For the past few days I have been
dreaming of lunar landscapes. The dreams themselves are not prophetic. I do not
remember the events upon waking up from my dreams but the landscape is returning
from what I saw around me for close-to-a-week week out in Ladakh. The Founder-President
of the organization where I work was supposed to have travelled to Ladakh as an
invited keynote speaker for an Education Conference but due to unavoidable
circumstances, she and her husband had to travel to Madras instead. I was
appointed as an emissary of sorts. That is how I found myself on a flight to
Ladakh a couple of Sundays ago, instead of a flight to Durgapur.
About-to-land
The flight to Leh took about an
hour. I had a window seat, and when the pilot announced that we were getting
ready to land – I saw the unreal landscape that does not look of this world. It
was not just the sheer raw beauty of the landscape. I have seen stunning sights
from aeroplanes and out-in-the-open. This resembled a scene from a different
planet. Maybe Antarctica gives the same impression of a different order. Here,
what met my eyes was the famous lunar landscape – as far as the eye could see
with a stark unbroken line of snow-capped peaks in the horizon beyond. The
white innocuous clouds hung here and there, looking like gigantic mushrooms
over a landscape, which had grown from someone’s imagination.
There was a nice, pleasant chap
from the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh, who had been receiving the
conference folks from 6.30 in the morning. He sat and chatted with me for a bit
and then went back to his post. After a couple of the speakers joined our car,
we were on the road to Phyang village. On the way to my farmstay, which was to
be my home for the next 6 days, I caught a glimpse of the sinuous Indus –
somewhat swollen, slow and sepia-toned as it wound its way through the valley. I
saw too the Phyang monastery up on a hill, and told myself that I would visit
it before I left Ladakh.
The farmstay was run by a woman, her niece and her husband. The woman and her niece were friendly, polite and very helpful without being intrusive. There was a lush, green garden that they maintained, and the village of Phyang stood like a green oasis beyond which rose those mammoth brown mountains. Just brown. From head to toe. It was as though one were standing inside a vivid, green bowl with those implacable, monstrous brown mountains standing like a circle of sentinels. Beyond them – depending on one’s view – one could catch the twinkling snow covered peaks of the Zanskar range. There were other folks staying at the farmstay for the conference and we chatted till lunch was served. I went about once to explore the garden and to see what lay beyond. My room was basic but clean and had a bed and a bookshelf, which carried three books – one on Buddhism, one on Ladakh and the third was The Sea of Poppies. Nandini, a friend who is studying marmots in Warila came visiting during the late afternoon and we chatted till late. We went out to the monastery but the solitary monk said that it was closed and that we could come back at 6.30 in the morning – if we wanted to hear the morning chant. We left with no promises. After a while we went for a bit of a drive away from Phyang village and the sky opened up above as one gigantic space with hundreds of stars. The air was quiet, and strangely-shaped rocks along the landscape looked as though they might come to life at night when nobody was looking.
Every morning was an early
morning there. One had to make sure that one could use the common bathroom –
being shared by 4 occupants – without causing inconvenience or being
inconvenienced, and I think we managed quite well. One could avail hot water
from the solar heaters but I went with cold baths, and it was fine. I could do
it there in Ladakh but in Delhi – I find it impossible. That morning, after
breakfast, we boarded the bus and there were others who joined our troop. We
visited SECMOL (Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh) first – and I caught my second glimpse of the
Indus, along the moonscape gorges, and it isn’t a sight I will forget in a
hurry.
View from SECMOL
At SECMOL, we saw the buildings,
which have been constructed so as to maintain an even 18 to 20 degrees in the
midst of the furious Ladakh winters, where temperatures plummet to -30 and
lower. We were shown the brown field, which becomes the ice hockey grounds
during winter. SECMOL houses the first Indian women’s ice hockey team, which
has gone on to win tournaments around Asia. We saw the vegetable gardens and
the hostel buildings, the work buildings, and the patches of green, which once
again were hemmed in on all sides by the brown moonscape. Later on Mr. Sonam
Wangchuk (the inventor-engineer on whom the famous character of Phunsukh Wangdu/Rancho of 3 idiots is ostensibly based; Mr. Wangchuk from what I saw and heard is thankful when people don't ask him about the connection) explained his idea behind setting up SECMOL. It was to give the
students who could not pass the board examinations or get through the alien mainstream
syllabus – a second chance.
