Luscious Ladakh

 Ladakh is a beautiful landscape, a high-altitude desert. It is very appealing to souls that feel congested, overcrowded and stuffed into narrow boxes in urban landscapes.

The moment you step into Ladakh, you feel its vast emptiness, without any competition, silence speaking through the mountain winds. It seems to embrace you and give you much of the peace that is required.

You feel decongested.

So no wonder modern humans, who have been put into crowded corners by the competitive edges of modern society, are flocking to Ladakh like never before.

My brother and I visit Ladakh every year during the summers to recharge our batteries, to feel the emptiness, the unmanifest divinity prevailing everywhere. Its unique culture, its peace-loving people, the joy on their faces, their contentment—you can feel it.

So this is about my experience in Zanskar Valley this time.

Earlier, the road to Zanskar was a long, circuitous route from Leh to Kargil first and then from Kargil to Zanskar Valley. It was a very long journey through treacherous roads. It would take almost the entire day, possibly even requiring a stopover at Kargil, so you would reach Zanskar the next day.

But now the Border Roads Organisation has been doing a wonderful job developing infrastructure in this high-altitude, lofty desert adorned with high mountain peaks, passes, snow-clad slopes, rocks and a challenging barrenness.

It is a very tough job.

With the coming of new roads, travelling towards Padum, the main town of Zanskar Valley, has become much easier. You travel through this extraordinary landscape with the Zanskar River cutting down through the mountains before ultimately meeting the Indus near Leh at the Indus-Zanskar confluence.

Zanskar is a completely different kind of cultural and geographical entity, even within Ladakh. It has its own unique culture, which has still been retained to a remarkable extent, even in comparison with the rest of Ladakh.

Earlier, there was no easy direct road access, and till relatively recently people would walk along the frozen Zanskar River. They would travel for almost two weeks and stay in caves along the route.

I met so many people who had taken this journey in their childhood or during their young age, walking for almost fifteen days on the frozen Zanskar River.

Since Zanskar was so isolated even from the rest of Ladakh, you can still see the ancient Ladakhi culture in its houses, its costumes, in the way people look at life—in the entire cultural landscape. It is still more distinct and ancient-looking than much of the rest of Ladakh.

But the river valleys and floodplains also provide an amazing amount of greenery.

The beautiful Zanskar Valley is dotted with lush green barley fields surrounding villages, particularly around Padum and along the gentle streams in its upper reaches.

Willow, poplar, apricot and juniper—these are the trees that sway to the mountain winds, symbolizing Mother Earth's undying spirit to manifest green even at the most arduous and challenging altitudes in barren deserts.

And then, across the streams, you have sea buckthorn.

These are wild, hardy, thorny shrubs. They have vitamin-rich orange berries, and they are much in fashion in the plains now. You have sea buckthorn teas and other drinks prepared from them.

Perhaps the attraction is also because something that grows in such hardy conditions must be carrying a very vital force of life.

So humans try to use it.

And around the monasteries you have juniper, locally known as shukpa. These are considered sacred, and their dried needles are put on live coals to give a purifying fragrance.

It is a lovely smell that you can find wafting across peaceful monasteries perched on hilltops.

The area around Padum is a broad valley between mountain ranges on both sides, and within it are the signs of habitation with their barley fields.

And now there is modernity.

New roads are coming in. Development works are going on.

After the opening of the roads, everything has picked up such a fast pace of development that you can see Zanskar changing before your eyes. Poetically, you might think that we are losing the pristine touch of nature.

But merely for poetic sentiments, you cannot deny these people the opportunity to enjoy the modern amenities and facilities of life.

These are the people whose ancestors spent their entire lives in snow-bound, inaccessible recesses, with their gateways to the outside world involving journeys along the frozen Zanskar during winter or difficult routes during summer, sometimes taking many days.

You can imagine how limited and how tough life must have been.

But now they are happy to see this change.

You can see their happiness and joy—new buildings, hotels, tourism, new sources of income. They are opening up.

Yes, this isolated part is losing its solitude.

But we cannot expect them to remain in ancient days just for us tourists, so that we can occasionally come and enjoy the remoteness and ancient feeling.

That is not justified.

They deserve modern amenities as much as anyone travelling from the plains does.

So we have to accept this fact that things will change everywhere, in every nook and corner of this planet, even in high-altitude deserts full of solitude.

Things will change.

There will be more crowds. There will be development.

That is inevitable.

Just the forces of change, as Buddha says.

Towards Dzongkul

One place that stands out in my memories of this journey is Dzongkul Monastery, roughly thirty to thirty-five kilometres from Padum.

We rode our bike towards it through beautifully spread-out parts of Zanskar Valley, through big villages, some of them quite prosperous because agriculture is possible there.

As we rode on recently metalled smooth roads, enjoying the beautiful road spread between high mountains, with the river nearby, we crossed little hamlets.

And then we came across a stone crusher belching stone dust into the pristine Ladakhi skies.

That stood as a contrast.

A dusty stone crusher, stones being crushed, that crunching sound of human endeavour to tame nature.

It appeared very, very odd.

Poetically, there can be a feeling of sadness, of losing something.

But again, you cannot deny these people what the rest of the world is enjoying.

So we have to accept change.

And we moved onward.

The last phase of the road towards Dzongkul Monastery goes across a very remote hillside overlooking a fast, glittering glacial stream. As we rode, we saw groups of yaks along the way because this monastery is located in a very deep corner full of solitude.

When we reached there, we could see construction going on.

