----------------------------Dorothy@TravelWithDorothy.com--------------------------------- In this issue…………......…....... …………………………………………………………….

Letters and Prizes:…………What to Take and Wear and Eat:…………Travel Quote: ..........……..

"At last they entered a world within a world—a valley of leagues where the high hills were fashioned
of the mere rubble and refuse from off the knees of the mountains. … They skirted a shoulder
painfully for hours and, behold, it was but an outlying boss in an outlying buttress of the main pile! …
‘Surely the Gods live here,’ said Kim, beaten down by the appalling sweep… ‘This is no place for
men!’"…….KIM…. By Rudyard Kipling.

-------------------------------TOURING LADAKH-------------------------------------------
Was my face black! Normally, of course, one’s face is red, but I had just unearthed my gear from
the car in which I had taken a seat for the two-day trip from Manali to Ladakh over the Himalayas,
dumped it in the hotel lobby and headed for the restroom. At my first mirror in two days I was
shocked to see that not only my face was black, my hair was no longer white and had become a
dark grey with black highlights. And it wouldn’t come off, at least not with the soap provided by the
hotel restroom. Why hadn’t I used a dust mask? I had one with me, but it had never seemed bad
during the drive and the five of us had enjoyed talking and oohing and aahing together as our driver
made the many curves. Then I realized that it was not only dust, because the earth was not really
black anywhere through all those hundreds of miles of tremendous mountains, it was the exhaust
from the heavy trucks, most of them Indian Army, which we had often gotten stuck behind. I was to
regret not wearing the mask more than once in the following days and weeks.

Of course I eventually got the black off and appeared for dinner in a more or less civilized manner. I
knew conference participants were scattered around Leh in many different hotels but after the meal I
just went to my room and to bed. The 11,500 foot (or 3505 meter, depending whom you consult)
elevation of Leh was obviously affecting me, and I realized, the following morning, that the city of
Leh, situated as it was on a steep slope, covered at least a 500 foot rise in elevation. At the T’Semo
La Hotel I was near the top of the narrow valley which held the town. It was easy to get
"downtown": past the Ecology Center, the Mona Lisa Restaurant (all outside with little rivulets
running about the tables)a school, a huge sign warning of the dangers of tuberculosis, over a bridge
where below me were locals washing clothes and hippies washing feet, past Hotel Khang La Chhen,
around a curve and onto a vaguely flat shoulder of the mountain where the tree-lined Bazaar was
filled with shops. Leh Gompa, a buddhist temple, was at the west side and the muslim mosque
Jamma Masjid to the east at the top (uphill) end of the busy block of the mall. Once beyond the
bazaar going downhill again, a warren of roads, some new and wide enough for cars, some old and
narrow led in a variety of directions. On foot I only went as far as the polo grounds, located on a
lower and larger shoulder. The archery grounds adjoined it on the downhill side. And it took me
several days before I got that distance on foot. Each time I turned to go back uphill again I
wondered just where that measurement of 3505 meters had been taken and why the guide books
didn’t tell me the distance in elevation from top to bottom of the town. Of course, all Indian hill
stations are built up and down the hills, so I guess I should have been prepared.

LETTERS AND PRIZES This month a cheap gewgaw of a crystal of smoky quartz goes to David in the UK. I purchased the crystal in Leh and it probably came from the Karakoram range to the north. David
asks about the trip up the Manali Highway from India to Ladakh. For that answer I must refer you,
David, to my issue titled "The Road to IXL" and the part you are inquiring about happens to be in the section only available to subscribers of this series. However I will whet your curiosity by suggesting that at
the tent camp at Sarchu (at about 15,000 feet of elevation) you stay well away from the rear of the
line of toilets once the sun has gone down and it is dark. Because "behind them—for, hill-fashion,
they were perched on the edge of all things—the ground fell sheer two thousand feet to Shamlegh
midden." (From KIM by Rudyard Kipling) It was actually only a two hundred foot fall at Sarchu.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Leh's main road junction was now at the very bottom of the town where my road from Kulu and
Manali in the southeast met the road from Leh’s airport situated about 5 km ( six miles?) from the
city and to the west, (the same road which eventually reached to forbidden Srinagar after a two-day
trip down the Himalayas much like the one I had just taken up the Himalayas from the east). But Leh
was now much larger than the description I had read by a wandering Britisher 100 years ago, who
had been overwhelmed at the sight of the Mani walls at what was then the lower end of Leh. It had
been such a landmark to him that as my transport had originally turned up the Leh hill I had watched
for them. Walls of rock a meter high and several hundred feet long, each plate-sized oval rock being
smooth and flat with a prayer - most often Om Mani Padme Hum - carved on it. Quite a few taxi
rides later, on my way from Leh to the center where the convention was being held, I finally saw
them. Not at the outside of town anymore, pointing the way to the holy sites for footsore pilgrims or
lengthy yak caravans, but well within the city now just beside the new bus station with the archery
grounds not too far above.

