Sunday 9 December 2012

ISLAY TO LADAKH AND BACK


THE FOLLOWING STORY IS A CONCISE VERSION OF MY ADVENTURES IN LADAKH.
THE BLOG POSTS THAT FOLLOW ILLUSTRATE THE STORY A WEE BIT MORE ~

Ladakh is a semi autonomous area in the region of Jammu and Kashmir in Northern India. I travelled there to stay with a local family in their home and participate in their way of life.
To get there, I crossed Taglang La, which at 5,359m (17,684ft) is the second highest pass in the world.
I arrived in Takmachik and met my lovely family on the 3 August 2010. There are four generations living in the one house. The oldest is Phutsok Dorge at 90 years, and the youngest - and wildest is Jigmet Chopel at two and a half years.

I believe that life in Ladakh is similar to the way life was in Islay and Colonsay at the time when my Dad was a wee boy. The people grow their own food. There is not a predominant money economy. In the villages there are no shops to speak of - if you don't work and create the food yourself, you will go hungry. For me, the difference between Islay and Ladakh is not specifically one of geography, but one of time.

I helped the family harvest apricots, turn the daal, fetch water, brush the floors with appropriate grass brushes. Life was peaceful, deep, hard working, joyous. Until the rain started. Heavy rain is unheard of in Ladakh. The annual rainfall is 90mm. This summer it poured for days. The roofs of the houses leaked, the apricots drying in the sun were ruined, the daal drying on the rooftops was soggy and turning mouldy.

One night we heard shouting, everyone had to move to high ground. The river that serviced the village had swelled to become a huge, raging torrent. It had burst it's banks, carrying fields and animals with it , and was now heading for the village.
I ran along a high ridge of rock. Looking down, it was like a mini tsunami, everything just crumpled before the awesome power of water. Fully grown trees snapped like dry matchsticks. The huge stone road bridge was swept away in an instant. Nothing could have held against the overwhelming weight of the water. It had found it's way from the mountains to the Indus. That night, and for three nights after, we all slept in a concrete built community centre up on a ledge on the mountainside.
Our village was now cut off from the outside world. Luckily, people could still walk out over a pedestrian bridge. We heard news of the terrible floods in Leh, 700 missing, five road bridges swept away. The village next to ours had lost 20 souls. There was not much to do to help our villagers. Their fields had been swept away, we were eating their food supplies, there was only one hand pump to supply all our water requirements. There were no communication links to the outside world. Our families in the UK didn't know if we were alive or dead.

Time to leave, I thought. I packed a small haversack with my sleeping bag, a first aid kit, a warm jumper, my diary, and my toothbrush and like India Anna Jones, set off. It was a bit scarey, but it was better to be actively doing something, than waiting to be rescued.
I crossed ravines by tree trunks lashed together, by metal step ladders placed over the stones on each side of the torrents. I got lifts in the back of huge stone dumper lorries. I also got a lift from a colonel in the army, who gave me an apple and whisked me along the burst banks of the Indus to Leh.
On arrival in Leh, I delivered a hand written letter to the Lama son of my Ladakhi family, informing him they were all safe. I waited at the airport for six hours for a standby seat to Delhi. In Delhi, I bought the last available ticket to the UK, and slept in the airport until my flight was called.
Before I left, both the grandmother and the grandfather of my Takmachik family put silk scarves around my neck. They were to keep me safe on my journey. I arrived at Heathrow, took the first train to Glasgow, then got the ferry to Islay.
And when I was safely back in my own home, I took off the scarves.

ARRIVAL


Arrived in Delhi Sat 24 July, 6.35 am through customs and immigration in the blink of an eye - benefit of sitting in row 22 - and compensated for always being last for dinner! When I stepped out of the plane into the connecting walkway, where they connected was a metre deep wall of HEAT - fantastic.
The road from the airport into Delhi itself is lined with neatly stacked pallets of bricks. They are building a new metro link to the airport for the games - which start in October .....
A green and white road sign endorsed drivers "there are two things you should always follow, your dreams and the traffic regulations"
Which summed up Delhi for me.
The driver couldn't find my prebooked hotel which was in the middle of Connaught place, which is being dug up for the new metro. He drove round and round and round, then finally got out and asked directions - 'your hotel is down there, Madam', pointing to an area under construction which was behind a huge caterpillar crane. I clambered over soft concrete with paw prints in it and wheeled my bag behind me till eventually I reached the back door of the hotel. I was just so relieved to have found it, I was laughing. The staff were so nice and polite they were horrified I had to reach the hotel that way - because from the front it was really quite smart and trendy.
I met a girl from the 'Learning from Ladakh' programme called Jenn at the hotel. Then I went to sleep for the rest of the day, while the energy and dust and heat and bustle of humanity that is Delhi whirled on around me.

