for my ariiving in a civilised hour.Despite my feeble attempts to say that no , you , don\t have to wait for me. Relentlessly she pushes me up the mountain , by just standing there and looking at me until I get moving again.

We part as we we come in to Dhankar Village , and a flight of swallows dive out of the trailside grove. I dive in to the first house with a welcome sign, and get a guestroom, and sit in the kitchen as the evening meal is prepared. I wind up with a toddler on my lap, as the men go slowly about making dinner. By the time the rest of the household appears, the dinner is finished.

Denial becomes impossible at this point and I start waltzing between the kitchen and the toilet.
Evening ends with a double dose of Cipro , and drinking hot honey wter brought up by Suchung-le. Nice chat over a fifteen minute candle stump.

next day , still a bit wobbly in the knees. Go up to Dhankar Gompa. The entrance hall to the dhukhang holds some interesting images of monasteries , and between them elaborate images of .... shoes , with comments. The two lay monks , teenagers in jeans and baseball caps , are unfortunately not in the same league as Sonam in Tabo : the monansteries are " in Tibet" , and all paintings are eight hundred years old.

Manning & Tabo

Today's big project is to clean up my table. Or : the most important things are beyond words. So , in the spirit of Thomas manning : my table. Thanks to the solar panel on the roof there is a working writing light (see upper left corner). The folded Silva 12 V solar panel supplied nicely for my camera during the three day power out. The trombe (passive solar heating wall) of the monastery serai , where I stayed is incidentally the largest I've ever seen.

(Tabo Choskor , religious enclave, is the oldest working Buddhist monastery in original form in India, founded in 996. Also one of only three surviving examples of the Kashmiri Buddhist painters , that re-introduced Buddhism in to India with the Second Spreading together with the Great Translator - Lotsawa.

Thomas Manning succeeded where countless other westerners had failed in reaching Lhasa, and was unable to say anything about the the Potalas logic defying perspective or the countless art treasures .He went looking for a hat.)

Back to Kaza

In to Spiti

The bus rocks, swings and creaks like a ship in .... interesting weather .Some hours has gone by since leaving Kalpa luxuriously in afront seat of a Manali jeep. A ride that also came with good company and conversation from France.

The first glimpse of Spiti is a weather worn chorten , protected not only by by a crudely hammered multi colored tin roof from the BRO but also for some reason encircled by barbed wire.
Signs of life seems even sparser than when crossing in to Ladakh. Even the happy-go-lucky semi military sign painting squad from the BRO seems a bit taken by the environment : none of the usual streams of motherly advice , jokes and puns ("Darling , I want you , but not so fast" ) that I've come to take for granted from Ladakh. Just one single , sombre , litterary allusion : " Live and let live " , painted on a sharply descending rock curve.

A Buddhist cave adorned with prayer flags on the other side of the Sutlej river , with seeming impossible access, shoots by. Some khyang at a flat , narrow strip along the riverbed.
This time I've given up all attempts of poping out of the window and and holding on to my camera , let alone operating it. I,m hemmed in between two Kinnauri ladies one who switches to my window seat to dry retch out of the window.
On the other side sits a gelong and three nuns from Hango monastery. The nuns fret , in a nice way , with their one piece of finery : Himalchali hats with with dried white petals that catches the light like blades of fiber optics.

Afte the checkpost at Jangi ( where I technically becmes an illegal : " shall not resort to any photography, carry any maps not approved by the Defence Ministry. or or immaginaries.. " ) there is suddenly no one standing , and only two people in the two seats rows. A depp breathing spree ensues , which is dampened by the arrivall of new passengers and sacks at .

The road dips and bends ( " Horn Please " has been replaced by " It is an offence not to sound the horn at .. ") ; skirts precipices and shoots i to rock galleries in the usual way.

The canyons are different though : giant patterns of contrasting stone materials suddenly frozen , on smooth sides .Gargantuan coffeee and cream , and later licorice , Jackson Pollockses.

In a magic moment the bus descends steeply in to a sumdo :one canyon to the right , with a near perfect sugar cone reaching up to the golden evening light and the road cutting in to a rock gallery after crossing a Bailey bridge thick with prayer flags.