Leh is actually 2 km (or is it miles?) above the true bottom of the wide valley where the Indus River
currently flows, widely spread by islets of vegetation. There are not many bridges. One we had
crossed as we entered the Indus valley east of Hemis Gompa. Another crossed in a more
stepping-stone manner just east of the main junction, allowing the Ladakhi royal family to reach their
current palace at Stok, as well as providing Ladakhis who farmed the rich river basin with access to
transport for their crops across to Leh, and tourists with easy access to the monasteries on the
Indus’s south bank. Very little water is added to the Indus during its Ladakhi run. While snowmelt
from the hilltops feeds the many little brooks and rivulets from which the people of Leh get all their
water, it has to be carefully channeled throughout the slopes of the city. A reservoir on my map
proved to be empty when I walked over to see it. It was only the size of a swimming pool anyway.
Not much moisture falls in Leh and the snowline is far away.

When I had entered the Indus valley of Ladakh originally from Manali the map had shown that the
road was very close to Hemis. Hemis Gompa is one of the major monasteries and I had hopes that
all five passengers would want to see it while we were so close, and wouldn’t mind tipping the driver
a bit to make the side trip, delaying our arrival in Leh about an hour. But by the time we had
negotiated the 5328 meter Taglang La (pass) we were all so tired (and I didn’t realize, so dirty) that
I didn’t say a word as we crossed the Indus bridge well above Hemis to the better paved road
direct to Leh. But I knew I wanted to see Hemis, as well as the other monasteries to the east of Leh.

A conference field trip took me and a busload of tiny buddhist nuns (tiny in comparison with us few
Westerners) to the buddhist monasteries up and down the Indus valley. Most of the nuns were
young and chatted and giggled amongst themselves since they didn't speak English. They had shaved
heads and wore a habit of dark maroon. - After a morning of visiting eastward to Shey and
Tikse, Chemrey and Thak Thok on the north side of the river, our bus crossed the bridge that I had
crossed many days earlier coming from Manali and this time we turned west for the entry to Hemis
monastery. Perhaps it was the sunlight at that time of day (about noon) or perhaps the swirled walls
of rock were naturally as red as they appeared from a distance. I had read that the monastery itself
was well back, hidden up a side valley, but the red twisted rock walls, like some giant whirlpool
broken in half and turned on its side marked the entry very auspiciously. Then came the Mani walls.
By this time I had seen quite a few Mani walls but these were breathtaking. Skeins of them poured
out of the Hemis valley entry over the alluvial fan of an ancient river (which may well have carved the
entry rock walls). Blocks and blocks of them (I tend to think in Western city distances) all racing
from the mouth of the monastery valley and spreading to fill the approaches. In my mind now I think
of it somehow as similar to the "cornrows' so popular as a woman's hair style both there and here at
home. Of course the engraved Mani stones making up the walls had come from the fan of stones
filling the valley. The monastery itself was a disappointment. The gompa wasn't open when we
arrived and by the time a monk arrived with the key our lunch had already been spread on picnic
tables across the courtyard among willows near the stream. I'm afraid lunch won out for most of us
and afterwards I just managed a step inside into a preliminary tall corridor of faded red walls. The
valley at this point was really a steep canyon and I had the feeling Hemis was carved into a cliff, like
the facades of Petra. (Perhaps I should also mention that the lack of a dust mask on the Manali
Highway had caught up with me (for the first time) and I was medicating my terrible cough and
congestion with antibiotics and and vitamin overdoses. I've got to go back to Hemis again and see
whether the red ribbons of entry rocks and cascading Mani walls were really so astounding, or was
it swollen sinuses pressing against my brain?)---

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