DELHI


Sat.24 July
Jenn and I decided to go for something to eat. I looked up the guide book and the restaurant that I chose was a revolving one. Once we stepped outside the hotel into the madness of the dug up streets we looked around and could see what looked like a revolving restaurant above the sky line. It was a great place. There were wooden signs pointing to the different landmarks on the city scape, so as you sat there revolving you could appreciate the sights. My favourite was a temple which had cascading ribbons of light pouring down from the top and around about it. It looked like a waterfall of light.
As we walked back to the hotel Jenn said she wondered about all the dogs lying about on the broken pavements and road ways - were they dead or just sleeping. I said I thought they were probably sleeping - otherwise there would be a terrible smell!
The population of Delhi is 14 million - in an area of only 1,483 square km. That is roughly 9,440 people per square kilometre! The population of Islay is 3,400 - in an area of 620 square kilometres. That is roughly 5 people per square kilometre.
One of the best things in the buildings is that they have high celings, even if the room is quite small. I think this is due to the ceiling fans though, because if the ceilings were any lower there would be some terrible disasters.

LEAVING DELHI

Sunday 25th July 2010
We were taking a bus from Delhi to Manali, half way to Leh, and where we hoped to meet other members of the 'Learning from Ladakh' programme. We procured the last two seats on the bus - later I wished we hadn't. As we drove out of Delhi I saw a woman with a huge pile of thin, dry sticks on her head - just balanced there as she walked along with her hands by her side. Over the tops of the buildings, I saw many small kites flickering against the pale of the evening sky - like in the film "The Kite Runner".
In India not many people smoke cigarettes and the first person I saw smoking since I arrived was a young guy with dread locks and wearing a T shirt with a rainbow on it.
As the bus drove out of Delhi I felt that although it was very unusual, the place felt familiar to me!
The road to Manali is very busy. Many, many lorries. The road is narrow and the edge of the road is RIGHT on the edge of the mountain. The drop from the road is all the way to the bottom. I wouldn't mind that usually - but the drivers go so fast , and they don't have enough room to go round the bends with the bus because of the oncoming traffic. NO ONE slows to let another pass, they just all power on. I can say it was the most frightening journey I have ever been on. One stage of the journey passes a cement works. The main road is the access road for the cement works. It is a hell of dust, lorries, diesel fumes and confusion. Just after the cement works we pulled in to refill the bus with diesel. As we drew out of the car park, I looked down at a parked lorry - around the orange painted wheel hub were the words 'OH GOD HELP ME"

MANALI AND BEYOND

Arrived in Manali on Monday morning 26th July, not having slept a wink. And luckily neither had the bus driver. Manali is made up from three little villages strung out along the Beas river. It was here Jen and I linked up with some of the other people on the Learning from Ladakh programme. I slept all day and night ! and they arranged a jeep to take us all from Manali to Leh.

It rained heavily all the time we were in Manali, there were concerns about lanslides on the road. We left early the next morning. Our driver Nihal was clever, competent and I felt safe in the jeep. His jeep was a 4x4 and the number plate was 1972, which he told me was the year of his birth and he had bought the plate specially.

We were breaking our journey in the village of Kelong. The journey there took 12 hours, then the onwards journey to Leh took 16 hours! The road is very rough. It's a beautiful but jarringly bumpy journey. It is mainly single track, tarmaced in sporadic stretches. The mountains are lush and green with much vegetation and lots of trees. Rivers pour over the road overwhelming it, and leaving stone filled craters. A couple of times we got out the jeep, where the river had completely washed the road away. Our intrepid driver took a considered run at the torrent with the empty jeep and powered through - as did the bare boned public service bus! Our hearts were in our mouths as we watched it drive through. Us passengers waded and jumped through the powerful white water, Nihal parked the jeep and came back to help us. The journey was so hard in parts that I feel I missed out on actually experiencing all the power and grandeur of the mountain ranges as we had to concentrate so much on just surviving the journey.

We went over the 2nd highest pass in the world. It's name is Taglang La (5359m/17,684ft) We also traversed Lachlung La (5060m/16,698ft) and Barachlacha La (4950m/16,335ft)

La means pass in Ladakhi. Achieving Taglang La is an emotional experience. The mountains stretch forever all around you, above the infinity of sky. There are temples and holy shrines all along these routes. People give thanks to the gods of the mountains for letting them pass, also they ask for their protection. The temples and stupas have red, yellow, green and white prayer flags fluttering and wrapped around them. Some temples are used by both Buddhist and Hindu. Anyone can go into them, or turn the prayer wheels.

The thin air feels fantastic. The air is so dry everything can be seen with great clarity. The jagged mountain peaks are starkly contrasted against the white of the clouds and the clean, sharp blue of the sky.

After the high passes the entry into Ladakh is down the mountains into the Indus valley. Leh is found at an altitude of around 3,600m.

I love Ladakh, it reminds me of Colonsay and Islay- except 3.6Km up in the sky. You really are closer to the stars up here.

