Tuesday 28 September 2010

Across the Roof of the World to Pangong Lake


A Journey in Ladakh

Originally in published in Maxx-M, August 2010

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The smooth strip of the road winds away across a vast, empty landscape. In the distance iron-colored slopes rise to jagged ridges; beyond the village tawny brown hillsides descend towards a narrow gorge, and above everything arcs a huge sky. There is a sharp breeze from the southeast. It snatches at the threadbare prayer flags of the thousand-year-old monastery and sets a copper bell, hanging from the thatched eaves of the main hall, ringing into the surrounding silence. Alpine choughs with glossy black wings twist and tumble in the cold updrafts.
I am 3390 meters above sea level, looking out from the upper terraces of the Lamayuru Gompa, a remote Buddhist monastery in the wilderness of western Ladakh. The monastery, perched on an outcrop of toothy rock, and the little village of whitewashed houses that cling barnacle-like to the slopes below, are adrift in a vast and empty landscape that extends for hundreds of kilometers in all directions.
I catch my breath in the thin, clear air after the steep climb from the road, then begin my clockwise circuit of the monastery, spinning the prayer wheels set into the masonry as I go.

***

Ladakh is many things to many people: an adventure playground for trekkers; a place for cultural tourists to sample the traditions of an age-old community; a richly spiritual land for those intrigued and drawn by the rhythms and complexities of Buddhism; and above all a destination for anyone impressed by dramatic landscapes.
Ladakh lies at the most northwesterly tip of India, hard against the Chinese border, and riding on the backs of the more accessible mountain regions of Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh. This is a land apart. Cut off from the monsoon weather systems of the Indian Subcontinent by the full might of the Himalayas, little rain or snow falls here. Barren mountains rise above wind-scoured valleys where bone-white monasteries cling to sheer cliffs, and where villages huddle in stands of glacier-fed poplar and willow trees. All of Ladakh, including its main town, Leh, lies more than 3000 meters above sea level.
This extreme altitude long kept this mountain fastness isolated from the rest of India and the rest of the world. It still does. There are only two roads into Ladakh – one across the stomach-churning Zoji La Pass from Kashmir, and another south to Himachal Pradesh through even wilder country. Winter snows keep both of these roads closed for much of the year.
Although the Indian government first allowed foreign travelers into Ladakh in the 1970s, those rough, tough roads long kept it the preserve of hardy backpackers prepared to endure the bone-shaking two-day bus ride from Manali during the brief summer season. But reaching Ladakh is much easier than it once was. The short flight from Delhi to Leh – served regularly by Indian Airlines, Kingfisher, Jet and others – is one of the most spectacular on earth. You can breakfast on parathas and chai in the steaming heat of the plains, then head for the airport, cross the full breadth of the Himalayas and settle down to Tibetan-style butter tea and momos for lunch in a hotel on the roof of the world.

***

I have chosen to enter Ladakh the dramatic, old-fashioned way – by road from Kashmir – and my first stop is the tiny village of Lamayuru. The monastery here is the oldest in Ladakh. Buddhism first spread north from India across the mountains towards China sometime in the First Millennium. It put down strong roots in the chilly world of the Tibetan Plateau – of which Ladakh is a part – mixing with the indigenous Bon religion of these uplands to create the unique character of Tibetan Buddhism, with its lamas, its prayer wheels and gompas, and its wild whorl of demons and protector deities.
I am shown around Lamayuru’s silent chambers, with their bright murals, smoke-darkened silks, and offering-scattered altars, by a young monk called Tashi. He tells me that the monastery was built by the great Buddhist missionary Rinchen Zangpo who spread the faith throughout the western parts of Tibet. Today the place is home to around 200 monks, drawn from villages all over Ladakh.
Once Tashi has left me I am alone in the wind beneath the snapping prayer flags. Each flag is stamped with a Buddhist mantra, and each time it flaps in the wind its prayer is carried heavenward.

