Across the Roof of the World

A Journey in Ladakh

Originally Published in The Epoch Times, 08/09/10

http://epoch-archive.com/a1/en/uk/nnn/2010/09-Sep/08/012_Travel.pdf

The wheels of the truck were inches from the edge of the road. Stark rust-coloured cliffs rose on either side, and far below an angry grey stream churned between tumbled boulders. I swallowed hard and looked up at the clear blue sky as we edged around the hairpin bend, shifted gear, and began to roll towards the valley floor.

I was riding into the heartlands of Ladakh, India’s wildest mountain fastness, in fine style – installed in the luridly decorated cab of a Kashmiri cargo truck. Thirty minutes earlier the driver, Hussein, and his assistant Altaf, had taken pity on me, waiting for a bus at a desolate roadside, and had stopped to give me a lift. By accepting their offer, I now realised, I had put my life in their hands – this road was little more than an overgrown goat path, edging along cliffs above bloodcurdling chasms.

My nerves were on edge and my eyes were fixed firmly on that narrowing strip of sky all the way down to the bottom of the gorge. We crossed the murky Indus River on a rattling suspension bridge and the road to Leh opened ahead, a strip of smooth blue tarmac cutting through a landscape the colour of wild horses. I breathed easy at last; Altaf smiled and patted me on the shoulder, reached under a pile of blankets at the back of the cab and took out a ripe melon. As we bowled eastwards with the mountain breeze coming in at the window he passed me slice after dripping slice.

***

Ladakh lies hard on the Chinese border northeast of Kashmir. The whole region is more than 3,000 metres above sea level, and the two tenuous roads that link it to the rest of India are blocked by snow for eight months of the year. This is a world apart.

Geographically and culturally Ladakh belongs not to the Indian Subcontinent, but to the Tibetan Plateau. Here there are stark, iron-coloured mountains, villages huddled in stands of willows and poplars, and bone-white Buddhist monasteries. The 270,000-strong population are Tibetan Buddhists, and their language is a Tibetan dialect. Indeed, until the turmoil of the 20th century saw old trading routes across high passes abruptly severed, the region had closer links to Lhasa than to Delhi. Today, however, it remains one of the most open and accessible places for visitors keen to see the ancient Buddhist cultures and the striking scenery of High Asia.
Many visitors arrive in Ladakh by air, but I had made my own entry from the west, taking a Jeep across the Zoji La from Kashmir, and making my first stop in the world of Tibetan Buddhism at the lonely outpost of Lamayuru. It was a spectacular place to start my journey through Ladakh.

The monastery here is the oldest in Ladakh, built in the 10th century by the great Buddhist missionary Rinchen Zangpo when Ladakh was ruled as part of Western Tibet. Its whitewashed prayer halls and weathered stupas are slotted among the crags of a rocky outcrop. Mud-walled houses nestle against the lower slopes; faded prayer flags snap in the sharp breeze, and the whole place is adrift in a vast, empty landscape.

I was shown around the monastery – and offered my first cup of salty butter tea (a Ladakhi speciality and an acquired taste to say the least) – by a young monk named Tashi. I spent the night in a simple guesthouse in the village, and the next morning I hitched that hair-raising lift with the truck drivers.

Altaf and Hussein – who were carrying a load of electrical goods all the way from Delhi – took me to Leh, the Ladakhi capital. In the 16th and 17th centuries the town was the seat of the Nyamgal Dynasty who ruled over an independent Ladakh, allied to their Tibetan neighbours. It was only when it was captured by the expansionist Hindu ruler of Jammu – later to become the first Maharaja of Kashmir – in 1834 that the region found itself more closely tied to the Indian scene. Ladakh remains administratively a part of the troubled state of Kashmir today, though many Ladakhis would rather see their homeland ruled directly from Delhi as a Union Territory.

For centuries Leh was a caravan town, a crossroads on a feeder branch of the fabled Silk Road. Yak trains from Tibet arrived to trade pashmina shawl wool with Indian merchants, and long strings of Bactrian camels lumbered down over the passes from the desert outposts of Xinjiang with jade and silks.

Today those old roads are closed, but Leh still has an international buzz. This is the hub of the tourist trade that has grown in the three decades since the Indian government threw Ladakh open to foreign visitors. There are trekkers, culture-vultures, spiritual tourists and mountain lovers in town, and 300 miles from the closest urban centre, it is an outpost of outlandish sophistication marooned in the wilderness, home to the best cappuccinos in the Himalayas.