The monastery, of course, has every right to add to its facilities. The monks deserve all the facilities that the rest of humanity enjoys.

There were migrant labourers from the North Indian plains working there, and monks were supervising the work.

We met a young monk there, almost a teenager. He was from a village down in the valley.

The monasteries traditionally have their disciples and monks from the surrounding villages. Earlier, there was this tradition of giving a boy from a family to the monastery so that they could keep the lineage alive and keep their monasteries going.

We had a nice talk with him.

Then he pointed towards the cave of Mahasiddha Naropa, high on the hill at some distance from the monastery.

It is here that the great Buddhist yogi Mahasiddha Naropa is believed to have meditated about a thousand years ago.

The ascent to this cave, deep in a stony recess high on the hill, is very steep, going through a very long flight of stone steps. Some have simply been cut into the surface, while others have been laid with cement and mortar.

It is a tough climb.

But it is worth it.

As I reached there, the cave stood out with its ancient imprint.

There are so many stories about Mahasiddha Naropa having mystical powers, having developed so many capabilities through yoga and Tibetan Buddhist tantra.

Tradition says that wherever he meditated, either in Ladakh or Tibet, he could put his hand on the hard stone walls of a cave and leave an imprint there.

So many of the caves associated with him carry this kind of branding of spirituality.

Inside that roughly thousand-year-old cave, its stones blackened with incense and lamps over centuries, a brass idol of Mahasiddha Naropa overlooks you with spiritual intensity.

I sat down there to meditate.

I could make out that it was a very high-energy place.

I feel that caves have the potential to retain the original frequency of a Mahasiddha who has meditated there because there is more stability in the earth element in comparison with air, water and the other elements.

Once a Mahasiddha has established himself at a certain frequency, a certain lightness of being, and has gone into profound meditations there, the entire cave becomes a kind of yantra—a spiritual yantra, a spiritual tool.

Energy has been stabilized and established there in a specific form, so that the place itself becomes a spiritual tool to energize and provide energy to those who approach it with openness, with good intention and with full faith.

The moment you start meditating at such a place, you are plugging into that spiritual machinery, that spiritual yantra.

And it does for you whatever needs to be done for your evolution, for your consciousness, for the evolution of your consciousness.

At whatever platform of your evolution you are, you will get what you specifically need.

That is the beauty of such places.

As I sat down to meditate, within a few minutes I could feel the energies pleasantly taking over my system, reshaping my energetic structure, aligning it in a better way so that my spiritual journey could become smoother.

It was a very blissful experience.

I felt a very strong and powerful energy overtaking my conscious system, like a mother cradling her child, taking utmost care to keep the child safe but still nourishing it.

The same was happening to me.

I spent about one hour there and allowed the energies to restructure, realign and reshape my energetic structure—to give me better chances on the path of evolution, on the path of understanding and wisdom, so that I could get more light in life.

The Monasteries as Living Worlds

The monasteries themselves are beautiful.

Their sturdy walls are made of mud and stone, painted with white lime on the outside, with small windows having maroon-coloured frames. Then you have maroon-coloured borders along the roofs at each storey, colourful draperies, shiny yellow silk curtains and so many golden ornamentations.

The roofs are made using sturdy trunks and timber, with mud covering the wooden framework that forms the ceiling below. These structures have survived through generations in an extremely difficult climate.

And then you have the thangka paintings.

The more we can see about them, the less it seems, because these are masterworks of patience.

A painter may devote months, sometimes years, to giving elaborate detail to Buddhist stories—stories of avatars, yogis, yoginis and countless other local deities.

They represent an extensive network of human imagination and thought about what might constitute godliness and also the opposing, contradictory forces of evil, the dark ones, which challenge the rule of order and discipline in society.

Stand and look at a thangka painting, and it might take your entire day just to have a look at each and every character in it.

It is so full of life.

It is a world in itself.

In the main shrine halls, along the side walls, you find ancient cloth-bound manuscripts containing Tibetan and Ladakhi scriptures dating back centuries, preserving sacred knowledge.

Even today, the resident monks sit down in rows, chant those holy sermons and revise their lessons.

There are deities and Buddha idols in golden hues, and elaborate altars consisting of so many kinds of offerings.

You can feel that it is a world full of complete faith.

The monks have worked so hard over the centuries to give such extensive detail to each and every aspect of their religion that the environment itself becomes an experience.

That dimly lit environment.

The fragrance of juniper wafting through it.

You walk on the floorboards across this little space, past the low tables at which the monks sit during their routine learning and study sessions, and you feel so small and insignificant in the face of that extensive, devotion-based, comprehensive structure created by the human heart, full of faith.

And they keep continuing with the tradition.

They pray for world peace.

That is the most beautiful thing that I love about Buddhists.

They simply sit down, and a central focus of their meditation and prayers is the larger good, for the benefit of the world, for peace in this world.

I sometimes think that if not for such lovely souls praying for world peace in such seclusion, this world would fall apart.

They are a binding force of love, keeping things from going totally wrong.

An Evening Above the Valley

It was evening time.

From the terrace of a higher storey, we looked down into the central courtyard in front of the main shrine hall on the ground floor.

We could see dozens of monks, ranging from the very old to very young novices, swirling around in beautiful patterns.

It was a kind of devotional ceremonial dance accompanied by chanting.

And there was such an amazing, innocent, childlike playfulness about it.

The monks were dancing in the seclusion of their monastery courtyard, high on the hill, far away from the maddening crowd—their robes swirling in the air, laughter, little jokes.

And that is their play.

Their play still involves and centres around devotion.