Didn't get the shot , but got apples instead , and a sense of sharing , from ne of the sacks on the floor instead.

Blam !

Nothing beats the wake up call of a large monkey making a four point landindg on the tin roof outside your window.
Shimla . Again.

Since I\ve had problems diting & uploading photos ( no smoking on the buses is great , the stapling ban on on bank notes is a relief , but cyber wallahs going all legal seem like sense of order running amok ) : the sound track of my life here , so far .

Manju was the babel of languages , competing with the fans .. well , you've already had that part.

Sarahan, next stop after Shimla. At 4:30 in the morning a Kali worshipper fires up a sound system that would have been the object of envy of the cavallery officer in Apocalalypse Now . ( Yes , that one : " I love the smell of napalm in the morning " )
This is one of the reasons why animals hide under the ground , to no avail. The pylon that that carries the the loudspeakers that hammers the entire valley in to submission seemingly looms even higher after the fall of the "new" tower , and as I clamp my teeth on the pillow to stop ther resonance vibrations to Kali's greatest hits I start to wonder if it really was a a earthquake that brought it down.

Kalka was the the fluttter of the prayer flags otside my room , and again the loud voices arguing from the kitchen of the Shivalik: from now on I'll asuume that what sounds as the preamble to a knife fight in Bengali is merely a difference of opinion .

The sound scape right now in Nako , beyond the Inner Line , could pass for a long intro to some minimalist music. Soft hissing sound from the kerosene lamp during the power break , the door to the dining room creaking and swinging open to the strong winds outside.
During the day , in the the village , the Kinnauri women dominate the audio input , swinging from melodious chirping to to sudden laughs and sharp calls.
Speaking of women brings me to the unexpected sound of ckicking steps that awoke me today. They came up to my door , which then was nudged repeatedley.
Never ruled out the presence of high heeled women in my life , but I was mildly surprised that one would turn up at this point.
I then went went out of my room ( quick check in the mirror) , said hello and gently led the young calf out along the balcony , along the corridor an in to the street.

In Kaza

If you lower it someone will come .Ground cover : just establish eye contact and throw it to someone.

Oh God ...

..save me.

Spiti bound

Leaving Shimla from the Rivoli bus stand , August 29th.

Rivoli bus stand , Shimla

Escape from Manju ka Tilla

Once again I sit down in the square in the front of the the two small temples , thinking this is .. well , not great , but it works. Then I put my hands on my knees , and afterwards the pants are not wet , but soaked. Time to get out of the monsoon.

On the night train to Kalka (camera bag under my head, backpack under my knees ) I pick up Kim Robinson's Escape from Kathmandu , a minor guesthouse libarary classic.

A standard theme in boks from Nepal and Tibet is time travel : moving in to another age on a commercial flight. The time travel picks up another dimension when the now in the book also represents another age.

It starts with a ... letter. Gather around my feet little ones , and I'll tell you of a fara away time when we sent pieces of paper to each other. I was there , and I also was in Nepal just before the book was written : a time of innocence when you could point the finger and laugh at the theatrical aspects of the royal power , before the long dirty war between the government and the Maoists.Timewarp has moved Nepal ahead of my home in some respects : there is a lot more software produced in Kathmandu than in Stockholm , and Nepal today has stripped the king of ceremonial powers beyond our constitution : our king can't be brought to court.

At the same time the life along the trail has not changed much since early eighties, and many of Robinson's one-liners survive well , like the one about flying with (formerly Roayal Nepal) Airlines : In Nepal , clouds have rocks in them. It is written at the breaking point of our innocence , at the time when you start to to wonder of the life banana pancake baker , and step in to the kitchen.

This sounds really serious , which is far from the truth . It's a grea romp ,with a supporting cast to match : Jimmy Carter (former american president) , Tsongkhapa ( founder of Gelugpa school of Buddhism ) , pot-smoking Secret Service-men , Ang Rita ( twelwe time successfull climber of Mount Everest) . And of course a Yeti named Buddha ..

--
Nice walk with Sally from Oz in the morning , playing guide , and a nice dinner in the White House with Jamyang , Tsering and little Tenzing , who treated me with a first review of the new Milarepa film. Will pick up a copy in Manju before leaving , hopefully also Angry Monk , the film about Gedun Chopel.