From there we were off to the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives, Ladakh. Here there was only an empty landscape. I had no idea where our bus was going because it veered off the road into the brown, empty expanse. A half-circle of blue shipping containers then rose into view, and nothing else. A solitary building then rose up in the distance accompanied by a couple of smaller buildings. It was in one of the larger buildings that we had the five-day conference. The idea was to look, listen and see whether the 40 people or so could come up with a plan in 4 days such that students could experience a contextualized, experiential and locally-relevant educational experience at HIAL. A very ambitious programme – but that’s what they had in mind.
The days and evenings fairly flew
by, and we were there till 6.30 or 7 in the evenings. The first part of the days
were actually unlike any other conference that I have attended. We visited
Basgo village one morning and the drive through the landscape was a delight,
and even though I found the brown gravelly and smooth mountains rather
discomfiting till the end – there was something else that was bewitching about
the place. I insisted on sitting in the front of the small bus so that I could
get an unobstructed view. Here and there, there are army cantonments – right near
the airport and strewn in parts of the land that we drove about but I didn’t
see too many army men on the first couple of days. On our way to Basgo, we
stopped at the sangam of the Zanskar and Indus. Both the rivers were brown –
the Zanskar looked a shiny brown. The director of HIAL showed us a picture she
had taken last November and there the Zanskar was a vivid green and the Indus
was a bright blue. With the glaciers melting, during Spring and Summer – both the
Indus and Zanskar change colour. I was interested in knowing whether we were
going to be sitting next to the Indus for a bit. Another chap was interested in
knowing whether he could go for a bit of a swim. Neither transpired and so it
was off to Basgo. There, Mr. Wangchuk gave us an interesting Geography and
Geology lesson – my most interesting one. He told us the story of the Tethys
sea and how the Indian landmass bumped into the Eurasian landmass, and that we
were standing very near the Indus-Tsangpo suture. He pointed to the two sides
of the mountains and told us why they looked different. That one of the sides
was formed from volcanic rocks, and how the sedimentary rocks on the other side had been pushed up vertically. From there we could see the Basgo palace, which was
perched on the side of a purple rock, which peppered the mountains – and he
explained it was actually clay. The castle lay on a melting clay chocolatey
coloured substance and so was going to gradually disappear. Lower down, we actually
felt the rock-like clay. Some of the more curious ones even tasted the clay,
which Mr. Wangchuk jokingly called “chocolate”, and he told us about the simple
experiment he had conducted to find out whether that particular rock was a rock
or not.
We next went to an idyllic stream and had a perfect breakfast of sandwiches and tea. Some of us crossed the stream on foot. It looked like a fairly easy thing but I am glad that the nice and pleasant young chap had insisted on carrying my shoes. The waters were freezing, the stones were mighty uneven and the distance looked longer somehow once one was standing in the stream. One wouldn’t have gotten swept away but a splash was not unlikely under the circumstances. But nobody slipped and there no splashes. One young man was helping everyone by pointing out the places to step on and he gave us plains-folks a helping-hand up the banks. We stayed there for longer than we were supposed to, and finished our breakfast with some cake, and a cake-demonstration of the formation of the Himalayas. It was time to depart. I could have stayed there for the entire day. We skipped off to Basgo palace after that. And examined some of the ruins and gateways. Since we were already short of time, we had to hurry off without exploring the temple ruins and the whole palace. Mr. Wangchuk told us a little story about the Tibetan-Mongol siege and how the Ladakhi king had taken the help of Aurangzeb in chasing them off.
We next went to an idyllic stream and had a perfect breakfast of sandwiches and tea. Some of us crossed the stream on foot. It looked like a fairly easy thing but I am glad that the nice and pleasant young chap had insisted on carrying my shoes. The waters were freezing, the stones were mighty uneven and the distance looked longer somehow once one was standing in the stream. One wouldn’t have gotten swept away but a splash was not unlikely under the circumstances. But nobody slipped and there no splashes. One young man was helping everyone by pointing out the places to step on and he gave us plains-folks a helping-hand up the banks. We stayed there for longer than we were supposed to, and finished our breakfast with some cake, and a cake-demonstration of the formation of the Himalayas. It was time to depart. I could have stayed there for the entire day. We skipped off to Basgo palace after that. And examined some of the ruins and gateways. Since we were already short of time, we had to hurry off without exploring the temple ruins and the whole palace. Mr. Wangchuk told us a little story about the Tibetan-Mongol siege and how the Ladakhi king had taken the help of Aurangzeb in chasing them off.