Those are the steps they take for ceremonies.

It was a beautiful experience.

On one side, the monks dancing.

And on the other side, when you stand on top of the monastery, you can see the entire Zanskar Valley in its fullness, with its open charm.

The sun mingles with clouds. Snow-capped mountains stand in the distance. Lush green barley fields dot the valley below. The gleaming waters of the Zanskar sneak through the valley.

And the wind sighs and sings songs of solitude.

You just feel that message from the beyond in each and every pore of your skin.

Your entire cellular structure absorbs that peace.

And no wonder you feel so happy and good after that.

The Old Lama

During another monastery visit, we rode through a few hamlets and reached a green village below a monastery standing high against the barren cliffs. There were willow, poplar and juniper trees, and the white monastery façade, dotted with small maroon-framed windows, towered above the village.

It almost looked like a tiny replica of the Potala Palace.

As we reached the village, we saw a few little children playing.

Whenever Ladakhi children come across bikers, they often ask for biscuits, toffees, chocolates or stickers.

Unfortunately, that day we had nothing.

Then they said, “Okay, then give us a ride.”

So I got down.

And the moment I got down, my brother found three mischievous little Ladakhi children riding pillion.

They went off making ecstatic sounds and cries of joy.

After giving them their ride, we proceeded along the circuitous road towards the main gate of the monastery. There was a shortcut one could take on foot from the village, but since we had our bike with us, we decided to take the metalled road.

As we were parking our bike near the entrance, we came across an old Buddhist monk—a lovely lama.

We had such an amazing discussion with him, full of kindness.

He was from the village itself and had become a monk perhaps twenty or thirty years earlier. In his maroon robes, he was walking slowly back towards the monastery. He had gone to perform some ritual ceremony for a household.

Then we had a discussion.

He talked about the basic tenets of Buddhism that they follow in the monastery. One particular rule they abide by quite firmly is living a life of honesty and not telling lies.

And he was quite honest and true in sharing his own story.

He told us about the gastrointestinal problems he was facing. He had once been treated at a Buddhist hospital in McLeod Ganj, I think.

Then he spoke about his detachment from his family.

“Yes, I can see my brothers, their grandchildren, my cousins, my nephews and nieces. But they are just like any other villagers to me now. The entire village is my family. When I look at the village from here, from the higher ramps of the monastery, the entire village is one small family to me.”

Then, as a goodwill gesture, he opened his cloth bag and took out a big packet of biscuits.

They were quite nice biscuits. Maybe some foreigner had donated them to him.

He rubbed his hand over his stomach.

“I cannot eat them,” he said. “I have to eat very simple food—rice and pulses—just once a day. My stomach won't allow me to have these biscuits.”

So he gifted the packet to me.

And then he walked away in perfect detachment, as if he had merely been the carrier of this present from that unknown foreigner to us.

That little incident stayed with me.

Sani Gompa

On another day, we went to Sani Gompa, not very far from Padum.

A big statue of Master Padmasambhava stands there in its majesty, overlooking a small pond with a few ducks. Tourist tents are dotted here and there nearby, on a thick, soft carpet of grass.

It is a lovely sight.

Sani Gompa is an ancient monastery associated through tradition with great Buddhist masters such as Padmasambhava and Mahasiddha Naropa.

When you go there, you find little places associated with these ancient masters where tradition says they stayed and meditated.

It is quite an experience to stand in front of places where such Mahasiddha yogis of Tibetan Buddhism are believed to have stayed and meditated, yogis whose traditions helped shape the culture and religion of people across Tibet and Ladakh.

As I was coming out of the monastery, I found three beautiful old Ladakhi women in their traditional costumes.

Their costumes were so extensive and elaborate, making them look like exquisite vintage beauties.

I simply could not help myself from wanting to take their picture.

When I requested them, “I want to take your picture,” they cackled with laughter.

Then they said, “Will you give us something for tea?”

So I gave them some money.

Again they laughed.

A hollow-cheeked laugh, but such full laughter coming from deep down within a contented life that it can inspire you.

It can instantly make you happy.

They sat down on a low boundary wall and I took a few pictures.

Then they simply walked away in slow steps.

In any case, life here is so slow-paced.

And within such a slow-paced life, watching old people walking with their still slower steps is something quite wonderful and full of lessons, if you can just take some time out and watch them.

Stongdey Monastery

Not too far away from Padum is another monastery, Stongdey Monastery.

It is an important monastery standing very high on a rocky hill overlooking the entire valley.

The bike ride from the main Zanskar Valley road was quite challenging for us. It was a steep ride, and the road on the side we approached from was still under construction.

So it was quite tough to reach there.

And on top of that, the moment we reached the large complex on the hill and parked our bike, a yak appeared.

Possibly the yak thought the bike was a rival.

It came towards it and seemed on the verge of hitting it.

My brother had to raise quite an alarm, waving his hands and taking a stick in his hand.

Only then did the yak move away.

That was quite scary, by the way.

Stongdey Monastery itself is a big complex, and there is a large lodge nearby where visitors can stay.

It was surprising to come across an entire accommodation section outside a monastery that had seemed so difficult to reach.

I started thinking: life here seems to be busier than what this road suggests.

Then we found the reason.

From the other side there was a smooth, metalled road.

That road also connects with the main Zanskar Valley road, and that is what the monks and most other visitors use to reach the monastery.

Standing on top, you can see the entire Zanskar Valley.

It is an amazing sight.

Indescribable.