Re-united ...

at last with my backpack , that never left Helsinki.

37 degrees and - obviously - humid on landing , but feels less. Quick shower and drying under the ceiling fan.

Lots of food (shabalay , momos, phing) and lots of languages in the dining room of Wongdhen House : English , Tibetan , Nepali and French to start with.

Thenthuk in the small square outside the temples , this year with awnings. Communal dining area , prayer chantings and kids just running and screaming. No photos taken , people made me feel invited and after that it stayed down . The kids took some photograhs though.

Todays Tibetan word : Tinda ! Look !

Linux and sutras

Everybody loves seeing monks with computers.In a small net cafe in Manju ka Tilla , the Tibetan enclave in Delhi , I regularly met three young guys with shaved heads : two young monks and cyber wallah in charge of the place , with a multi colored mohawk hairdo . The place was cramped , the keyboards more or less worn out ... and hanging down at angle was a large portrait of Dalai Lama , framed with multi colored blinking LED´s.
The titillation of seeing Buddhists monks in this role lies in an assumed transgression : men or women of the cloth should remain isolated from the world of technology.

In The Argumentative Indian Amartya Sen raises an interesting contrasting view to this , high lighting the early Buddhists role as technological ground breakers. Book printing is obviously one of the greatest leaps forward in transmitting knowledge and ideas , and Indian and Chinese Buddhists had a key role in disseminating this technique : in fact the first dated printed book is the Diamond Sutra from Dunhuang. It was the Internet of it´s time : slow but hip , and in no way restricted to religious themes - the Himalayas were crossed in both directions carrying the latest landbreaks in astronomy , medicine and technology.

And in keeping with the Internet analogy , the Diamond Sutra echoed eerily of Linux terminology : "free and for universal distribution" as it says in the prologue .
Buddhists we´re involved the earliest book printing ventures in India , Japan , China and Korea. One could choose to see this as a co-incidental interest in material technology - or as an expression of the underlying social technique : printing became an extension of the public debate that from the beginning was a central feature in Buddhism .

As Sen point out , when Ashoka arranged the first known public debates between different religions (at the same time time as the Catholic church had Giordano Bruno burned at the stake ) , they had a couple of centuries of the great Buddhist councils to lean on.

Sen points out this tradition as a quintessential Indian quality , that explains some of the unique qualities of Indian democracy : the only Asian country I can think of where the Army has remained consistently uninterested in wresting the power from the elected governments . This tradition predates Buddhism , like the one line from the Mahabharata that has gained foothold in many Western minds : I am become death , the destroyer of worlds..

When Robert Oppenheimer (a truly cultured man , who had read the Mahabharata in the original Sanskrit) used these words to describe his anguish in seeing the end result of his work , the detonation of the Hiroshima bomb , he fixed one side of the epic debate between warrior Arjuna , who at first refused doing the unthinkable and Krishna who in the end literally drove him out to the battle. Most in the West seems not to remember that final outcome , but Arjuna´s voice is still a living , working cry resisting the horrors of the war.

In the same way , Sen shows , the Vedas contain a multitude of voices , that gives unexpected firepower to unexpected standpoints : an complete agnostic tradition , women speaking out against male power structures, Brahmins being descibed as con artists..
Even though the Krishnas so to say won in these conflicts , they never made their opponents invisible , and we can pickup their side of the debate to day.

In comparison , much of Christian literature gives about as much depth to their societies inner conflicts as statements from the old Communist party conferences.

Photo from the Asian Classics Input Program , www.asianclassics.org here in the process of transferring woodblock prints to hard drives in the library of Diskit Monastery , NUbra
.

Windstruck

.. as I return home in the early morning. Temperature has dropped 15 degrees in a single day , the trees are shaking as if they are trying to uproot themselves and walk away. A welcome relief to last week´s malarial ennui.

And a good day for planning travel. Can´t resist swiping this from Mridula´s blog :

Recharging..

Manali-Leh Highway : Keylong-Sarchu

.

