Journey to Ladakh

In the Summer, 1996, issue of Synapse there was an article by Helena Norberg-Hodge about a cultural region in the most northern area of India, called Ladakh. It was a surprise to me indeed to see that article about a place the existence of which almost no one knew. At the time of that publication I had in my hand airline tickets to Delhi, India, and from there to Leh, Ladakh! I was going on a trip to the Himalayas, to visit the people, experience their religion, and to go trekking and camping in the greatest mountains in the world. The arrangements for this trip were made through Journeys International, a travel agency in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

My intention in writing this article is to offer some first hand impressions about the people I lived with for almost three weeks.

Most people ask me why I did this. Some who know I am a philosophy instructor at Northwestern Michigan College wonder if it was an educational pursuit. At the time I went, I was a part time instructor at NMC and had not taught Eastern Religions for several years. Although the trip was educational, that was not why I went. Although it was an experience of being in a third world country, that was not why I went.

Every time I am asked why I did this, I feel I should have a good answer, and I don't. Not yet, at least. I didn't travel to Ladakh for any useful reason that would justify such a trip. It seems I made this trip for its own sake. I went to Ladakh "because it was there." Being there and being someone who has been there seems to be why I went there.

I should also say, since it may make a difference in how this Ladakhi Travelogue is considered, that I had never been outside the United States, except to Canada. Acquiring a passport, securing a visa in the passport to enter India, and going through "Immigration" for real, was a new event for me. This, along with an endless list of firsts, marks me not an experienced traveler. Far from it!

I left Traverse City in the midst of the Cherry Festival and flew to Delhi by way of Detroit and London. My first experience that I had arrived somewhere very different hit me as I left the plane, stepping into the chute connecting to the plane to the Indira Gandhi airport building. It was around midnight and I caught a blast of air coming in through the seams where the chute and plane meet. It was the hottest air I ever felt, combined with an oily and spicy aroma. This hot air and aroma now mixed with a rush of people all streaming down this gangplank, pouring into a dimly lit corridor, no one looking at all familiar, no reassuring signs every 20 meters, down long corridors, following the crowd (like I had a choice!), down a long staircase into a huge room with little desks at the far end. This was Immigration and they wanted to see all my important papers. All connections to the familiar and orderly Western world were being untied. I had arrived. Next stop, Leh, Ladakh.

Ladakh is inside the Himalayas, and Leh, as well as every village, sits in a cleft surrounded by peaks. The plane in its approach to Leh virtually falls into the airport whose runway is too short due to mountains rising at either end of it. The city of Leh and the other villages I visited sit at an elevation of about 12,000 feet. For several days I had to overcome being light headed along with a recurring headache and fatigue from the slightest exertion. All this passed and a feeling of exhilaration and energy remained.

My traveling companions were all Ladakhis who worked for Journeys. I had a guide who spoke English quite well, although almost no one else did. There was a cook and a horseman who managed five donkeys. My guide and I traveled by Jeep from Leh to the Village of Temisgam about 40 miles west of Leh. We walked back over the next ten days and over many mountain passes. This was my real "live-in" experience with the Land and the People of Ladakh.

Yet in the midst of this vertical desert are lush, flourishing villages. They appear as bright patches of green on an otherwise brown-gray rugged landscape, sometimes referred to as a moonscape. These villages have an abundant water source which comes down from the surrounding mountain peaks. Mountain tops which catch and command the rain and snow, hold it frozen. The intensity of the sun melts the glaciers which come rushing down mountain clefts. The villages receive these rivers from on high and distribute them into innumerable channels throughout the village. The villagers' homes sit around the perimeter of the tillable land which is crisscrossed with these irrigation channels, all gravity fed. Flat stones are used as "switches" to turn water on or off the to various fields so the land can be worked or crops can be harvested.

Most villages are self-sustaining in their grains and vegetables, oil, milk, and meat. There are goats and sheep, cows, and dzo and dzomos for milk and meat and wool and leather and labor and on and on. Dzo and dzomo are male and female cross between cow and yak, very suitable for the climate and very rich in production.

The monks and nuns are the accomplished practitioners of Tibetan Buddhism, filled as it is with so many rituals, groaning chants, prayers, elaborate ceremonies, clanging cymbals, ringing bells, thumping drums. Everyone practices as much as can be managed given the obligations of daily living but the monks and nuns do it all and do it well. Every village had its monasteries and devout villagers come and go there in a regular series of visits, men and women, young and old.

Not only do the villagers come to the monasteries but the monks go to the people. There are no churches or central places of worship in the village. Instead each family's home is a church. Those with less means have a corner set aside for this and those with more have an entire room set aside as a chapel. Special pots and pans, cups and saucers are in every home for Buddhist rituals which occur as needed in the life of the family -- birth, puberty, marriage, sickness, or death.

The trek back toward Leh from Temisgam Village was actually an archipelago of monastery visits, an extended pilgrimage tandeming from one holy site to the next. Monks came in all sizes and ages, some as young as 8 or 10 years old. We visited monks in their schools, monks in their cells, monks in the midst of chants and cymbals and drumming. We ate in medieval monastery kitchens with huge wood burning cook stoves with boiling pots of rice and turnips (monks are strict vegetarians but they do use butter). During one lunch with the school master he gave me a Ladakhi staple &emdash; raw barley flour mixed with (quite sour) yak butter and milk. And always tea, served very creamy with lots of sugar.

Everything was served with smiles. And respect. And generosity. No Ladakhi I saw ever ate anything without first offering half of it to another. They were a graceful and beautiful people, living in the midst of the most rugged and demanding landscape and climate imaginable. And they let me live with them for those days and they fed me their food and showed me the treasures and truths of their religion.

Jim Valovick, 51, lives with Cathy and Caitlyn in Leelanau County. Currently he is a philosophy instructor at Northwest Michigan College. This trip was made in July, 1996. He also visited Germany and Italy with Cathy and finally visited Bangkok with his daughter, Caitlyn.

Return to the Index of Synapse 38, Winter 1996