For that, you have to reach there yourself and feel it—the mountain wind sighing, the beautiful panorama unfolding in front of you, sunrays filtering through the clouds and giving everything a misty look.

The waters of the Zanskar gleam below.

The barley fields appear as rich green patches against the sandy brown of the rest of the landscape.

At Stongdey Monastery, I could also see that there was plenty of water available. They had redirected a little stream of glacial melt from the higher slopes towards the complex, and that had supported a beautiful plantation of poplar and willow.

Again, green manifesting itself in the middle of barrenness.

Towards Phugtal

Then there is the famous Phugtal Monastery.

It has been known as one of the remotest monasteries in the region.

It lies deep in the mountains in the direction of the upper Tsarap valley. Travelling from Padum towards Shinku La, separating Ladakh from Himachal Pradesh, you eventually come across the route from which you can proceed towards Phugtal.

The road is quite good for much of the journey now.

There are just a few places where you have to pass through water because, do whatever you may, glacial melt will still make a dent in a mountain road.

There you simply have to go through it.

But the journey is reasonably safe.

You keep travelling while enjoying the majesty of the Tsarap River, its muddy waters cutting across barren hills.

After travelling for many kilometres, you reach a small settlement where there is a cafeteria and you can have tea.

From there, the branch towards Phugtal begins.

It is a recently cut, unmetalled road full of stones and pebbles.

So it requires a cautious ride, whether you are travelling in an SUV or on a bike.

After negotiating roughly seven kilometres of rough riding over stony and pebbled hill roads along the river, you finally reach a point where you have to get down from your car or bike.

From now onwards, you have to cross a little bridge to the other side of the river and then walk roughly a kilometre along a steep hillside to reach the monastery.

It is tough going because the gradient is quite steep.

But you have beauty around you.

You can pause.

You can stop.

And you can enjoy the sight of huge wild bushes of roses.

They look so beautiful—big wild bushes carrying hundreds of roses, smiling at you.

When you have such a huge bouquet of wild roses against the backdrop of brown, lifeless, massive, intimidating rocks, it comes as a surprise.

It makes you wonder at Mother Nature blooming through flowers even among stones.

And once you reach Phugtal Monastery, you can feel the sanctity of hundreds and thousands of monks who have stayed here across generations, through centuries, when they would remain snowbound and cut off from the rest of humanity for months on end and would be required to walk over frozen streams.

It was quite an otherworldly experience.

The very point of establishing monasteries at such inaccessible places was to find an utterly peaceful corner, full of solitude, where monks could focus on their meditative practices.

And then the monks told me that there is another, even more remote monastery farther upstream, roughly a full day's journey on foot, because even now there is no motorable access to that point from Phugtal.

That is where a Vietnamese Buddhist friend of mine had stayed in a cave for almost three years. I have written about her experiences in another blog post.

So you can imagine how vast Ladakh is.

That is its beauty.

Even now, there are places you cannot access without taking the trouble of walking for a full day, trekking on foot across steep cliff slopes to reach them.

And there, too, somewhere in that vastness, you will find a little monastery with its resident monks.

That is the beauty of Ladakh.

Even while roads are entering its valleys and modernity is transforming its villages, somewhere beyond the last motorable road there is still another path.

And beyond that path, another mountain.

And somewhere behind that mountain, perhaps, another little monastery sitting silently in the wilderness.

Ladakhi rainbows

A shared taxi with locals, including lamas, from Leh to Padum in Zanskar, and then a few days spent wandering around on a mountain bike that we took on rent from Padum—this allowed us to cover Zanskar almost end to end, visiting everything from famous monasteries to nondescript, forlorn places away from the hubbub of tourism.

In Padum, I remember a special face.

The face of an old woman, a Western tourist.

One day, as we were walking in Padum, I saw a frail-looking, very old woman approaching us. She had a wrinkled face but an energetic walk. She asked us the way to the Ladakh Tourism guest house, which allows tourists to stay whenever there are vacant rooms.

She made a big impression on me because she looked over eighty years of age.

My brother and I talked about the free spirit of Western people in exploring the world till old age. The body may grow old, but not necessarily the spirit of wandering, the spirit of wonderment, the desire to explore new things.

Then the episode was forgotten.

After all, when you travel, you come across so many tourists.

We came back to Leh.

And the very same day that we returned, while walking around in the evening, we came across a timetable displayed in front of the bus stand.

There it was.

The bus to Pangong was leaving at eight the next morning.

Instantly, our eyes glinted.

A bus gives you a very different experience of travelling with a larger group of people. It becomes quite a lot of fun because, away from your particular circumstances and identities, when a group of dozens of people comes together, the journey itself becomes an exercise in learning about other people.

And when all of you are looking at the same destination as a unit, the destination itself acquires a different perspective.

It acquires a different meaning altogether.

That reminded me of one particular bus journey from one of our earlier trips to Ladakh—a journey from Leh to Pangong.

A Bus Full of Characters

That bus was full of characters.

There was this very tall and fair, almost Spanish-looking boy from Maharashtra. He was actually from Pune and worked in the software industry.

He looked almost like a foreigner.

A very gentle guy.

Then there was a doctoral student from JNU. The girl was travelling alone and looked pleasantly desperate to get into networking mode, to talk to people.

She possibly wanted some company.

That is always acceptable and understandable.

Then there was this short fellow from Maharashtra, slightly cross-eyed but so full of humour that I could devote a few chapters to him.

There was Jishnu, a boy from Kerala, dark, with such an odd-beat beauty in the make and shape of his face that he stood out.

You would not forget him if you happened to see him even once.