Manali-Leh Highway : along Chandra River & up to Keylong

Manali-Leh Highway : over the Rothang La

:description to follow

New, old book

Long wait , in two senses : I looked for this story a long time ago , and gave it up when all I could find was long out of print German editions. Recently I found it in English , on a UK site , ordered it ... and waited three times longer than I´m used to from my Delhi bookshop.

Peter Aufschnaiter had in my mind become a sort of vaguely glimpsed counter image of Heinrich Harrer in Tibet : a man more interested in living his life with Tibetans , than boosting his own self image. ( Dalai Lama´s tutor , my foot ..)

And living, in the intimate sense , with a Tibetan woman which becomes a interesting point as I start in to the book : nothing to be found on this in the biographical notes.

Where did get this notion ? From the film ( where Harrer visits Aufschnaiter and his wife ) , or from Seven Years in Tibet ? More importantly , why do I think I "know" things like this without tagging the source ? Is my world view determined by Hollywood representations ?
Doh , I live in the Western/Northern hemisphere , of course it is to some degree . But not being aware of it is bad news.

Digging in to it : fresh reprint from a publishing house in Bangkok, with a different , lemony smell. I had smallexpectations from this cheaper reprint ... and then I find the back card board pocket for the map of Lhasa . Aaaah... loving attention to details speaking here, and in the drawings . Photographs , with that eerie detached innocence in the onlookers before the media age. A love of nature , and a cultured perspective , with quotes from Milarepa linked to what he sees today/yesterday.

Skövde skit

Synchronicity : as the restaurant car rolls in to Skövde Railway station the cast of Lagaan ( nice clip here )erupts in to the first dance number on the parched Indian earth. At exactly the same time three pale young girls , no bangles but a lot of rivets , safety needles etc. start in to a skit , in a rhytm eerily synchronized to the film.Dry snow and and a creaking ice crust under their feet.

Returning from "equatorial" Sweden and film festival. One opening sequence haunts me : Malalai Joya , a woman from western Afghanistan challenges the warlords in new, forming Parliament : " I speak for the dead and the martyrs , you have blood on your hands and should not be allowed in this assembly, you should be tried as war criminals" . She has bodyguards , lots of them.

tranda

Suddenly..

..everyone speaks Swedish. I go from struggling to understand what people are saying , to struggling to understand what they are doing.

Along the way :
arrriving latish in Delhi. Traffic clogged on the way to Manju ka Tilla. The taxi radio endlessly blaring "control calling". Control orders, pleads, cajoles.. seemingly to no effect. A guy called Prakash as a message waiting ; in the end I also start to get miffed at him.

In Munich , the safety inspector has started to smile even before I come up to the X-ray machine. Passing thru her mahine and hands, the basic unassorted stuff of my trip :
*heavy walking boots
*khataks - offering scarfes
*compass
*guide book and map in a Tibetan silk slip case
*incense
*harddrive
*tsa tsa-amulets

..she can´t hold back her laughter.

Sorry, no way.

not exactly the response I was going for when turning over my passport at the border post in Zhangmu. The group splitted in Lhasa , the tour group visa original was supposed to be at the border... no .
After being shuffled around for an hour , there is response from the agency in Lhasa : "oh , the visa , we left it (hold on to your hats ) in the chai shop" .
The Chinese guards almost smile when we leave.

tashilunpo

Vanishing act

Arrival in Shigatse.I go out for lunch ,and wind upin a small zakhang on the street leadingdown from Tashilunpo monastery. The more or less standard panoramic shot of Lhasa is pointed out to me and I go yes , Kyi Chu , Tsuglhakhang (Jokhang to the westerners) and Sera .. making a quiet inner note to my self : yes that , would be Drapchi,the infamous political prison in between. We find Ganden together .
The daughter in the family sits down and takes my hand , strokes the back ofmy hand and puts her hand next to it: loook...
After a bit of struggling, using the name for the Lhasa river ,I manage to come up with a new phrase : kyipa du ,I am happy.
We watch a VCD (on the TV covered with a khatak) from Lhabrang Monastery in Amdo , with stuning scenery and even more stunning butter statues. Leaving I get ten Yuan change back for my 15 Yuan meal on a twenty.. and small gifts.
Morning kora next day: long line of locals , Khampas and Amdowas walking ,praying, stoking the sang burners, sitting queitly in more or less organised meditation.Walking with camera in my left hand , keeping the right one free for the prayer wheels. At one point one woman turns around with a wordless question as I am taking some photographs.. and turns around to enthusiasm as she gets to see the pictures.
Inside the monastery there is a lotof pictures of the 9th Panchen Lama ( the most popular on the streets is with him sitting on a horse in frontof Tashilunpo, with a white touris bus in the background) some of the 8th... and a bare minimum of the Chinese -installed 10th, always with a conspicous absence ofofferings. Soft resistance.

