Ladakh: Like no place on earth

Debating whether I should go to India had me wrapping myself in knots more than any yoga class ever could. I didn’t know what was holding me back. All I knew was that I didn’t feel particularly drawn to it either. Memories of the pungent smell of Delhi’s back streets and the overwhelming sense of overcrowding as the Mother Land bore down on me in all her glory didn’t evoke the type of feelings that made me want to pack my bag, kiss goodbye to the air conditioned comfort of 7/11 and Mango shakes, and wade in amongst the sacred cows and sadu’s.

So I decided. India was a no. After all I still had the sharp words of the Russian Psychic ringing violently in my ears – ‘Don’t go to India’ she said. Oh. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find that kind of warning particularly encouraging.

I couldn’t shake off this feeling that this wasn’t the case though. That indeed I should go. But try as I might I couldn’t picture myself in India. I just kept thinking of the Himalaya, of Tibet, those snow peaked mountains, epic and vast, their strength and their silence as awe inspiring as it is frightening and brilliant blue skies.

I had toyed with the idea of Ladakh, right from the get go, even before I left home. It sounded like some mythical, magical land, akin to Bhutan not only on account of it only having been open to tourists since around the 70’s, but because of its isolated existence tucked high into the mountains between the border of Kashmir and Tibet. For 90% of the year the roads are impassable and the places disappears until a blanket of snow. For this reason it didn’t occur to me that I somehow might be in the right place at the right time. Then two things happened - I had a conversation with someone, having mentioned none of this, who I was boring with my should I/shouldn’t I debate re: India. And the minute they said it – I’d go to Ladakh at this time of year, it’s the most incredible place on earth – it struck something deep inside, louder than a temple gong and I knew I had to go there. Then the next day, I was browsing through an old magazine in a coffee shop in Chaing Mai and the pages fell open on a double page spread about Leh, the capital of Ladakh. From corner to corner it was filled with images of breathtaking, open blue skies, snow capped mountains – just like the ones I have been day dreaming and dreaming about - and Tibetan monks in traditional dress. I could almost smell the Yak butter candles and toasty, aromatic Sampa flat bread.

I book a flight to Leh, without even thinking about it twice.

Two weeks later I am at Bangkok airport, boarding a flight to Delhi and it’s as if I’m already there. Men queue, nose to tail, all sporting impressive colonial mustaches, a beady eye and a crisp white collar shirt. Bursts of Hindi radiate from each and every one of them in some kind of disorganized exchange. Fast forward a few hours, a long flight, two curries and a night spent on the airport floor, I find myself soaring about the mountains that have filled my dreams. I feel like I have fallen down a wormhole into a far and distant land, untouched by common society and filled with magic and promise.

The sky is so startlingly blue and so stunningly infinite and intense I can’t quite believe I am here. What is it about this part of the world – this culture – that tugs on my heart strings like no other?

Down below I can see a tiny toy town, sheltered by raising mountains that utterly drown and encapsulate them. The tips of the planes wings are practically touching the peaks as we circle the airfield (the only flat surface for miles and it’s minimal at that) and prepare to land. How anyone ever found out this place is existed is almost beyond me. It is everything you would except and imagine from Shangri-La. Except this is real and it’s unfolding before me.

I start to spot small Stupas rising proudly, as if to greet me, and the old familiar site of Tibetan monasteries which have grown to mean so much and stir such longing in me. I am impossibly happy to be ‘home.’

Whilst I hold my breath, we touch down. It’s early. I’m jet lagged and utterly spun out from the altitude. I’ve just deposited myself about 3,500 metres above sea level after all. No steady assent when you fly in. The sun is up, but its easily only hovering above freezing. I jump in a little taxi and request to be taken to a little guesthouse a friend recommended, that isn’t in the bloody Lonely Planet. He drops me off, my jaw still nailed to the floor as I try to take in everything that this place is.

It turns out its full. I have no idea where I am, so start to wander in the direction of town, my pack weighing my down.