And then there was this Bangladeshi gentleman travelling with his friend. He was connected with the travel industry, but he seemed to be enjoying each and every bit of the journey like an ordinary traveller discovering everything afresh.

I remember that bus journey from Leh to Pangong vividly precisely because we were travelling as a group.

Our Bangladeshi friend would repeatedly insist with the driver and helper:

“Please allow me to sit on the front seat.”

There were minor squabbles among passengers to grab the front seats because from there you could have a clear view through the windscreen of everything unfolding beautifully before you.

Our Bangladeshi friend was really, really friendly by nature.

When we finally reached Pangong, almost all of us happened to take accommodation near the beautiful lake, either on one side of the narrow road or the other.

By evening, when we gathered together, it was almost like a friendly get-together.

Some were having rum.

Some were taking beer.

And then it became dark.

Under the Akash Ganga

At night, the sky seemed so nearby.

The stars glittered so clearly.

The Milky Way was so vivid that it appeared as if you could simply raise your hand and touch it.

Such unpolluted skies are almost unbelievable when you come from the haze and dust of the plains below.

The stars had their full smile.

So we proposed to the group:

“Let us walk down the road in the darkness and enjoy a walk under this open vault of the sky, glittering with new smiles and a full Milky Way—what we call Akash Ganga in Hindi.”

They agreed.

Now my brother is very mischievous.

As we walked, he started telling everybody about snow leopards.

How a snow leopard crawls stealthily.

How silently it approaches.

How it can attack.

And much to our surprise—and later our laughter—we found that, one after another, members of our group simply kept slipping away.

They went back to the safety of their rooms.

Eventually, there came a point when only we two brothers and the two Bangladeshis were left outside.

Then we started laughing.

Everybody had escaped the moment my brother started talking about snow leopards.

When we came back, we found our short, slightly cross-eyed Maharashtrian friend, with that beautiful mischievous look, thoroughly enjoying life.

He was tipsy.

We asked him:

“Why did you slip away without even telling us?”

His reply was wonderful.

“On the one hand, you are talking about snow leopards. And then, who knows? You guys are from Haryana. We know what type of mischiefs you are into. Later you might have said, ‘Now, after this walk, let us try to cross this big lake running into dozens of kilometres. Let us try to reach the other side!’”

So, he said, they thought it better to avoid that eventuality.

They saved themselves from the snow leopards and also from getting frozen and drowned in the icy waters of the lake, which is almost as big as a little sea.

We had a good laugh about it.

Little Stories Within the Journey

The JNU scholar looked very much in need of company, and I am quite sure she had developed a big crush on our Spanish-looking, tall Pune boy from the software industry.

She kept hovering around him.

That also added a beautiful cuteness to that peaceful time on the shores of Pangong Lake.

And something else added to the beauty.

There was very little artificial light around the homestays and restaurants along Pangong Lake.

So you had darkness.

And in that darkness, the sky smiled its brightest smile that you could ever see.

We enjoyed it thoroughly.

The next day, the same bus started back towards Leh, and the return journey was equally enjoyable.

This time our Bangladeshi friend was lucky.

He managed to occupy the front seat.

And he was so happy, almost clapping like a child.

But this cheerful man had a story.

A story of pain and suffering.

He had shared it with us while we were having dinner at the homestay.

He said that he was enjoying life now, but this enjoyment had come after paying a big price.

His wife had suffered from a very rare disorder.

He had served her and taken care of her through her long illness. He told us that although his religion permitted him another marriage, he chose instead to remain beside his wife.

He gave her the costliest medical treatment he could possibly arrange in Bangladesh. He took her to foreign countries. He spent a great deal of money trying to find treatment for her.

And after twenty-five years of suffering, she passed away.

I could see that pain on his face.

And now I felt that perhaps he was somehow trying to move beyond that painful past by immersing himself in the vastness of Ladakh.

He was enjoying each and every moment.

He was a very friendly, sociable person, taking photographs with us so that he could carry the sweet memories back home.

Even now, he occasionally sends us WhatsApp messages.

He is always trying to come back to Ladakh, although at one point tensions in relations between Bangladesh and India made obtaining a visa difficult for him.

And I thought: common people ultimately end up losing whenever there is friction between countries and larger powers.

He is a simple common man.

He just wants to enjoy Ladakh.

Looking at him so happy, I kept thinking: this man has suffered so much while taking care of his wife, and now he is enjoying life.

Credit goes to Ladakh.

Perhaps here he feels free and liberated from some of the tentacles and entanglements of life.

His friend was equally graceful, though much more silent in comparison.

Dancing in the Snow

On the journey back, another beautiful memory still tingles my nervous system.

There was snowfall at one of the high passes.

It was overcast, and as we climbed high into the mountains, snow began falling.

We got down.

The JNU girl—who knows, perhaps she too was carrying her own share of pain, perhaps even some love story gone wrong—was suddenly so happy.

She started dancing in the snow.

In fact, all of us had a little dance there, shouting out our share of joy.

That is the beauty of enjoying travel as a group.

Most of us will possibly never meet again in life.

But those memories stay.

They make a certain permanent space within you, and they never fail to bring a smile to your face whenever you recall them.

Jishnu

From the same journey, I remember Jishnu from Kerala.

Silent and aloof.

The carrier of a beautifully strange persona that made him stand out even in a crowd.

He had a flashy white smile on his pitch-dark face.

His face was cut in such a unique way that it gave him his own unorthodox beauty.

If you look at a fellow human being as something unique in himself, Jishnu was that.

