Jewel in the Crown

So off we went, the wife and I, for a week’s break. Flying in the narrow space between the middle layers of snow-capped mountains provides the perfect middle-class experience, a combination of the excitement of danger with the knowledge of complete safety inside the aircraft. Landing at what could reasonably be thought of as an abbreviation of an airport at Leh after a mere 75-minute flight from Delhi, one realised with force that distances in the mind are immensely greater than on the ground.

The airstrip, we were told, was built in four days; its builder received a Padma Shri and membership of the Rajya Sabha for it. The first part of the tidbit was astonishing, as was the sight of a middle-aged Ladakhi woman heaving baggage off the conveyor belt and carrying it to the taxi, without waiting for the bakhshish.

Our hotel was two km away. Its ambience was breathtaking, with majestic poplars in the compound and apple trees, laden with still unripe fruit, almost jutting into the dining room windows. Everyone who has heard of Ladakh advises the traveller to stay indoors for the first day; more anxious advisors would rather that one refrained from venturing out for anywhere up to four days to get used to breathing in the thin oxygen layers at that great height. We stayed in for lunch and a nap; in the evening we went out for a brief, very slow walk and returned in one piece each.

Buddhism is an all-pervasive presence in Ladakh, although there is also a sizeable Shia Muslim community. Buddhism is manifest in the reverence with which the Dalai Lama is regarded and in innumerable monasteries. Leh itself is teeming with monasteries, each with a distinctive character of its own. The Hemis monastery is reputed to be the biggest and wealthiest. The Lamas here, as elsewhere, do not pester the visitor with unwanted attention, but if you want them to, will explain every nuance of the spiritual meaning of a painting, carving or statue. They never ask you to put some money in one or another box, quite a relief to anyone who happens to have visited a Hindu temple or a dargah. Nor did we find a single beggar either around these monasteries or on the roadsides in the market places.

The other great monastery in Leh is Thiksey. Carved out of a mountainside, it looks imposing from the ground level and its architecture is of the kind that one immediately identifies with the region. One has to walk up quite some height to reach it, but the effort is repaid in full measure. Among its riches is a huge collection of old Tibetan manuscripts.

A long way out of Leh, the small Alchee monastery is more than 1,000 years old, with frescoes to match the antiquity. The frescoes need a lot more attention than they seem to be getting.

While there are other monasteries and palaces — the Stoke palace has some superb Thangka paintings awfully displayed — in Leh, the region’s jewel is the Pangong lake. It lies some 150 kms out of Leh and the journey is at times enchanting and at others backbreaking, irrespective of the condition of the vehicle. On the way, one gets the first sight of the river Indus and a fascinating view of the union of the greyish river with the brownish Zanskar. Actually, all the sights are incredible: small, lush green fields in the narrow valleys, the mountains changing colours from light to purple and dark brown, all within a few yards.

Not as incredible, however, as the sight of the lake itself. Set between low range light and dark brown hills, the water in the vast lake — one third of it is in India and the rest in China — is a veritable riot of colours and their shades. At one spot we could count seven colours from light brown and light grey to sea green and midnight blue. It’s the experience of a lifetime and well worth the effort.

Then there is the Khardung-la, at a height of 18,250 feet purportedly the highest motorable pass in the world. Being there gives one a queer feeling of conquest. The real conquest, however, was effected by the innumerable labourers from Bihar who built this, as the other roads in the region, and the military jawans who guard the rough, harsh mountains round the clock, surrounded as these are by Pakistan on two sides and China and Afghanistan on one each.