Ladakh

LEH

Wednesday 28th July 2010
Arrived in Leh around 10pm. Some of the group were startled to discover Leh was a town, and not a medieval, mud brick village. We found a room at the Yak Trail Inn and fell asleep. In the morning most of the group moved up the hill to a guest house reccommended by the Lonely Planet. I decided to stay in a lovely guest house I saw in the area of Chubi, called Green Villa. It had a large garden, every square centimetre planted with potatoes, tomatoes, Kos lettuce, broccolli, cabbage, carrots, barley, and many other vegetables. And lots and lots of lovely flowers. Green Villa is self sufficient. It also is host to 14 - 16 guests a night during the summer season of June, July, August. They make their own butter, jam, flour. They have fields further up the mountains where they keep their animals in the summer months. They harvest apricots, mustard seeds, walnuts. They cut the flowers and grasses for fodder for the animals. Ladakhi homes have a colourful profusion of plants pots with geraniums, poppies, cornflowers, sunflowers.

The gardens are irrigated by an intricate system of shallow channels which run to the base of trees and curve around them, run along the rows of vegetables and are damned off at the ends with small sluice gates of slates secured in place by old pieces of clothing. At first one wonders why there are random bits of jumpers lying around in the ground, then I realised it was to further secure the tiles of thin stone or slate that acted as diverters for the channels of water.

The food in Green Villa was the best I tasted in Ladakh and India. The Mother of the house - ama le - would go into the garden and pick the leaves and vegetables for the lunch and dinner. The food was fresh, clean, healthy, light. We had soup, vegatables and rice, then sometimes a warmer, heavier dish made with a sort of homemade pasta. I think this dish would be good in the winter cold. They also had chillis growing in the garden, and this Ladakhi dish had a spicey edge to it.

LEH AND GREEN VILLA


Green villa is representative of the home of a Ladakhi family who are reasonably well off. The younger daughter of the family is studying a Masters Degree in political science from Delhi University. The older sister is married and her husband works as a guide for people who wish to go trekking. The couple have a baby boy called Karma Wangdey Gyatso. The sisters names are Rinchen Dolma and Rinchen Angmo. Rinchen Angmo is Wangdey's mother. The sisters were named by the lama.

Green Villa is a lovely, large home. It is new, having been built only 6 or 7 years ago. It is unusual in the area, as the first floor is constructed entirely from stone. Ladakhi houses are usually built with a stone foundation, then dried mud bricks form the house walls. Nowadays, the majority of houses have steel reinforcing rods between the courses of bricks. Previously, I am unsure what they used. The ceilings beams are whole Willow trunks. The tree is left whole. Thin Poplar sticks line the spaces between each beam. In good construction, the Poplar has a slice shaved off each end of the stick so it can sit flat on the beam. After the Poplar sticks are laid close together to form the ceiling of the room below, paper is laid, then brush similar to dried heather is placed over, then earth is smoothed over the top to seal it all. Above the windows and doors in traditional Ladakhi homes are wooden lintels. Some are very intricate, comprising stepped borders of carved pattern. They are a beautiful addition to a building. It is expensive to have these lintels as they are carved by hand.

All homes have lines of prayer flags fluttering from the corners of their roofs. It is lovely to see and makes the buildings seem very alive. The winds carry the prayers to the universe. The Om Mani Pad Me Hum prayer is all encompassing and very popular on the flags.
Green Villa has running water and flushing toilets. Outside the Poplar stick garden gate is a fast flowing stream. The family wash in this stream, allowing the guests access to the piped water. Most guests who stay at Green Villa are sympathetic to the traditional Ladakhi way of life. So, guests can be seen washing their clothes, and occasionally their face, in the freezing mountain water.

A traditional Ladakhi compost toilet is available for the use of the guests. This comprises of a small elevated room with earth on the floor and a rectangular hole cut in the floor. After one has made use of the facility one just pours a shovel full of earth down the hole. This is a very efficient, clean sewerage system. There is no smell, and the compost will be used in the future to maintain the garden production.

I slept and rested most of the day of Thursday 29 July. Leh is at an elevation of around 3600 metres. The air is thin, and until one becomes acclimatised the slightest exersion leaves one breathless. The only way to adjust to is rest and drink plenty, plenty, plenty water.

LIFE IN LEH, SUMMER CAPITAL OF LADAKH


Friday 30 July 2010
Morning in paradise. The sun shines from 6 am onwards. Sitting in the garden on the handkerchief of grass allocated for the compact dining table, the sky is all around one. You feel you are living in the sky! The blue is different to the colour it is in Islay. This is because the air is drier and the light is not refracted so often before it reaches the eyes. Also, one is closer to the outer atmosphere up here. It feels very strong and secure. The mountains fill your vision, but the enormous, open aspect of piercingly clear blue sky expands your heart and mind.


Breakfast is homemade individual, round flat bread with homemade apricot jam and homemade unsalted butter. Mint tea for me and salt butter tea for Ama-Le and other hardy souls.

This afternoon I explored Leh town itself. There is an old town area and a new town area. The old town has narrow, winding medieval streets lined with old, mud brick buildings. The buildings comprise one room open to the street with old, wooden shutters forming the wall to the street. The wood is old and green and the planks are splintered and rounded at the ends.