He was travelling alone and on a tight budget.

He had been staying at the homestay of a friend near Manali, doing some graphic-design work for him in exchange for his stay.

He too was crazily in love with Ladakh.

He wanted to see more and more of it.

So, to help him save his budget, we allowed him to stay in our room on a spare mattress in Leh.

He stayed with us for two or three days and contributed whatever little amount he could afford.

But that was simply a kind of help to a fellow journeyman.

I remember him accompanying us to Shey Palace and other monasteries.

At Shey, the three of us—my brother, Jishnu and I—climbed the little hill.

Beyond the palace, if you are cautious enough, you can move along a ridge. It is a steep hillside with boulders, so you have to be careful.

We reached an old, partly abandoned structure where there were numerous prayer flags and prayer strings.

It appeared to be a place where Ladakhis, perhaps going back to their royal times, had performed ritual ceremonies, and where rituals are still performed on special occasions.

The three of us went there and sat inside that crumbling structure high on the hill.

It was a very strange experience.

We could see remnants of ceremonies—incense, burnt material and other offerings.

Sitting there, I explained my own feeling that such a place can act almost like an open portal because its sanctity has been maintained through ritual and devotion over a long period.

If we maintain ourselves in a state of openness, I feel such a place can help us.

So we meditated there.

These are the memories we carry when we tag along with fellow travellers sometimes.

It is not necessary all the time.

We need our personal space as well.

Then you take the bike and go off on your own.

But travelling as a group creates a completely different type of environment.

Pangong — The Liquid Jewel

And Pangong Lake itself is a completely unique experience.

It is a liquid jewel that keeps changing its colours throughout the day according to the play of clouds and sunbeams across its waters.

It looks like something straight out of the heavens that we imagine.

Whenever we visit, we like staying at Sasoma Homestay.

It is run by three generations of women.

The eldest is an old woman of around eighty.

Then there is her daughter.

And then her granddaughter.

All three women take care of the homestay together.

During the tourist season they are extremely busy, and over the years I have seen their establishment getting new additions.

I am happy that they have made some money.

During the season, the cost of boarding and lodging varies according to demand, and the stay generally includes dinner and breakfast the next morning because most tourists spend only a single night there.

Their dining hall is lovely.

It is carpeted in Tibetan Buddhist style, with low tables and sitting platforms around it.

And all three generations of women work expertly together to serve the food.

It is simple food.

Chapati.

Rice.

Dal.

And for breakfast, bread and omelette.

But it is served with so much love.

The old woman keeps spinning her handheld prayer wheel.

Once I asked her daughter why she continued turning it while we were eating.

“She is praying for you while you eat,” her daughter explained. “She is praying to her gods that whatever you eat here should be good for your system.”

That is the loving-kindness contained within these little rituals.

A Bag of Garbage

Whenever I stay there, I take long solitary walks along the shores of Pangong Lake, marvelling at its changing shapes and colours, looking towards the lofty mountains and the snow-capped peaks in the distance.

But unfortunately, some careless tourists litter the banks of Pangong.

To me, Pangong is a goddess.

A living shrine.

So during one of my walks, I kept collecting garbage—empty cans, wrappers, bottles and other trash.

Eventually, I had a big bag full of it.

When I arrived back at the homestay carrying the bag, the old woman's daughter looked at me.

“Where have you picked all this from?”

“I have cleared the source of your revenue,” I told her. “The beautiful lake that gives you your bread and butter.”

For a moment, she seemed unsure where I should put it.

But then the old woman came forward smiling.

She walked ahead of me and guided me towards a large garbage bin where they kept their waste.

Still smiling, she opened it.

And I poured everything inside.

I remember that little moment clearly.

Padma

The old woman's granddaughter is Padma, a lovely young Ladakhi woman.

Once I asked her about her education.

She replied:

“I am doing my graduation from Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi.”

I was so surprised.

It was quite unexpected.

Here was a girl from such a far-off corner of India, close to the borderlands, growing up beside Pangong Lake, and she was receiving a modern education at a premier college in Delhi.

During her summer break, she travels back home.

And then this modern college-going girl joins her mother and grandmother in managing the family homestay, serving travellers arriving from different parts of the world.

Three generations of women under one roof.

The grandmother spinning her prayer wheel.

The mother running the household and homestay.

And the granddaughter moving between Pangong and a premier college in Delhi.

Perhaps that too is Ladakh—the ancient and the modern sitting at the same low dining table.

Walking along Pangong Lake itself is another chapter.

That deserves a full, completely separate narration.

For now, what stays with me from these journeys is the beauty of travelling with other people.

A busload of strangers comes together.

For a day or two, everybody forgets his or her separate world.

Someone falls in love, or perhaps merely develops a little crush.

Someone tells jokes.

Someone is carrying twenty-five years of pain behind a smiling face.

Someone dances in falling snow.

Someone is travelling on almost no money.

Someone wants the front seat like a delighted child.

And someone frightens everybody by talking about snow leopards in the darkness.

Then the journey ends.

Everybody moves away.

Most will possibly never meet again.

But strangely, they do not completely leave you.

Years later, when you remember that bus, that dark sky, the Akash Ganga, the laughter, the snow, the lake and those faces, they all come travelling back.

Perhaps that is one of the gifts of travelling together.

For a few hours or a few days, complete strangers become part of your story.

And then they remain there.

Coming back again to this year's bus journey from Leh to Pangong.

The bus was waiting in the bus-stand yard. Travellers were slowly arriving.