But despite all this, a hint of the old Silk Road romance remains. A spectacular mud-walled fortress looms over the town; in the narrow alleys the descendants of Turkic traders from Kashgar and Yarkand still do business; and rising across the Indus Valley the white ridge of the Stok Kangri range still flares brightly in the afternoon sunshine.

***

The final stage of my journey through Ladakh would take me east through a stepping-stone string of monasteries, and across a skyscraping pass towards the forbidden Tibetan frontier. In the hilltop monastery at Thikse, some 20 kilometres from Leh, I shivered in the dawn as the maroon-clad monks lined up for their morning puja ceremonies – a welter of clashing cymbals, booming gongs and rhythmic chanting. There were more stops at more monasteries – Stakna, standing sentinel between the flanking ridges of the Indus plain; Chemrey rising from a nail-bed of poplar trees; and Takthog, slotted against the back wall of a narrowing side valley – and then, riding in the back seat of a hired Jeep, I crossed the dizzying saddle of the 5,289-metre Chang La, claimed to be the third highest drivable pass in the world.

It was downhill all the way on the other side through broken, fractured landscapes where chubby marmots watched the passing Jeep from the stony roadsides. And then my final destination appeared ahead – a long lozenge of bright water under a vast sky.

Pangong Lake, a 130-kilometre stretch of clear, salty water, lies 4,250 metres above sea level. Once it was a junction on ancient trade routes – north towards Yarkand, east towards Lhasa. Today, it is the ends of the earth and a suitably stunning place for the culmination of a Ladakhi adventure.

The Jeep stopped at a cluster of seasonal cafés at the windswept head of the lake and I scrambled alone up the hillside to take in the view. The waters were a vivid turquoise in the shallows, deepening to the colour of lapis lazuli further out. Flocks of delicate, red-legged seagulls – incongruous here in the high mountains – fluttered on the near shore, and across the water a great bank of ribbed brown hills rose. To the east the lake narrowed between rugged buttresses, and in the furthest distance a conspiratorial cluster of snowy peaks huddled. A sensitive international border straddles the lake; those mountains lay deep inside Chinese-ruled Tibet. Sitting, shivering on that windy hillside, I felt deeply grateful for the window into the Buddhist heritage and the wild landscapes of the wider Himalayan world that my journey through Ladakh had given me.

© Tim Hannigan 2010

Across the Roof of the World to Pangong Lake

A Journey in Ladakh

Originally in published in Maxx-M, August 2010

http://maxx-m.com/home.php

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

Travelling to the Dizzying Heights of Ladakh

A Journey through Ladakh, India, from West to East

Originally published in the Jakarta Globe, 30/09/09

http://thejakartaglobe.com/travel/traveling-to-the-dizzying-heights-of-ladakh/332455

I had been waiting at the roadside for an hour, shivering in the thin air. Behind me the poplar trees of the Chemrey Valley looked like a distant oasis; ahead the road swept away over barren slopes towards the mighty 5360-meter Chang La Pass. White lizards scurried over the rocks and no vehicles came past. Beyond the Chang La lay the fabled Pangong Lake, the remote strip of lapis-blue water that I hoped would be the highlight of my journey through Ladakh, northwest India’s high-altitude wilderness. But if I didn’t get a ride soon I would have to turn back. And then I heard the sound of an engine, straining through the switchbacks. I was on my feet in an instant, just at a shiny white jeep rounded the corner…

***

Ladakh lies hard on the Chinese border in the stark mountains of the Karakoram Range. To the southwest is Kashmir, of which it is technically a part; to the east lies Tibet, to which it is far more closely tied by history and culture. It is one of Asia’s most prized destinations for adventurous tourists.
I had arrived in Ladakh from the west, travelling through hills the color of Tibetan wild horses. My journey would take me to a series of ancient gompas – Buddhist monasteries – and then finally, I hoped, to Pangong Lake.
My first stop was the isolated village of Lamayuru, with its whitewashed gompa perched on a toothy ridge. As I made my way up the steep steps I found myself gasping for breath. Like much of Ladakh, Lamayuru lies well over 3000 meters above sea level, and here in the trans-Himalayan rain-shadow there is little moisture. Buddhist prayer flags snapped in the breeze and glossy black alpine choughs wheeled in the thermals.
I was shown around the silent, incense-scented halls of the gompa by a young monk named Tashi. He told me that Lamayuru is home to some 200 monks from all over Ladakh. The gompa, he said, was over a thousand years old, and had been built by the great Tibetan missionary, Rinchen Zangpo.
Ladakh has long been part of the wider Tibetan world and for many centuries it was ruled from Lhasa. Later it was an independent kingdom under the powerful Nyamgal Dynasty. It was only with its annexation by the Hindu ruler of Jammu in 1834 that Ladakh found itself more closely tied to the Indian scene. But as I looked out from the gompa courtyard on barren mountains that ran all the way to Tibet, lowland India seemed as far away as the Indonesian tropics.