The shops are silversmiths or metal smiths, cheese and curd makers. Dusty rooms with red and brown and dark blue striped folded wool blankets. There are also rooms containing raw, skinny carcasses with flies buzzing around. A single old man sits in each room working at making curds in a large, shallow metal basin, or stitching something or talking to his friends. There are many shops selling metal work items. The traditional Ladakhi house cooker is a magnificent, enormous oblong L shaped metal stove with an area for a fire and a bit for a stove pipe. The more expensive ones have intricate metal designs welded on the walls of the stove. If the stove is a dark colour the designs are in silver and gold metal. I think traditionally the Ladakhi people exhibited their wealth by their kitchen utensils. An old fashoined Ladakhi home will have dozens of different sized silver basins. Some the size of a soup bowl, some large enough to bathe in! The first time I saw the kitchen of my family in TackmaChik I thought they did catering for weddings! But it was just Stanzin's own kitchen utensils. They also have copper bowls, and many brass and gold coloured goblets which are filled with apricot oil and used as lamps on the alter, which is in every home.


That evening, outside in the garden of green villa, I had a yoga lesson from Baljit Singh. Baljit is a tour guide - and a classical guitarist! He has a battered old guitar with the varnish worn off the fretts from continuous playing, and he is GREAT at playing it. His tour company takes people to places where they can reconnect with the natural world and remember what it feels like to be whole and at peace. Which is all very well until disaster stikes! There was not much peace or tranquility ahead for Ladakh over the next few weeks, but that evening we were blissfully unaware of this.
Link for Baljit's travel company. (Just now the pound is roughly equal to 70 rupees.
http://www.thetopcamp.com/

LEARNING FROM LADAKH ~ ISEC


Saturday 31 July

Ladakh means 'the land of high passes'. Ladakh comprises two semi autonomous areas, Leh district and Kargil district, in the region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. Ladakh lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the North and the main Great Himalayas to the south. The Indus river forms the backbone of Ladakh.

The population is around 260,000 souls, being either Tibetan, Mons or Dards peoples. Unlike the rest of Jammu and Kashmir, which is mainly Islamic most Ladakhis are Tibetan Buddhist. There are also a small number of followers of the old, old Bon religion. Most Buddhists follow the tantric form of Buddhism known as Vajrayana Buddhism.

I have been fascinated with Ladakh for many years. Ever since I heard Helena Norberg-Hodge talking about it on Woman's Hour on radio 4. Helena runs an organisation called International Society of Ecology and Culture http://www.isec.org.uk/ This organisation seeks to relearn from Ladakh the ways we in the West have lost in our new economic culture. Ways of community and local food production. Happiness in a non economic way. It also seeks to reafirm to the Ladakhi people that their traditional ways and social structures are a good thing. Women are respected and are not devalued in traditional Ladakhi culture.

When I was young, Gaelic language was denigrated and we were advised to learn French and German at school. What use was a dying, old fashioned language to us as we were making our powerful, successful way in the world? Now we know, to our detriment, we need our language. The very structures of our consciouness are formed by our own language. Subtle ways of interpreting our surroundings, our social structures, our very being, are lost to us if we lose our language and traditional ways. In the west, we are struggling to bring back what we have lost.

Part of the ISEC aim is to form friendships with the Ladakhi people and to share our different ways of living. The Learning from Ladakh programme I was on, allowed me to stay with a Ladakhi family and over time become part of their family. Through forming bonds of friendship we could speak to each other about the difficulties and good things in each others lives and cultures. In Scotland we have to reclaim what we have lost in terms of culture, language, community. In Ladakh, if they are aware of what happened to us and other cultures, perhaps they can find new ways to integrate into the 21 century, without leaving their strength and traditions and culture behind.
Links to the official websites of Leh and Kargil regions
http://leh.nic.in/
http://kargil.nic.in/

OFF TO TACKMACHIK


Tuesday 3 August.
At last the adventure proper begins. Today we left Leh at 11 am to travel in a lovely old fashioned, bone shaker bus with curtains and the luggage tied on the roof. We were going to Tackmachik, a village of about sixty families, 100 km up the road in a Northern direction. We were travelling along the main Leh to Kargil road. This is the main artery to the Ladakh border.

Yesterday, Monday, several of us went to the 'Amchi' to get medicine and pick me ups to keep us well on our visit to the remote villages. The Amchi is the traditional Tibetan/Ladakhi medicine woman, or man. She determines ones state of health by assessing the type of pulse you have. You sit quietly and she puts the three fingers of her right hand in a line down your pulse vein. She can tell if your pulse is rolling, light, heavy, erratic, constant. What depth it has, what type of rhythm it has. From an accurate assessment of your pulse she can tell where your aches and pains are, what ails you. I was lucky. She said 'not much wrong here' - and that was before I gave her the minature of Bruichladdich! But she prescribed me wee, spherical pills made from herbs and barks to be taken 3 times a day for the next ten days. This would keep me at optimum health, and it did!
Before I left Islay, Bruichladdich and their kindly team gifted me with a tray of minatures to share with the people of Ladakh. It is traditional to give the Amchi something in return for their help, but nowadays people just pay for their perscription and the Amchi is paid a salary from the hospital.