And that’s when it happens. I am walking down the street, happy, tired and disoriented - wondering where the devil I will find somewhere to stay, when I see him. Or maybe he see’s me. Either way, we walk over to one another, in a moment of instant recognition, despite having never met one another before.

Lassif is half French, half Kashmiri. He’s at least 40, has lived an interesting life, having ran away first to the Shivinanda Ashram before spending years learning with Osho in Pune, and now runs a modest jewellery shop on the edge of town. He is charming and full of charisma. We chat and he recommends somewhere for me to stay.

From this moment we are friends.

I know him, maybe from somewhere - another place, another time perhaps. Here, anything feels possible.
It may sound ridiculous, (in fact I have no doubt that it does) and that alone in this remote place I simply fell under the spell of a local, but it wasn’t like that. To put the recognition I felt into words even now is difficult, but I just had this overwhelming sense he was someone familiar. And the amount of peace I felt whilst in his presence was phenomenal, so much so that after an evening I spent in a tiny hut he’d erected on the side of his shop, mopping up rice with our fingers and sipping on spicy Kashmiri tea I started to avoid him, because all of this scared me.
It scared me that he knew me and it scared me that I had stumbled across this stranger, who seemed as if he was not a stranger at all.

At no point should this be misinterpreted for romantic love, because it wasn’t. I don’t’ know what it was, but it wasn’t that. The man had a child and a wife, who I liked equally, but with whom I didn’t not seem to share this unexplainable bond.

I keep trying to figure out why he came into my life like that – if there was some lesson to learn from him. But I’m not sure if it didn’t somehow pass me by.

One night I got very sick. I don’t know what caused it, if it was a stomach bug or the altitude or perhaps even the intense ritual I had just witnessed at a nearby Monastery during their annual mask festival, during which they danced to eradicate demons, but I returned to Leh feeling like I had one foot in reality and the other had slipped off somewhere. When I got back to my guesthouse I had a high fever and passed out for several hours, only to wake up so I could throw up.

I felt bad enough that I was frightened. I was beginning to think maybe I needed to go to hospital and that the Russian’s prophecy was being foretold. Someone in my guesthouse suggested I might have got Hepatitis from the water and there was talk of blood test with rusty needles if I did seek out local medical help.

There was no-one else nearby and no-one else I could trust, so I sought out Lassif. He closed his shop, brought me mint tea and came and gave me some kind of Reiki. Afterwards I fell into a deep, deep sleep and when I woke the next day I was fine.

When my time in Leh was drawing to a close, I could not bear the idea of leaving. There was something about this place that made me melt. Literally, the beauty of Ladakh and its people (with the exception of a monk who tried to feel me up on a bus!) became so overwhelming for my poor heart, conditioned to the western world and the western way, it was almost more than I could take.

The affect of being in such an open, friendly environment where everyone was so lovely to one another, where everyone said hello, where I could take little cups of ginger honey tea back to my guest house to fight the affects of the cold, as I curled up on a tiny straw mattress in a mud hut (with no heating), from a nearby Chaiwaller without having to pay for it really does something funny to you. This is a place where Buddists, Hindu’s, Sikh’s and Muslim’s live along side one another and carry a huge amount of respect for the faith of one another. It is a country flanked by trouble – Tibet, China, Kashmir/Jammu and Pakistan and yet no-one lives in fear and everyone is still smiling.

I have always been enchanted by Tibetan culture, but perhaps without the weighty influence of China there was something about this particular brand of spirituality/Buddism that was just more raw and more pure in its form.
It was not fake, colour coded or packaged up for the tourist trade, it just was what it was – a simple way of life, based upon compassion and community. It’s a real model for how society should and could be. Our lives may be richer and more convenient in so many ways, but for all the ‘progress’ we have made, we seem to have lost so much, become so disconnected and with it disheartened.

I can’t help but question if we’ll ever get that back and what the future if for somewhere like Ladakh, that is now starting to open its doors to tourism and with that, take on more western values which frankly just don’t fit or have a place here.