From Lamayuru I continued east along the River Indus, the backbone of Ladakh. I spent a night in the little village of Alchi, a cluster of traditional houses and an ancient gompa between irrigated fields, then pressed on to Leh, the Ladakhi capital.
Leh originally developed as a mountain crossroads, a meeting point of treacherous trade routes from Tibet, India and Central Asia. As late as the 1940s camel caravans were still crossing the Karakoram passes, but Indian independence and wars with Pakistan and China saw the borders sealed. Ladakh was closed to the outside world until the 1970s when the first tourists were allowed to visit. For many travelers today Ladakh is the next best thing to Tibet, or perhaps, with its well-preserved culture, even better.
In Leh the caravanserais of old had been replaced by guesthouses and giftshops, but there was still a hint of historical romance. The town lay in a nail-bed of pale green poplar trees; the mud-walled palace of the Nyamgal kings loomed over the dusty bazaar, and the descendants of Muslim traders from Turkestan still kept small shops in the alleyways.
I found a cheap guesthouse in the old town. Over a cup of salty yak butter tea – an acquired taste to say the least – in the traditional kitchen with its ranks of shiny copper pots and pans, Padma, the charming proprietress, told me of the changes she had seen in Leh over the decades. Despite relying on tourism for a living, she had concerns about sustainability and the speed of development – the outskirts of Leh are already marred by ugly concrete hotels. Also, like many Ladakhis, Padma complained about Ladakh’s status as part of Kashmir State – a legacy of 19th Century treaties between the Raja of Jammu and the British colonialists. Despite sharing no cultural ties, and having no involvement in the political unrest of Kashmir, Ladakhis are ruled from Srinagar. For Padma and many others it would be better for Ladakh to be governed directly from Delhi as a Union Territory.

When I asked in Leh about visiting Pangong Lake, replies were doubtful. Public transport is almost non-existent; a permit is required and regulations demand that foreigners must travel on an organized tour with at least three other people. I wanted to travel alone. The travel agent who helped me arrange my permit looked at me askance when I suggested hitchhiking. “Well, you could try…” he said.
Try I would, and the next day I set out, stopping off to watch a prayer ceremony at the gompa-topped hill of Thikse before catching a rattling local minibus, full of cheerful villagers who welcomed me with the universal Ladakhi greeting – “Joolay!” – up the side valley of Chemrey. The bus dropped me in the last village. The light was shining on the white ridge of the Stok Kangri mountains as I set out walking, picking my way to the lonely roadside beneath the towering hairpins of the Chang La.

***

The jeep screeched to a halt and a very surprised head in reflective sunglasses appeared from the passenger window.
“Where on earth are you going?”
“Pangong Lake!” I said; “can I have a ride?”
They were a party of wealthy Indian tourists on a daytrip from Leh, and despite their surprise at finding a foreign hitchhiker at this wild spot, they made room for me amongst the picnic baskets. I smiled all the way up the snow-streaked slopes to the dizzying summit of the Chang La Pass. My companions seemed less happy – they were suffering from headaches and nausea, mild symptoms of altitude sickness brought on by the elevation. A little shortness of breath was all I experienced.
Across the pass marmots and wild horses watched us from the roadside as we passed, and then, finally, the lake appeared in a blaze of bright blue. One glance and I knew the journey had been worth it. The Indians dropped me at a little cluster of tented camps at the head of the lake and I picked my way up the steep hillside to take in the view. The waters below faded from aquamarine in the depths to pale turquoise in the shallows. Flocks of delicate white gulls – incongruous here 4250 meters above sea level – flickered over the shore, and beyond there were bony brown hills under a vast sky. The wind from the east cut like a knife and the light was sharper than glass. It was a truly stunning place. The lake here was barely a kilometer across, but it ran eastwards for 134 kilometers, deep into Tibet. The upwelling of white mountains I could see in the far distance were inside Chinese territory, beyond the forbidden frontier. But shivering and smiling on this bleak hillside I was sure that the view from the other side could be no more beautiful than this…

© Tim Hannigan 2009