And surprise of surprises, I saw the old woman again—the majestic carrier of so many wrinkles on a thin face, a frail woman but robust in spirit, walking with pride.

It was the same woman I had seen a few days earlier in Padum, looking for the Ladakh Tourism guest house.

She boarded the bus and took her seat.

Then came a young woman, light brown in complexion and of Latin American appearance. I would later come to know that she was from Mexico.

She boarded the bus and occupied one of the two-passenger seats to the left. We were sitting on the three-passenger seats to the right.

She shared her seat with a shy young man, perhaps between twenty-five and thirty. He worked in an automobile showroom and had told a sweet little lie to his parents—that he was going to Vaishno Devi.

Instead, he had come to Ladakh.

These days there are so many Instagram reels and social-media posts about people visiting Ladakh, and he too had been bitten by the bug. He had four or five days to explore the place.

As the bus started, he nervously and hesitatingly began building up a conversation with the Mexican woman.

She was full of confidence, as people generally become after having been on their own and travelling for years.

It was a tentative conversation.

Smatterings of it kept falling into my ears because, as a writer, I listen to what people are saying.

It gives me a lot of fodder for my write-ups.

There was another girl in her early twenties, a student of psychology studying in the direction of clinical practice. She was as much overweight as she was radiant with happiness, joy and giggliness.

She was extremely extroverted, completely unmindful of the typical standardized expectations regarding a woman's body, weight, shape and size.

She simply did not bother.

I had rarely seen a young woman carrying such confidence. She had a girlish face, and although her body did not conform to the standard beauty statistics of a typical woman, she carried herself with ease, confidence and the majesty of youth.

Very talkative.

Very bubbly.

And she would talk a lot to us during the journey.

Nora

As the bus proceeded, I started talking to the old woman sitting towards the back.

I learned that her name was Nora.

She was from Spain.

I told her that I had seen her a few days earlier in Padum when she was looking for accommodation at a government-run guest house.

She had already been enjoying India for more than two months. Earlier she had been in Kashmir and a few other places, and now she was exploring Ladakh.

A woman of undying spirit in her late seventies.

With her excited, wrinkled, almost girlish face, she talked with enthusiasm and curiosity.

She had maintained that curiosity.

She had retained that sense of wonder about life.

And perhaps that was what made her continue pursuing her dreams even at this age, travelling completely on her own.

She told me that a few days earlier she had participated in a guided hiking trail of moderate intensity. Due to bad weather, she somehow lost the trail and became separated from the other members of the trekking group.

It was rapidly getting dark.

Then, she said, she slipped and went rolling down a little slope.

She almost injured herself, but thankfully there was no serious injury.

And then she cackled with laughter while telling me that getting lost had almost become a way of finding herself in a completely new setup.

She walked for some distance and eventually reached a little hamlet with a small monastery.

The lamas welcomed her and gave her full hospitality.

She rested there.

She became an unexpected but much-welcomed guest.

And she had another story to carry with her.

We Are All Carrying Stories

All of us are carrying big stories with us.

They may or may not appear big in the eyes of others, but yes, we are the majestic carriers of our little individual stories.

Nora certainly had many.

She had spent a considerable period of her life in Qatar and told me about her experiences there, including her association with work devoted to the education of girls.

Then came stories of her journeys.

Armenia.

Azerbaijan.

Latin American countries.

So many places.

So many stories.

And she was so happy that I was listening to her seriously.

At one point she told me something beautiful.

She said she had thought that she would feel joyful after reaching Pangong. But now the journey itself had become joyful because she had found such a patient listener—someone willing to listen to her stories and also share his own.

We had spiritual discussions as well.

Whenever the bus halted, sometimes the conversation moved into more serious areas—enlightenment and other subjects that are expected to arise in the mind of somebody entering the later phases of life.

She was very happy.

Around us, meanwhile, the little world inside the bus continued evolving.

The bubbly psychology student had started talking to my brother.

The shy young man from the automobile company was slowly shedding his shyness and speaking with greater freedom to the Mexican girl.

During one stop, I saw him taking her photograph beside a stream.

She looked really happy.

It was turning into a lovely journey.

Back at Sasoma

After reaching Pangong, I found that the old woman who runs Sasoma Homestay, where we generally stay, was not there this year.

She had gone to visit her other son in a nearby village.

But she was quite healthy.

That itself was reassuring.

Over the years, these people have become part of our journeys. We have stayed at their place repeatedly, and naturally that creates a little nick in your heart.

You begin to care about them, especially when you return.

So I was quite happy to know that Dadi Ma—as we call her—was still there and healthy.

The family also seemed to have made some money because there were visible improvements in the homestay.

I complimented them.

And I joked that no wonder they had increased the price per night by a few hundred rupees—they had to recover all the investment they had made.

They are simple people.

These simple people do not always have the logical, shrewd and clever counterarguments with which we people from the plains so quickly defend our interests.

They would simply smile shyly.

That is their reaction.

Perhaps the simplest way a person can react.

Everybody Finds His Own Pangong

The other passengers scattered around according to their budgets.

They searched for accommodation in nearby places.

Nora and the Mexican girl decided to share accommodation nearby.

Our chubby, smart, suave and extraordinarily confident young psychology student was running around with her backpack, searching for that most suitable combination—the best possible place at the cheapest possible rate.

She was so confident that at one point I saw her standing beside the road making the sign for a lift.

A biker stopped.

Within seconds, I saw her sitting pillion behind him and disappearing down the road.

I thought she would now be enjoying herself somewhere with a biking group around the lake. There are many homestays, campsites, huts and cabins scattered around.

