The pilgrimage

 As you travel on the impressive roads of Ladakh, enjoying the barren beauty, the rich silence and the redolent emptiness of this high-altitude desert, almost on the roof of the world, you come across many workers along the way, working on road repairs.

These are contract labourers hired for keeping the roads in shape. They work across the seasons. In winters, they remove snow to allow mobility on the roads. In summers, they pick up stones that have glided down the slopes from above, repair cuts made by glacial melts, or work at places where the valley-side support and embankments of the roads have given way.

They are working day in and day out.

A majority of them are women—broad in structure, short in stature, but mountainous in spirit and willpower to add something extra to their meagre incomes and run their homes.

These Ladakhi women, ranging from the young to even those in their sixties, can be found working in groups at intervals along roads throughout Ladakh, in almost every direction.

They wear dark clothes, trousers, heavy jackets and sunshades to protect themselves from the biting winds and dusty conditions.

They are so diligent in their work, going about it slowly and steadily.

Since we have been exploring Ladakh, we have seen them in many avatars—mostly working, picking up stones, handling shovels and pickaxes; sometimes taking their lunch, sometimes having tea, sometimes resting and chatting while the mountain winds howl around them or vehicles speed past.

But on this particular day, when we travelled from Padum towards Phugtal Monastery, there was something special in the air.

Apart from the work they had been doing, there was something celebratory in nature, almost as if it were a festival.

In the morning, as we passed these groups, we could see the little ornate low tables that Ladakhi people use for having tea while sitting on the ground. Little carpets had been laid beside the road. There were baskets of eatables and bundles of clothes.

The women were working, but we thought that perhaps something interesting was going to happen later in the day. It seemed as though they were waiting for something special during the latter half.

And all along the route, for fifty or sixty kilometres until we reached the point where we had to leave the main road towards Phugtal Monastery, we found groups of women waiting in anticipation—working, but working with a pleasant casualness, as if they were looking forward to something special later in the day.

Along the little hamlets and villages, we also came across groups of men attired in their traditional Ladakhi dresses, carrying musical instruments and drums, preparing for something.

So we thought perhaps there was a wedding they were going to attend.

At a small restaurant on the way, run by a very energetic Ladakhi woman who was sharp in tongue and good in humour, everybody seemed to be in a hurry.

It was around eleven in the morning, and when we asked whether something was available for breakfast, they said, “We are in a hurry today.”

But they did not explain why.

So there must be something special, we thought.

But we had no clue about what was going to come.

The woman running the place was short, with a very smart face, perhaps in her forties. She had the tongue to give it back to anyone, but always with a smile. She had that smartness.

She ordered her helper to at least serve us tea.

So we had tea there.

We were carrying our own biscuits and snacks, so we had them with the tea and then started our journey onwards into the inner valley.

From near the village, the Tsarap River system carried its waters down through the mountains, and farther inside lay Phugtal Monastery.

We went there, and after spending three or four hours amid the beautiful majesty and mysticism of Phugtal Monastery—where generations of monks had lived through snowbound seclusion and kept the sanctity of Buddhism and its traditional knowledge alive and thriving to this day—we came back in the afternoon, rich and fulfilled in a beautiful way.

And when we returned to the same little cafeteria-cum-restaurant, the place had completely changed.

It was buzzing with dozens of men and women in a festive environment.

There was music.

Ladakhi men were dressed in robes of maroon and other dark shades of red. The women were in their extensively embellished and ornamented traditional wear—exquisite dresses—and everybody was moving around with such anticipation and joy.

It was the kind of joy little children have when they know they are going to participate in games, or when they are going to enjoy a day at a fair or a fun park.

I took permission from them to make videos and take photographs, and they were so happy to allow it.

There is hardly any insecurity or inhibition in that part of the world.

They seem free from many of the modern bugs that we, the people from the plains, frequently encounter. Here, we often look at anybody approaching us with a request with suspicion and a sense of separation. There is so much cut-throat competition that we almost take it for granted that whoever comes to us must have some ulterior motive.

But there, in that openness, the Ladakhi people, with their beautiful culture of accommodation and their religion promoting loving-kindness, do not seem to have been bitten by this bug.

And we had a free hand at photographing and videographing the little festival.

Then I asked someone what the occasion was.

He told me that a very senior lama, a Rinpoche, was travelling from Manali to Padum that day.

And these people, wherever there was a Ladakhi Buddhist settlement—whether on this side of Shinku La Pass or on the other side towards Himachal Pradesh—had been lining up since morning, full of joy and reverence, to welcome the honoured and learned man, the revered Rinpoche.

Suddenly, everything we had seen in the morning made sense.

When we started back on our journey towards Padum, the women whom we had earlier seen sitting in anticipation and working casually had now put away their working clothes.

They had changed into their traditional costumes, so deeply symbolic of their ancient culture.

The same women whom we had seen handling stones, shovels and pickaxes in the morning were now sitting beside the road around little ornate, colourful tables, having tea ceremonies, bantering and joking.

There was so much lightness in the air.

Whenever we reached a little hamlet, there would be a larger gathering of people. Pickups and jeeps stood waiting for the honoured Rinpoche to arrive so that they too could join the convoy.

The men were beating drums.

The women were singing.

And we witnessed the same spectacle for fifty or sixty kilometres, almost all the way back towards Padum.

Wherever there was even the smallest human habitation, people had gathered along the road in their best traditional costumes, enjoying those moments as though it were a festival.

It was such a lively thoroughfare in the wilderness.

The brown stones looked tiny in comparison with the indomitable joy and faith of these people, as if these mountains had not been successful in subduing their spirits for generations.

Nature might give them the harshest of conditions, but these people would stick to their ancient culture, their religious beliefs, their respect and almost godly reverence for their Rinpoches and lamas, and their ancient identity that defines their uniqueness as such a distinct culture.

It was a lovely experience witnessing all this on our journey back towards Padum.

Ladakh is full of mysteries.

The more you wander, the more it opens up.

But the more it opens up, the more questions it puts on the platter.

It is almost like a teasing, mischievous beauty, seductively pouting and always inviting:

“Come after me. Come after me.

You will not get me in totality.

But the pursuit will be worth it.”

And pursuing we have been this beautiful landscape.

Every answer Ladakh gives seems to produce another invitation to wander farther.