Off again ...

the jeeps making an endless trail of dust in the early sunlight , meeting the blue smoke from the incense burners and the backlit prayer flags. A couple of klicks from Yamdrok Tso we hit the tarmac again : a surreal feeling of floating. Close to two hours following the circular lake : golden yellow marshes by the rim, an impossibly deep turqoise color and on the other side russet browns , violet .. topped by the white cone of Nechen Kang, around seven thousand meters.
Over Kamba La , the last 5000 + pass.

In Gyantse

...just now , but unable to see my blog from here. Will post more when I know it actually lands somewhere...

Flowing around the mandala

Back from a couple of hours at Boudanath, my refuge from the commersialised existence in Thamel , where I ... sleep.
The Boudanath stupa is gigantic and minimalistic at the same time. No markers for the different directions , the same watchful eye in all four directions. A three-dimensional mandala. And the people flowing endlessly around it in a rapid , but unhurried way.
For some reason I come to think of the Nepali ghazal " life is a river".

Today I walked the outermost circle of the stupa , which is very easy to miss, just inside the enclosing wall. Triangalur patches with potted trees and shrubs (again, the forest theme) and boards where people do chaks : full-length prostrations. Rough boards with a sheen alog the edges where the cloth "mittens" hit the board as they strech out. Talk with a Amdowa monk , sharing the few common English and Tibetan words : Nga pö yin .. Aaah , pö..

Will try to upload some pics before it's time to board the next jeep.

Piety and bullhorns

In the morning the rains lift away , and Kushinagar beyond the the plastic tarps and mala stalls is reavealed . Giant Thai-style stupa just across the dharamsala where I've stayed, and the vaguely 50's sci-fi hall housing the sleeping Buddha and a reliqary stupa behind it.

Pilgrimage : the endless re-inventing of the mix between piety and tourism. A Thai group arrives , bringing coverings ( like giant bedspreads in silk) for the sleeping Buddha - a soft spoken moment.

The next moment ... I think Siddharta would have laughed at the scene of the procession being led around stupa by a monk with a bullhorn , leading the prayers the same time.

Siddharta , who told people not to worship or believe him , only trust what people have tested with their own reasoning. And the early followers in the first monasteries, who made a concise statement on the use of imagery : the only embellishment found was a lotus bullseye in the urinoar.

Later I walk out to the cremation stupa (with numerous stops for chai, ras malai etc) together with Ramesh. The antipode of the gilt , slender Thai stupa : unadorned brick, oxidised black , with a indented profile that reminds me , gives some of the feelings as patients with "open lid" after brain surgery. Small flecks of gold leaf in the black.

Carwash

.. I think, I am in a carwash . Even the rain can't be heard, just the endless stream of water sloshing in the gutters.
Long days travel yesterdays , rollercoasting thru emotions : few things are more depressing than a not recently dead cow , in the middle of the road in the rain, a long straight stretch thru a beatiful forest made me lift . Is there an English equivalent for that Swedish word - loevsal - a room made from the sheltering trees ?
And rain , pouring down like the monsoon just had started. People wading the streets of Gorakhpur. Arriving in Kushinagar after an interminable bus ride of 51 klicks : the driver slowed the bus down to a virtual , sometimes real standstill for every meeting vehicle.
Off the bus in the dark , sensing/seeing vaguely an archway : Buddh Marg ? Kushinagar ? Really?
Fruit and tea stalls, battened down under plastic tarps. Mud. A lot of mud. Temple cum guesthouse : "NB. Foreigners also welcome" .
To sleep , perchance to dream of a hot bucket shower ( when the power returns).

flirting with Keralan ladies - dangerous stuff.

chatting with the chai-wallah on the Varanasi night train

Finger-played couronne game in Maju ka Tilla - favorite evening pastime

The moon is having problems tonight..