So, now on Tuesday, we were all excited and happy to finally be going to meet our families and see what our homestay would be like.
I loved the bus journey. At first, we traversed a huge plain. All tiny scrub and endless sand and gravel. Then we moved up into the mountains through a narrow torturous route, very windey and the bus wheels were right on the edge of the precipice. We then decended to drive along the banks of the Indus. The heavy, turbulent water was pale brown in colour from all the soil and alluvial deposits it carries on its journey down the mountains. It took us all day to reach Tackmachik. We arrived in the village in late afternoon. Tachmachik means 'medal 1', Chik means 'one'. So, I took it to mean 1 medal - 'first prize village'. When I told Stanzin my interpretation she thought it was good!

MY FAMILY AND TACKMACHIK


Most of the families who were taking part in the Learning from Ladakh programme were having two people from the group to stay with them. My family were having me and a woman called Laurel.
Our family consisted of
Phutsok Dorge - 90 years
His wife - Soman Pasket - 75 years
Their son - Tsering Angchok - 56 years
His wife - Rigzin Dolma - similar age, I presume
Their daughter in law - Stanzin Dolkar - 27 years (married to their son, Punchok Paldan - 30 years, working as taxi driver in Leh for the 3 summer months)
Their two sons - Jigmet Dorge - 9 years
And last, but certainly not least - Jigmet Chopel - 2 years and 3 months.
There are four generations in the one house - how wonderful is that?

On the Tuesday we arrived we were shown to the house by the group organiser and introduced to two women. We then went back to the bus for our bags, and went with other members of our group to meet their families. We returned to our house - Kaptopa Khangbu - about 40 minutes later. When we went in the gate and round the path running along side the house, we met a middle aged man sitting leaning against a pile of sacks, with heaps of fresh apricots on the ground in front of him.
'Jullay, jullay' (hello, hello, welcome, welcome, thank you, thank you) we said in our best Ladakhi. The man waved slowly and measuredly to us and smilingly replied.
When we reached the privacy of our own room, I said to Laurel, 'that man was pissed!'
'Oh surely not', she replied in her nice English way, 'they're Buddhists'.
I didn't say any more but I thought to myself - I know a drunk person when I see one - Buddhist Ladakhi or not!
Sure enough, it later transpired Tsering Angchok was fond of the chang - the homemade barley beer - and his wife was the village bootlegger!!

TACKMACHIK GOMPA


Wednesday 4th August
Today we went with Stanzin to the apricot orchard. The air is very heavy. There was huge thunder and lightening last night. We took various tins and plastic containers to put the apricots in and Stanzin carried a homemade wicker basket that fitted on her back. It had four sides and tapered to the bottom. Each side was about 16 inches long at the top, and the depth of the basket was about 2 feet. It was lined with a modern, woven flour sack. The frame of the basket was constructed from two U shaped willow branches and attached to them were stong flat ropes to go around the shoulders and across the top of the chest. Tsering Angchok had made the baskets.


Life in Ladakh, especially in Tackmachik, is very 'human scale'. These baskets hold an amount of apricots that takes one person about two or three hours to gather. This time is enough to ensure one is not sick of picking apricots! The weight of the filled basket is just enough for one person to carry. The basket is built to the size of the body. If it were in the West, we would make bigger baskets so we could carry more at one time - so it would save us making so many trips. But it would be a struggle for us to carry them home. They would take longer to fill, so we would be sick of the job before we filled the basket. We would have made life harder and unpleasant for ourselves! We would have created unnecessary stress in our quest for bigger and better.

In the afternoon I went to the Gompa (monastery) It is near the entrance road to the village, roughly half an hours walk from Kaptopa house. Tackmachik is beautiful. It is on the left bank of the Indus. It is a green oasis created by the villagers. The road is high up and sweeps in to the the village. The fields are thin and curved and stepped, following the line of the river. As I walked along I could see three men up on the side of a mountain. They had been blasting out a channel for a three mile long canal which was to run between Tackmachik and a neighbouring village. A man waved for me to pass. It was safe to walk in front of the area where the men were working and take a short cut over the foot of the mountain to the Gompa.
The Gompa is a small rectangular, white washed building with a smaller anteroom extension on the left. At the front door is a wide platform with five steps leading upwards. On each side of the double front door are full length wooden framed windows. I looked in.
Along the whole back wall was a wooden framed glass case containing beautiful gold Buddhas. In the middle was an especially big statue. The statues were placed about waist height and reached nearly to the ceiling. There was nothing else in the room. There was a deep red carpet on the floor, and two wooden T shaped decorated beams stood on either side of the main Buddha, supporting the roof. It was amazing. Out in the middle of nowhere this small, ornate jewel of a temple.
I walked down the steps from the entrance and leisurely looked in the windows of the ante room, as my eyes focused, my brain registered the most frightening, wrathful, demonic face I have ever seen - and there was an almighty
B O O M ! !! ! ! !
The ground shook, I felt the noise reverberating in my sternum. Oh Buddha, I thought! The terrible face, and the terrible noise - I nearly had a heart attack!
I caught my breath and thought, this is not the place to be just now, I'll head back to the village. As I walked down the path it occured to me I hadn't left an offering - and considering the power that was evidenced as I had gazed upon Vajrapani, I thought it would be prudent to do so. I turned around and went back to the front door. Looking in at the benevolent Buddha I left a little, new apricot and some water. I turned to the window of the room housing the dark blue face. Bending to leave the offering, my eyes focused again on the terrifying visage -
B O O M ! ! ! ! ! !
The temple shook, stoor and dust filled the air, stones rained down about my head. A small shrine high on a jagged edge above me shook, it's prayer flags waving crazily. The ground below my feet shook. The sound consumed the space around me and reverberated from mountain to mountain echoing again and again in the dust filled sky. It was frightening and overwhelming. The sound and the sight were one and the same. Twice I had looked upon the terrible face and twice the terrible roar had filled the air. I know who's in charge around here, I thought - and legged it.
http://www.angelfire.com/mt2/thubtentenzin/texts/Deities_in_Tibetan_Buddhism.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajrapani

DANCING UNDER LIGHTNING


Thursday 5th August 2010.

Heavy, heavy rain last night. The Indus is in full spate. Stanzin told us the bridge at Basgo had been washed away. In Tackmachik some of the villagers were aligning themselves along the steep, stoney banks of the river. They had long poles of wood and they were using them to winkle tree trunks and branches out the spinning, foaming torrents. It is difficult, dangerous work. Not only do they have to salvage the wood, they have to drag it up the steep banks to the road, then take it home. Perhaps some of the luckier ones will have a donkey to help. Stanzin's father in law is one of the men undertaking this arduous task. She takes us to the foot bridge and we watch for a while. He hooks the wood as it spins past, manoeuvers it closer to the bank, then throws it up onto the stones. Stanzin is worried about him while he is doing this. It is very dangerous, and the river has no mercy.

That evening we were invited to Stanzin's Mum's house for dinner. The house is on the mountain side. To reach it one has to climb a wooden step ladder. Stanzin's Grandfather (90 years) lives here, too. 'How does your Grandfather climb up and down this ladder, every day?' Laurel asked, gingerly manoevering herself up to the house, 'with no bother at all, and faster than you!' came back the humorous reply. There are no prams or baby buggies to be seen in Ladakh. There are no reclining armchairs either. In the West we think we are making life easier for ourselves, we are actually taking away our natural movements. No wonder we are stiff when we get old!

We sat outside in the courtyard, one storey up and Stanzin rolled thin, round pasta, and twirled them on her fingers into lovely butterfly shapes for dinner. Lightening crackled continuously round the mountain peaks above our heads. It filled the sky with an eerie, petrol blue luminosity. I leaned my elbows on the mud brick courtyard wall and stared and stared at this hair raising spectacle. I was standing on an earth floor 11,000 feet up in the air with electricity cracking and fizzing all around me.
Stanzin and her niece, Rigzin Angmo, age 9, sang a lovely Ladakhi song. Then Rigzin Angmo danced for us while she and Stanzin sang. Both the dance and the song were beautiful and sweet and delicate. It was so magical, cradled in the brown, earthen courtyard in the dark, with this lovely, wee girl singing to us and the blue lightning sparkling all around. Jigmet Chopel, age 2, decided he would dance for us, too. He encouraged his mother and Rigzin Angmo to sing and Laurel and I to clap in time and he danced and danced until it was time for dinner.
It is the most ethereal time I have as yet, been privileged to experience.

PROTECTION FROM THE RAIN


Friday 6 th August
I awoke at 2 am with rain pouring into the room. The roof of Kaptopa house, and the majority of houses in Tackmachik, is made from smoothed, dried earth. The rain had been so heavy and frequent over the last days and hours it had erroded the earth covering and was pouring in through the poplar sticks that formed the ceiling. We put basins down to collect the water, moved our bedding and went back to sleep.

That afternoon I helped Stanzin and Tsering Angchok lay plastic sheeting over the roof. Jigmet Dorge handed large stones up the wooden step ladder to the roof for us to secure the plastic.We also put sacks over the wall head as it is important to keep the wall head dry.

Later, Tsering Angchok and I covered the donkey house with sheeting. Near the donkey house was a stone alcove built into the hillside storing sheaves of daal. Rigzin Dolma asked me to help her move the sheaves out onto the earthen courtyard. Tsering Angchok came along - and from the animated conversation between him and Rigzin Dolma, I gathered that she wanted to move out the daal that was in the alcove, cover it with the plastic and move other daal in. He wouldn't let her do it. I don't know if the daal in the alcove belonged to someone else or what the issue was, but I left them to it and walked back to Kaptopa house.
That night, about 10pm, rain poured down the wall in my bed room. One of the runoff gullies from the roof had been blocked by the plastic. Stanzin climbed up to the roof and in the wild rain and wind sorted the problem. That night Stanzin, Jigmet Dorge and Jigmet Chopel slept in our room. The night before their room had been soaked through. Their room is in the older section of the house. Kaptopa house is in two parts. The old section is on the right of the main door, and the new section on the left. The house now forms a 14 m sided square, with an open topped hall area in the centre. I presume the new part was added when Stanzin married Punchok Paldan, thus creating more home space for an expanding family.