***

From Lamayuru I journey on eastwards into the Ladakhi heartlands. Although region is part of India today, it was not always that way. For many centuries Ladakh was ruled from Tibet; later it was an independent kingdom. It was only in 1834 that it was annexed by the Hindu ruler of Jammu, bringing it into the Indian sphere of influence for the first time. But the culture of Ladakh remains more closely tied to Lhasa than to Srinagar or Delhi. The religion, the language and the landscape here is Tibetan, and for many visitors to Ladakh that is its biggest attraction.
After a stopover in the little village of Alchi, with its poplar-lined irrigation channels, ancient monastery and rows of bright brass prayer wheels, I continue east along the banks of the Indus. This river is the backbone of Ladakh, entering the region from across the Chinese border, and continuing west to the Pakistani frontier.
Following the Indus I arrive in Leh, capital of Ladakh and a place that mixes creature comforts with age-old color, where there is fine food and top-notch accommodation and air links to the outside world, but where more than a whiff of the romance of the Silk Route and the days of camel caravans still lingers.
Leh was always a crossroads. It grew up as a junction on the trading routes between Kashmir, Tibet, India and Central Asia. A century ago long trains of loaded mules, yaks and twin-humped Bactrian camels regularly struggled into town under loads of Chinese silk, Indian tea and Tibetan shawl wool.
The caravan trade is no more, but there is still a buzz about the town with international travelers from all corners of the world mixing in the old quarter’s maze of mud-walled alleys with monks from nearby monasteries, Kashmiri salesmen, and nomadic Drokpa tribesmen. A rugged, prayer flag-strewn fortress rises over the streets.
Leh is home to the best accommodation on the Tibetan Plateau. A far cry from the days when Yarkandi camel-men bedded down in the caravanserais of the old bazaar, the outlying suburb of Changspa – a mesh of quiet, poplar-shaded lanes – has some excellent accommodation. Hotel Omasila is a boutique hideaway that has its own brand of “Ladakh style”, with traditional murals on the walls, and fine views from its flower-filled terrace. There’s good food in some surprisingly sophisticated little eateries, tucked down these same lanes – from hearty Tibetan staples like momo (meat or vegetable-filled pasta dumplings) and thukpa (thick noodle soup) to cakes and cappuccinos that you wouldn’t normally expect to find 3500 meters above sea level.
Leh is also the first stop for those who come looking for spiritual solace in Ladakh. There are yoga and meditation courses, Buddhist retreats and ayurvedic treatment centers amongst the poplars and willows.

***

I am looking for my own soul food out in the wilderness beyond the town. Across the Indus Valley the long white line of the Stok Kangri Mountains rises; north across the Kardung Pass is the upland desert of the Nubra Valley. But I am heading for somewhere even more remote – on the far side of a dizzying pass, running right across the Tibetan border, is the long turquoise lozenge of the Pangong Lake.
I set out from Leh, stopping at more ancient monasteries to see monks performing morning puja ceremonies with conch shell horns and clanging gongs, and then I cross the 5289-meter Chang La Pass.
This is the third highest motorable pass in the world. I am travelling in comfort in a hired jeep with some fellow travelers from Mumbai, but the air is so thin at the top that we are all left feeling faint. On the other side it’s a long descent through a stark, fractured landscape of tumbled boulders, sharp ridges, and steep scree slopes. Wild horses watch us from the roadside; plump marmots peer from their burrows or lounge on smooth rocks in the thin sunlight.
And then the lake appears, and we all draw breath. The color is intense in the sharp light, turquoise in the shallows, deepening to a rich lapis lazuli blue further out. A breeze is blowing and flocks of delicate white water birds crowd the shores.
I leave my companions huddling over tea and soup at a simple lakeside café and scramble up the mountainside. The lake, a narrow strip of salty water, runs 130 kilometers away to the east, crossing an international frontier. The conspiratorial cluster of white mountains I can see rising in the far distance lie deep inside Chinese Tibet. It is a staggeringly beautiful place, and a suitable culmination for my journey through the stark wilderness of Ladakh. I button my jacket against the wind, close my eyes and listen to the sound of silence…