On another morning we saw a
rivetting documentary by Stanzin Dorje/Gya, titled, “Living in Ladakh”. It was
a simple documentary made on his nieces and their everyday life. The granny
featured as did Stanzin Dorje’s sister and brother-in-law. The stars of the
show were the young girls. And since he had made a largely unscripted
documentary – it captured the life of the two young girls in difficult,
challenging, normal, happy and humorous moments. It ended with the girls going
on the very arduous pilgrimage walk, and with Stanzin telling us about how and
why he made the documentary. He was an old student from SECMOL.
At Warila
The rest-of-the-days and evenings were spent in the conference room – either talking and discussing and making points in groups or listening to and looking at presentations. But I ran off one late evening with Nandini to her field base off a village near Leh. And very early the next morning, Nandini, her field-assistant and I drove to Warila where Nandini is studying marmots. Those two hours up there at 5000 metres was a fine experience. There was an army cantonment there, which was temporary. The army had just moved in about a month and a half ago. I managed to see quite a lot of those bounding marmots. The landscape here was not really barren. Everything seemed to be a soft, pale green and here and there the marmots bounded out of their burrows, scampered about, stood on a rock, surveyed the landscape and went off bounding again. I mentioned to Nandini that they looked awfully like gigantic squirrels, and she laughed and said that they were a part of the squirrel family. Some of them, near a particular monastery are rather tame, and are fed by the monks and they even like being petted by tourists. Sometimes, Nandini said – they even chase the tourists to get some tasty snacks and petting. We fairly raced back to the town and Nandini contacted and picked up a local chap, Mingyur who was coincidentally her point-man and also connected to HIAL. She dropped me off at HIAL and Mingyur dropped her off at the airport from where she was returning to Tirupati for a couple of weeks.
On the final day, we went about
for more sightseeing. We visited Phyang monastery, and there some of us
wandered about, sitting in the prayer room with an oriental-looking Buddha, and
looking at the painted-over artwork, and an old prayer room with the original
artwork, and where the monks were engaged in their deep, sonorous chant with
their accompanying drumbeats. I can quite imagine the primordial tug to go deep
into that chanting. There’s something very harmonic and hypnotic about it even
when I don’t understand a single word of what is being chanted. My reasoning
mind keeps saying “but I don’t even know what is being said” and another part
just wants to keep sitting still with no thoughts. From there we went to Thikse
(Thiksey) monastery, where the halls led into other halls and there was a great
big statue of the Buddha. This prayer room was visited by more people and
although I sat still for a bit – I could feel too many people moving around and
I hurried out.
Thikse (Thiksey) monastery
View from Thikse/y monastery
From there it was to the town and market centre of Leh. It rather resembled the Manali mall in one part. We were left to our own explorations, and I took off on my own. I walked about, explored a couple of side roads and then found a coffee shop where I took out my note-book, wrote some, looked about, had some coffee and had a smoke. I was wondering what else I could explore when I spotted one whole bunch of our conference people. I gently waved from where I was perched but they were walking along, and didn’t notice, and I didn’t draw any more attention. I went back to my view and thoughts. From where I was sitting – I had an unobstructed view of a twinkling bit of the Zanskar. After 20 minutes or so, I looked up thinking that I would like to go and look about some places when I saw one of the conference folks. I waved out and joined her, and she was visiting the Central Asian museum. I happily joined her and had a lovely 40 minutes exploring the museum with its pictures and portraits and maps – related mainly to the Silk route – and artefacts. I wondered though why there were no weapons on display. There was plenty of tea-drinking and food and clothing-related paraphernalia but only two small knives were on display. From there, we decided to visit the Ladakh arts museum, which turned out to be an adventure of sorts. The place was almost impossible to locate and we climbed all the way to the Leh palace and were wandering about in circles. A couple of helpful tourists pointed out to a possible direction but we realised that would simply be yet another circle. Finally a local helped us locate the museum by going all the way with us but the museum itself hadn’t been set up properly. My travel-companion joked that the museum authorities should give us Rs. 100/- (the price of admission, which we were not charged because nobody was there behind the counter) for making the climb through rocky terrain and visiting the museum. There was hardly anything on display. But the journey to and fro the museum had been a lot of fun for me. Next we met up with one group from the conference and went off to see the ice stupa with Mingyur. There we spent some time, wandering about next to the stream and had conversations and walked about, and then it was time to return to our farmstay. A couple of the boys from another farmstay stayed on and after chatting and having dinner, I called it a night. Early the next morning it was off to the airport at Leh with two of the very young, friendly and nice chaps from the conference, and a quiet and uneventful flight back to Delhi.