THE (RELATIVE) CALM BEFORE THE FLOOD


Saturday 7 August 2010

Today we sorted out our room. Stanzin has 4 or 5 types of grass brushes for different jobs. Some are long, thin, soft and feathery, formed from the tips of the grass right down to the stalk. Some are thicker, stiffer brushes, formed from only the stalks. Some are rough, and spread out at the end, like a short brush made from tough heather. These brushes looked like dishevelled spiders! Each brush is for a specific purpose. The soft feathery ones are for fine brushing, sweeping down the lovely, brightly coloured carpets and rugs that cover the mattresses. The rough ones are for sweeping the interior earthen floors.
Today I had a complete body wash in 1 litre of water. My Mum told me when one does this, 'you wash down as far as possible, wash up as far as possible, then wash possible!'

THE DEVASTATION OF THE FLOODING


Sunday 8 August 2010
At tea time, I was using socks to wash our bedroom windows. Two other members of the group were intending to go to a group meeting, and I wasn't going to bother, then Laurel said she would wait for me to finish and we should go up together. Luckily I did.

We heard shouting and saw the villagers up on a high ridge. The mountain burn servicing the village had swelled with the torrential rain. High in the summer pastures, over the days of rain, a huge natural damn had built up. The water had increased in volume and eventually burst through, sweeping down the field fringed gorge, carrying fields, trees and animals with it. It was finding it's way to the Indus.

Sonam, one of the villagers, had been up at the summer pasture, the 'drok', in Ladakhi, and had seen the water building. He anticipated the water breaking through. He ran all the way back to the village to warn people. The village girls wash their clothes in the river. The children play around in the shallows beside their siblings. Sonam reached the village in time to give 15 minutes warning.

When we were up on the ridge we heard a terrible rumbing fill the air. The land shook beneath my feet. Energy shock waves reverberating up from the gorge hit my body, as from safely on high, I watched a mini tsunami power like cosmic vomiting over the land. The water was grey, brown, thick, turgid. Wave upon wave of liquid energy forced down the gorge. The huge stone road bridge was swept away in a second. The power in the air was exhilarating. The devastation was heartbreaking. Mature trees cracking and snapping like thin, dry sticks in a fire. Huge boulders and wedges of earth whirling in the water, as lightly as tumbleweed blowing along the American plains. Nothing can withstand such elemental force.

Some villagers were crying. Some of our group were crying. People were shocked and bewildered.
After time, the volume of water became constant. Luckily, it had swept a natural dog leg to the Indus and avoided the houses of the village. I figured if there was going to be another surge there would be a window of 30 minutes before it reached. If there was another surge, there was a possiblity of it breaking the dog leg open and sweeping along the main street. My family's home would be directly in the path of the water. We would need to spend the night high up.

Some of us decided to go down to our homes to fetch water, warm clothes, supplies. Our home and the mayor's home were the lowest down. But, I figured if I went now, I could get stuff and be out of the house before anything else happened. I went down the hillside to the houses. The village was a ghost town. Everyone was up on the ridge. I walked along the streets to Kaptopa house. I can see it now as I write this. I got my suitcase, put Laurel's spectacle case in it, made sure there were warm jumpers and my first aid kit. The house is low on the land, I heard the water's deep menacing growl filling the room. My heart was racing, my blood pounding in my ears. I could see myself doing things as though I were watching someone in a film. At times I thought I could hear the river becoming louder. My rational mind had worked out the probabilities, and I trust my own judgement, but another part of me was thinking - what if I had got it wrong? Gathering things together, I sent love from my heart and soul to my family at home, and I thought to myself, ' If I am swept to the Indus in a power of muddy water, I've had a good life and I'm ready for the next stage of the journey.'
On one hand I wasn't scared at all, and on the other I was terrified out of my wits. Years ago, a fisherman who survived his boat sinking, told me that we have two minds. I said I understood what he meant, and that day, in Takmachik, I experienced it.

BEING TAKEN TO THE GOMPA BY MY FAMILY


The evening before I left Takmachik, Stanzin, Jigmet Dorge, Jigmet Chopel and their cousins, took me and two friends to the gompa. Stanzin got the key from someone and we made our way up the hillside, past the line of little prayer wheels. The little prayers wheels are set in the wall at shoulder height and as one walks past one can send prayers spinning to the universe. For the last few days Phutsok Dorge had been spending a lot of time at the gompa. I was happy about this, I thought at this time we needed all the help we could get.