© Tim Hannigan 2010

Sunday 26 September 2010

Echoes of the Silk Road in China’s Wild West



Travelling in Xinjiang, China

Originally published in Maxx-M Magazine, June 2010


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The smell hits me as soon as I step down from the train in Kashgar: a scent of melons and pomegranates, an odor of livestock, a whiff of spice and a waft of grilling kebabs. It is the perfume of Central Asia, letting me know that though the flag fluttering in the clear blue air above the station concourse might be unmistakably Chinese, I have arrived in another world. Welcome to Xinjiang, China’s Wild West.

Xinjiang province is vast, fully one sixth of China’s huge landmass. A land of deserts and mountains with an indigenous population of Turkic Uighur Muslims, and a history traced with the trade routes of the old Silk Road, it has always leaned more to Samarkand and Bokhara than to Shanghai and Beijing. Today it is a place where the romance of a past of camel caravans and cultural collision lingers. Even the names of the geographical features here have a tantalizing resonance: the Kun Lun, the Tien Shan, and the Taklamakan.
As I step out of the station in Kashgar, a city steeped in history, I catch sight of a distant line of ethereal mountains, levitating over the desert horizon. Excitement lies ahead.

Kashgar was once a key junction on the Silk Road, the two-way trail that carried goods, technology, ideas and religions back and forth between Europe and Asia. Roads from the east were forced north and south around the Taklamakan, the world’s second largest shifting sand desert, only to rejoin at Kashgar. And if there was ever an identifiable point on the Silk Road where east met west, then this was it: Buddhism, Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity, and Islam; all of them at one time or another dominated here, while Turks, Mongols, Chinese, Indians and Arabs all added their own dash of spice to the melting pot. This was an international city long before anyone had coined the term “globalization”.
Riding at anchor between the mountains and the sands, modern Kashgar is still a junction for rough roads to outlandish places. International highways lead from here across dizzying passes into Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kirghizstan, and the sounds of the Silk Road still echo in the narrow alleys of the Uighur old town, and in the thronged thoroughfares of the iconic Sunday Market.
Every week for centuries, farmers and craftsmen from surrounding villages have flooded the eastern edge of the city for a bazaar on a grand scale. Here there are carpets and walnuts, silks and scarves. The market ground is a cacophony of voices as vendors proclaim their wares and men in pillbox skullcaps and women in heavy brown headscarves haggle in the hard-edged Turkic gutturals of the Uighur language. A few kilometers south of the main market is another slice of Central Asia – the livestock bazaar, where all the best horses and cattle in Xinjiang are traded in a stony field between ranks of tall poplar trees.

After my own exploration of the markets I retreat to the quieter quarters of Old Kashgar, wandering for hours in a tangle of narrow alleyways lined with traditional courtyard houses. Old men in calf-length jackets and crooked turbans totter by; the occasional donkey cart loaded with watermelons clatters past, and small children smile and wave shyly from courtyard doorways.
Eventually I find my way out into a mass of food stalls on the edge of Old Kashgar’s central Id Kah square. There are juicy kebabs, mounds of fluffy plov – rice cooked with dates and spices – samsa, little baked parcels of lamb, and great rounds of flatbread scattered with sesame seeds. As dusk falls over the city and flocks of pigeons turn in the pale sky the prayer call rises from the Id Kah Mosque on the edge of the square.

The medieval past might be close at hand in Kashgar – the inlaid tombs of its ancient kings still stand in the poplar-studded suburbs – but this is also a modern city of 340,000 people and a hint of cool is creeping in. After exploring medieval alleyways you can kick back in Fubar, a bar run by Japanese transplant Hiroshe Kuwae that does the kind of informal cool you don’t often find in the provincial China. Across the street meanwhile, there’s cake and some of the best coffee on the Silk Route in the modernist Karakoram Café, run by an incongruous Singaporean, the charming Christin Tan. Kashgar is a long way from the Lion City, but when I drop in for a latte, Christin tells me that Xinjiang has more in common with the Southeast Asian city state than meets the eye. Both places, she says, were founded on multiculturalism and international trade.