Comforts : find at last the minibus to Delhi, twelwe people (one more than in the Leh-Manali jeep) and get a set behind a Tibetan and her daughter and between a cosmopolitan lama and a another Tibetan. Talks of favourite tsampa recipes, meditation on emptiness and Tibetan passports (yellow cards) .The guy next to me peers out of the window : "the moon is having problems tonight" he says - peering out of the window to get a chance to see the predicted eclipse. .

The bus stops quite close to Manju ka Tilla , and the lama and I set off : a goser with full trekking gear trailing behind the lama with a rolling Samsonite case, eyes halfclosed ,barely clearing the traffic rushing by. Munchhausen-like dogs with a shaved look. Garbage fires. In to the small street outside Wongdhen House I call mini-Barkhor. Dreamless sleep.

Economic theory

Finally , the sun reaches our jeep and the frosted cage rapidly thaws. We are eleven people in the Indian Tata : thee czechs, me and seven Indians who have been sitting some hours near the 5000+ Tanglang La while the people up front have been trying to repair the truck that blocks the single lane road. Finally, after a lot of scurrying up and down the line of vehicles with batteries, making up fires under the truck etc., we can all set off.

The 15-hour run from Leh to Manali has about as much contact with the real world as modern economic theory : sure , it should be posssible , being less than 500 klicks. Only this time... if it wasn't for the broken bridge, the truck that couldn't start, the army convoy... if only reality didn't come in the way.

Other realities also make themselves clear in the process : I sit in the front , sharing my sleeping bag with the guy next to me, as do the Czechs in the next row. The four Indians in the last sideways seats share .. closeness and very little else , with chattering teeth. Along the road we meet the Bihari roadworkers with thin blankets and thin clothes, living in the tents the military wouldn't have : they earn less in two weeks than what I've paid for my jeep ticket.

In the end we arrive in Manali , 23 hours after starting , including a very short break in Darcha , which I used too share the heat from a burning coal bucket and a ginger tea with the same family/dhaba as last time I was there.

frosted cage, thawing

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...

cold morning

Taking the cue from the yaks...

Digar La

Cold ...

Cold morning , I take my cue from the yaks giving up grazing in a nearby dell and pack down my tent and leave for warmer places with thicker air.Breakfast on the go : the last of the dried apricots and tsampa.

Lonely at the top

.. but a lot of company along the way : eagles, yaks, really! large marmots, a family group of very elegant Ladakhi deers : light grey on the outside,white belly and inner leggings, chock black tail stump.. and the ever present yellowbeaked ravens (thanks for the binoculars, dad !) .
I manage to tag along an elderly Ladakhi gentleman in goncha and huge sunglasses up to around 4900 , where he gently lets me off : maybe you should take it slower; he signs "yams , yams" : take smaller steps. He obviously has mastered the secrets a long time ago : walks very slowly but never ever stops.
The map can't really prepare you for the reality of Digar La, the most un-la-like la (pass) I've ever seen . A long ,huge, curving valley climbing ... until it ends in a sharp curved ridge. Boulders and stones that first appears as gravel in sharp slope up to the solid ridge , with a small notch crossed by prayer flags : the pass(age) . Hairpin bend thru the notch , where the trail slopes down in an equally crazy angle. Like walkin up to the rim of a moon crater. The thin air turns me in to an atlas of respiratory distress symtom; like everyone else : William Moorecroft notes the same in his passage 1822 and adds in awe " even the yaks were affected .. and needed frequent breaks". Hard , cold wind lashing into me the last hundred meters; grateful for the staff.

Stone flowers

(I'll be up- post- pre-dating posts the next days, generally mucking about with the the concept of time as we know it portioning out the Nubra story in installlments)
..as the Ladakhi call lichens, a bubbling brook to cool my boots in and the realisation that I've sloged away half of the days altitude, well before noon. In the crevices I feel the smell of thymelike herb with a bitter sidenote. Could make nice sang (not spoz).