Stanzin unlocked a large wooden door. We entered a big sized room, with aged wooden posts and flooring. The facing wall contained lovely, golden statues of Buddha. The things in the room felt dark and worn and old. The Buddhas glowed with a strong, golden hue. The children and Stanzin performed honouring movements. I walked forward and went to each Buddha in turn. The atmosphere is very respectful and I felt touched by it and very emotional. A cousin picked a length of wool about the size of his thumb from out of a vase and started working with it. Jigmet Dorge took a cloth and was wiping a small golden goblet. Stanzin asked me to go outside and wash my hands. When I returned she gave me a box of matches and motioned me to the little goblet which now had a woollen wick floating in a sea of almond oil. I lit the lamp. It was on an aged wooden altar in front of the Buddhas. I plucked hairs from my head and took money from my belt and left them with the flickering lamp on the altar.

We each took time to give thanks or petition the Buddhas or offer reverence. It was very spiritual. Although I cannot be regarded as a Buddhist, I felt something fill my heart and mind, and was awed and humbled by my experience with these people in the holy space.

In our own time, we made our way back to the open courtyard in front of the main door. I looked out over the houses of Takmachik to the swollen Indus. I looked out to the immense mountain ranges stretching to meet the blue infinity of sky. I felt the power of the land and the sky and the Buddha.
Stanzin and her family group took me to three different temple rooms inside the gompa. Each had a different feel, but each was part of an overarching whole. Stanzin made an almond oil lamp for me to light in another of the temple rooms. I asked for protection on my journey. At each altar I left three hairs from my head and money. I wanted to offer something of myself.
We processed through each temple room in turn, and locked each door behind us. Our journey was slow and organic and reverential. I felt time immemorial in these rooms. They were foreign to me, but I was not a stranger there.
Eventually we made our way out the gompa. I knew with certainty I would be looked after on the journey that lay before me. I could sense the Buddhist God in the skies over Ladakh.

ISLAY TO LADAKH AND BACK


Ladakh is a semi autonomous area in the region of Jammu and Kashmir in Northern India. I travelled there to stay with a local family in their home and participate in their way of life.
To get there, I crossed Taglang La, which at 5,359m (17,684ft) is the second highest pass in the world.
I arrived in Takmachik and met my lovely family on the 3 August 2010. There are four generations living in the one house. The oldest is Phutsok Dorge at 90 years, and the youngest - and wildest is Jigmet Chopel at two and a half years.

I believe that life in Ladakh is similar to the way life was in Islay and Colonsay at the time when my Dad was a wee boy. The people grow their own food. There is not a predominant money economy. In the villages there are no shops to speak of - if you don't work and create the food yourself, you will go hungry. For me, the difference between Islay and Ladakh is not specifically one of geography, but one of time.

I helped the family harvest apricots, turn the daal, fetch water, brush the floors with appropriate grass brushes. Life was peaceful, deep, hard working, joyous. Until the rain started. Heavy rain is unheard of in Ladakh. The annual rainfall is 90mm. This summer it poured for days. The roofs of the houses leaked, the apricots drying in the sun were ruined, the daal drying on the rooftops was soggy and turning mouldy.

One night we heard shouting, everyone had to move to high ground. The river that serviced the village had swelled to become a huge, raging torrent. It had burst it's banks, carrying fields and animals with it , and was now heading for the village.
I ran along a high ridge of rock. Looking down, it was like a mini tsunami, everything just crumpled before the awesome power of water. Fully grown trees snapped like dry matchsticks. The huge stone road bridge was swept away in an instant. Nothing could have held against the overwhelming weight of the water. It had found it's way from the mountains to the Indus. That night, and for three nights after, we all slept in a concrete built community centre up on a ledge on the mountainside.
Our village was now cut off from the outside world. Luckily, people could still walk out over a pedestrian bridge. We heard news of the terrible floods in Leh, 700 missing, five road bridges swept away. The village next to ours had lost 20 souls. There was not much to do to help our villagers. Their fields had been swept away, we were eating their food supplies, there was only one hand pump to supply all our water requirements. There were no communication links to the outside world. Our families in the UK didn't know if we were alive or dead.

Time to leave, I thought. I packed a small haversack with my sleeping bag, a first aid kit, a warm jumper, my diary, and my toothbrush and like India Anna Jones, set off. It was a bit scarey, but it was better to be actively doing something, than waiting to be rescued.
I crossed ravines by tree trunks lashed together, by metal step ladders placed over the stones on each side of the torrents. I got lifts in the back of huge stone dumper lorries. I also got a lift from a colonel in the army, who gave me an apple and whisked me along the burst banks of the Indus to Leh.
On arrival in Leh, I delivered a hand written letter to the Lama son of my Ladakhi family, informing him they were all safe. I waited at the airport for six hours for a standby seat to Delhi. In Delhi, I bought the last available ticket to the UK, and slept in the airport until my flight was called.
Before I left, both the grandmother and the grandfather of my Takmachik family put silk scarves around my neck. They were to keep me safe on my journey. I arrived at Heathrow, took the first train to Glasgow, then got the ferry to Islay.
And when I was safely back in my own home, I took off the scarves.