Kashgar is the hub of southwest Xinjiang, but there is much to see beyond its oasis boundaries. To the southwest lie the outer flanks of the Pamirs, a sky-high mountain range that traverses international borders. Threading through it is the Karakoram Highway, the tenuous strip of tarmac that links China to Pakistan. It leads past Karakul Lake, a sheet of cobalt-blue water ringed by towering snow peaks, and onwards to Tashkorgan, a town at the very limits of China’s vastness. Inhabited by wiry Tajiks, people who look more like Spaniards than Chinese, it is a place of cold winds and clear skies.
And then of course there is the desert, the mighty Taklamakan. I set out to explore the string of oases that runs east from Kashgar. These are towns in sight of the mighty white wall of the Kun Lun, northern rampart of the entire Himalayan mountain system. Villages with vine trellises and pomegranate orchards line the approach roads, and in the empty country beyond twin-humped Bactrian camels stalk, dark silhouettes against the desert. The sunlight here is sharper than glass, cutting through the leaves of the poplar trees and catching on the sequins embroidered into the headscarves of the women.
In Yengisar, the first stop east of Kashgar, there are traditional knife workshops and a fine visage of Mustagh Ata, the highest peak in the Kun Lun. The next stop is Yarkand, once the terminus of a feeder route of the Silk Road that ran across the mountains from India. Here too there are endless lanes lined with mud-walled houses, and all the sights and sounds of a Central Asian bazaar.

Xinjiang has always been on the periphery of the Chinese world, slipping in and out of imperial control as dynasties waxed and waned over the centuries. Sometimes – as in the 1860s when a Turkic warlord named Yaqub Beg ruled the country from Yarkand – it was independent; sometimes it was uneasy Chinese territory. Today the state shares many traits with its more famous southeastern neighbor, Tibet. Here too the local population is restive and resentful of organized immigration by ethnic Han Chinese; here too there is political unrest and heavy-handed government control. But though there are tight restraints on telecommunications, unlike in Tibet foreign visitors are free to wander widely in the province.

From the bazaar town of Karghilik I hire a driver to take me into the mountains. Above the banks of the chilly Tiznaf River, I climb a high ridge and look out over a mighty vista of ribbed brown rock and striated white ice. The clear sky is chased with mare’s tail clouds and behind the southern ridge of snow peaks lie Kashmir and India. It is a tantalizing thought, and it is only reluctantly that I descend and continue my journey to the last stop of my Silk Road odyssey.

Hotan lies some 400 kilometers from Kashgar. To the north is the full breadth of the Taklamakan, with lost cities and buried civilizations beneath its sands; to the south lie the mountains. Despite the wild location Hotan itself is a startlingly modern city, but it is also scene of the biggest of all the traditional weekly markets in Xinjiang. Kashgar’s Sunday Market, back at the start of my journey, was a heady enough whorl, but this is something else. Here there are bolts of colored cloth, men hawking raw, unpolished jade, sifted from the banks of the nearby desert rivers, and women, elegant in long, sweeping skirts and headscarves tied high at the backs of their necks.
The old towns of China’s Wild West may be modernizing, but though a visit to this part of the world is no longer the litany of dreary government hotels and bad food that it once was, there is still a romance, a ruggedness and an authenticity that is hard to find in so many other places steeped in heady history.
With the market over it is time for me to leave Hotan, and leave Xinjiang too, but that magical scent that first hit me in Kashgar, and the memories of sharp sunlight falling on white mountains, on the tile-work of medieval tombs, and on the glistening, ruby-red seeds of fresh pomegranates, lingers with me long after I have left.

© Tim Hannigan 2010