Yesterday : grumpy. Couldn't decide if I needed a acclimatisation day, started out ... hit the wall.Muttering things like " that's great , only a kilometer left - vertically" I found a spot for the tent a couple of klicks from Digar.
To top of the good ambience , I froze from the ground as my hi-tech camping matress punctured as the altitude diuresis set in - meaning scrambling out of the tent to pee four times in the night.
Well , all that's forgiven as I've struck camp near Chumik Yogma(chumik :source , ma : upper, yog : ?)
Anoher source of frustration was the maps , what was on and not. Wrong mindset( but hello , mislaying a whole monastery...) . Today I've used the maps to what they can be used for , an interesting plan coming out of it : with water in he last tokpo I can make a very short jaunt tomorrow to the foot of the pass, meaning around 300-400 mters up to the pass, then all downhill to Sabu.

Dramatic grey & rosy skies on the other side of the Shyok valley as the sun wanes (snow ?). Soon time to zip up the tent and don the second sleeping bag.

agham

Agham

Woke up early - still no juice for my camera charger - packed and had breakfast : mint tea, dahi & chapatis and went up to the prayer wheel to wait for the bus. The clang of the two pryer wheels coming tighter as more passengers gathered.
Bus arrives : up on the roof with the pack and makes it on the bus with several cubic centimeters to spare. Drop off at the Panamik roadbend since the bus doesnt go further east . Run up to a waiting army truck : Khalsar ? A sea of smiling faces pulls up my pack , camera bag and staff .. and explodes with laughter and screams as the truck drives away just as I'm about to climb up. Short run and new climb.
Long , boring but somehow fun waiting in Khalsar ( " an unpleasant hamlet , dominated by a military garrison") playing a mutual look at the other game until I finally get a lift in miltary truck riding in a convoy. In front , big panoramic windscreen as we ride a high strech , paarlell to the river.
Long days trek in quiet solitude, partly trail , partly road.
Then the uncomparable racket of the back seat of a - not sucessfully - patchwelded military truck , together with a grinning Ladakhi, looking a lot like Plupp. He keeps patting his houlder and grinning and pointing to me , till I get the point : he gets by with a simple shoulder bag. He then proceeds to pat, point and and taking inventory of my pack : tent ? stove ? sleeping bag ?
In the end I leave the truck to trek the desert , scarred by the the asphalt pit of the projected road. Eventually thes also peter out , I walk for anothe two hours until I see a green wedge appearing (reming me of that poetic swedish 18th century word * for a flowery patch beside a stream.
On arriving I do my one third-of-each (ladakhi , english & pantomine) "long walk , looking for good water and good spot for my tent" routine - and gets shown to the local yak/cow grazing field. Not exactly what I was hoping for, but the water looks good and I find a somewhat sheltered place for my tent.
Later with the tent pitched and the Trangia chuff-chuffing another Ladakhi appears. I start talking about the contents of mmy pot (ngamphe, jos, chuli, dried apples) when he says : come and sleep in the house.
Second time I reurn from my tent site I have the Trangia with me , freshly made Ladakhi herbal tea and can for once reverse the situation : "don, don !" and they accept and seem to like it.
after this - of course - butter tea, games of jumping up and down in the knee with the toddler , a sueaky transistor in the window doling out Ladakhi folk songs. Butterlamps, portraits of Dalai Lama. I manage to get across the story of the the Tibetan monks at Moderna Museet who made a huge sand mandala.. and the horror ofthe invited Swedes as Dalia Lama smilingly inspects it - and sweeps everything in to a bucket to pour it out into the local bay. Everyone laughs.
Nightr approaches and I am shown in to the .. fine room : carpets around the wall , handpainted chogtse tables, election poster with Sonia Gandhi. I fret over which place is polite to accept .. until it dawns on me that no one will join me . Brief momen of panic and shame : are they sleeping out because I arrived ? But no bedding has been moved , evidently they sleep on the roof until (real) winter arrives. The lessons of earlier , pre-chimney times : it's not healthy to spend too much time inside.
Finally , for once I can strech out.

stupa

wait