In the evening, as we walked along the banks of Pangong Lake, we saw Nora and the Mexican girl.

They were sitting on stones along the shore, splashing water and enjoying themselves.

We thought it better not to disturb them.

They needed their privacy.

And we wanted to treasure our own moments too.

So we simply took a little circuit around them and proceeded farther.

We walked along that beautiful path with the musicality of waves hitting the shore in the background.

Changing colours.

Changing cloud shapes.

Changing hillsides.

And even the colours of those hillsides changing continuously with the changing slant of the sun's rays.

It was quite beautiful.

The Cosmic Canvas

And at night—obviously—the wonder of wonders.

The stars seemed to twinkle so nearby that you felt you could simply stand on your toes and touch them.

Such pristine darkness.

Such pure smiles of stars.

And the Milky Way—so bright, so defined, so distinct.

A beautiful painting on the cosmic canvas.

A lovely sight.

You could simply continue looking at it for hours.

It has that kind of beauty.

And Everybody Gathers Again

On the journey back, the Mexican girl boarded the bus.

Nora stayed behind.

She wanted to spend a few more days around Pangong.

Our automobile-sector young man now seemed almost in love with the Mexican girl, as could perhaps be expected.

There is sometimes this funny expectation among Indian men that when a Western woman talks freely to them, perhaps there is immediately the possibility of friendship, a relationship, or at least an affair.

That's quite funny.

But that's how it sometimes is.

I was wondering what had happened to our bubbly psychology student.

I thought she must still be happily travelling with the biker group because I had last seen her speeding away as a pillion rider.

But after the bus had travelled perhaps ten kilometres, just where the lodgings and accommodations on that side of Pangong begin to thin out, I saw a figure standing in the distance.

An arm went up.

The figure was signalling the bus to stop.

And the entire bus cackled with laughter.

Here she was!

She had reappeared just as suddenly as she had disappeared.

She climbed aboard and immediately resumed her usual chirpy talkativeness and confidence.

And that would continue all the way.

The Forgotten Camera

A few kilometres farther on, perhaps twenty kilometres from where we had started, there was suddenly panic on one of the seats.

A young couple appeared to be completely out of their wits.

They started questioning each other.

It soon became clear that they had lost something.

Their expensive camera.

They had apparently left it behind at the homestay.

The young man was using excited and troubled words.

And the girl was giving him daggers through her eyes, almost as though saying:

“You just have your say here. I will take this up with you later.”

There was no other option.

They asked the driver to stop the bus.

Immediately they got down, almost in panic, quarrelling and accusing each other of being careless.

I thought somebody would obviously give them a lift back towards their homestay.

Everybody laughed.

Perhaps they were simply destined to stay at Pangong for another day or two.

The next bus would not leave immediately. Or, if they were lucky, perhaps they would find a shared taxi.

In any case, such incidents bring another element of uncertainty and excitement into these journeys.

And I hoped that by having their trip unexpectedly delayed, perhaps they would get some extra time to enjoy the beauty of Pangong Lake.

I was also quite confident, from my own experience of Ladakhi people, that they would find their camera exactly where they had left it.

So perhaps a forgotten camera would merely give them another little extension of Pangong.

These are the little, little beautiful takeaways from a bus journey.

The Mexican Architect

Among the characters, Nora particularly stood out—the old woman with a young girl's spirit.

But the Mexican woman had her own story too.

She was an architect from Mexico.

When she set out to explore India, her parents had expressed some anxiety regarding her safety.

But she told me that during her travels she had not come across even a single instance in which she personally felt unsafe or threatened.

And then she used a very interesting expression.

Perhaps because she was an architect, the metaphor came naturally to her.

“I have been refabricated,” she said.

She felt that the journey had amplified her by several notches.

It had given her a new dimension from which to look at things.

And she had experienced Ladakh quite extensively.

She had joined a cycling group from Manali and cycled all the way from Manali to Leh, covering hundreds of kilometres through extraordinarily difficult terrain.

Imagine pedalling your way across some of the world's highest motorable mountain passes, confronting cold, high altitude, lack of oxygen and the sheer physical strain of cycling through such a landscape.

I am one hundred percent sure that she enjoyed every bit of it.

Because such a journey gives you a completely different perspective from which to look at the raw beauty of nature.

You are in awe of it.

Side by side, you are intimidated by it.

Sometimes you feel like worshipping it.

And during the toughest phases, perhaps you feel like complaining to it—sweetly, as you complain to your mother.

Yet at every step you are so alert, so aware and so open.

Your sensory perception seems to be at its peak in feeling reality.

You are taking very big doses of reality while putting your body through such strenuous exercise in such difficult conditions, but upon a canvas as beautiful as Ladakh.

She seemed completely happy.

She appeared to have enjoyed it thoroughly.

What Ladakh Does to People

Perhaps this is what Ladakh does to people.

It gives them an amplification.

It allows them, at least for a while, to rise to a higher frequency from where they can look down upon their normal lives from a clearer perspective—with sharpened vision, with more wisdom, with more knowledge.

And the more you travel through Ladakh, the more you come across such people.

Seekers of their larger selves.

People whom you find wandering around Ladakh apparently looking at mountains, rivers, monasteries and lakes, but perhaps searching for something bigger within themselves.

A bigger dimension.

These are special people in themselves, searching for something larger.

And Ladakh provides them an open platform.

An open canvas.

A place upon which they can paint the picture of their own reality.

Ladakhi rainbows after a brief shower on Hunder sand dunes

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