Our photos from this leg, including adorable videos of our Ladakhi nun friends, can be found here: https://www.icloud.com/journal/#8;CAEQARoQuWj_bg94JNNh9wuTyGGCSw;1F82C2D0-7EC3-43D9-B834-10F5F50BB82E
The ride was fast through winding mountain passes. In the late night the bus stopped at a roadside bar. The driver and his companion got out to have a drink. Several passengers followed after vomiting outside first. We were grateful much of the ride was in the dark so we could not see how close to the edge we really were. In the morning the sun rose to reveal the Himalayas. We drove alongside the Beas, a rushing, gushing, terrifyingly beautiful river.
The next morning at 5:45 AM we were out on the street waiting for a mini-bus to take us to Leh, Ladakh. The bus fit 14 plus a driver; we were seven polish, two Isreali, two Germans, a Brit, a Frenchman, an American and an Indian driver.
There is only one open road to get to Leh and we were damn lucky because it had been closed just two days before we set out. On the first day we stopped for two landslides and at a mountain mechanic for brake repairs.
We chose the journey split into the two ten-hour days. We stayed the night on the road in Sarchu in a tent camp. Each of us have so far chosen the most inconvienient times to get sick. For me it was the plane to Delhi. For Alex, he was debilitatingly sick for the days on the road to Leh, especially the first night. He had a boiling fever and immediately crashed on his cot in our tent when we arrived.
Our tent had a not-so-convienent restroom in the back. Behind a zippered door was a western-style toilet jammend into the ground. The waste we "flushed" down with a bucket of water went into a shallow pit on the other side of the tent wall. This created a strong and distinct latrine scent in our living quarters. Other than this, the accomidations were great.
Our guidebook recommended taking two days to get to Leh to ease into acclimatization, but this did not actually help. The elevation of the first night was 4,440 meters (about 14,500 feet). This was a big jump from Manali at 2,000 m. It would take us three days to recover to relative normality. That first night my heart raced in an attempt to spread more oxygen to my body and my head felt like a wrung-out sponge. When we walked up a hill or any steps we would need to sit down, breathless as though we'd sprinted.
On the second day we crossed the highest point either of us may ever go: 5,328 meters (17,582 feet). It was hailing sharp balls of ice there as many of us hopped out in t-shirts and sandals. From here it was all downhill to Leh which is at only 3,300 meters. The landscape on the second day was rough and barren. We wore scarves to cover our mouths to keep from sucking in the ubiquitous dust. Our bags and our bodies came out of the bus covered in a heavy layer of Himalayan dirt when we finally made it to Leh. I hardly exaggerate on the conditions of our 20 hours in the bus these two days, but I will not hesitate to say it was worth it. The scenery was more breathtaking than the thin air. We spent hours and hours gazing out our window speachless at the world we saw.
When we made it to Leh we did some guest-house shopping with our new Polish friends and found a decent place. We bargained down from 1,200 ruppees to 800 and collapsed again on our bed. We were so glad not to be in a hurry because we took the next few days slow to acclimate and recover our energy. In the meantime, we explored Leh and have a few yak cheese pizzas.
When Alex's fever went away and when we could climb the stairs to our room without needing to immediately sit down, we ventured up the hillside to see the palace gompas. The monk at the door who granted us entry told us that the giant Maitreya statue (a future Buddha) is new at 25 years old, but the wall paintings and the temples themselves are over 600 years old.
We saw an advertisement on a telephone pole for a meditation trekking retreat in a couple of days, so we headed over to the office of Open Ladakh to find out more. There we met Vivek, the founder and teacher. We signed up and the next night we took a taxi to Stok, a village 10km from Leh where Vivek's family lives in Dhamma House. The location is georgeous and far quieter than bustling Leh. Vivek's family, his wife, two young boys and his brother and sister, very sweetly took care of us while we were there. We slept in tents in the yard and meditated in silence with six other people for two days.
On the third day we went for a silent, day-long trek into the mountains. We saw yaks! And many trains of donkey schlepping lots of gear for trekking groups up and down the passes.
On the second and third day of the trek Alex started to feel ill again. The altitude does not agree with him. We had both planned to go to a small nunnery in a village called Sabu the next day, but Alex stayed behind and I went on my own for three days. On the fourth day Alex joined me. This is when the elder nuns, the founding teachers, invited us to stay at the nunnery for the rest of our time in Ladakh. They proposed we play with the young nuns and teach English. They also promised one day to accompany us to close-by monestaries. We happily accepted.
Gephel Shardrubling, roughly translated into English as successfully spreading the wholesome way, is a nunnery perched on the side of a relatively small, rocky mountain. In the meditation hall Alex was continuously distracted by the view of the eternally snow-capped peaks.
Over the seven (or four) days and nights we stayed with the sisters we fell in love with them. There are 13 nuns living there. The students are ages 6 to 17. They live and learn in a four-room center. They use an outhouse and the kitchen and pantry are in a seperate building as well. We imagine this reality is very cold in the winter time. They have a few toys and books that have seen a lot of use over the five years the nunnery has been open.
Five and a half days a week they study math, Hindi, English and Buddhist scriptures from 6 AM until 8 PM, interspersed with meals and time to play. On Sundays they do laundry, clean the rooms and are free to roam about the area. The three nunnery dogs follow them everywhere they go.
Alex and I had many rounds of make-believe tea and chapatis. We played lots of games taught to us in the Ladakhi language with hand gestures. One of the games was Ladakhi "Duck, Duck, Goose". Another involves a stack of tile pieces one team knocks over with a ball of socks. In this game, the defensive team has to hit out all the oppositie team with the sock ball before the offensive team successfully restacks the tiles. We played this several times before we realized there were two teams! Later the teacher translated how the girls laughed so much at how no matter what team was defending, both Aex and I would be running from the ball. We shared in the laugh. Over the week we shared countless laughs.
The girls gave us Ladakhi names: we are Sister Dava (pronounced 'dawa') and Brother Dangzar, meaning moon and moonlight, unable to be seperated. We desperately wished we could memorize all their names, but we had lots of trouble. Ladakhi people have two names and they are all challenging for us. We called them "ane-le" which is the honorific way to refer to a nun. When it was meal time they came running and said to us, "Sister, brother! Welcome to lunch!" (or breakfast or dinner...)
On our Saturday there Alex, Sister Muskit, Sister Chosdon and I made my mom's famous pancakes with bananas for 14 people. Everyone did their best to convey they liked them, but we know they do not quite fit into the habitual Ladakhi palate. The teachers opted not to use mango jam with them but chili powder instead.
The animals that live there, a cat and three dogs, come and go as they please. The dogs, like all Ladakhi dogs we've seen, have parasitic flies that live inside their fur. Dava, the yellow one, was my favorite pup. The white dog was Alex's favorite. He is the most vocal protector of the girls. Alex called him the little white lion. The big dog has been with the nuns since they came to live in Sabu, and he never leaves them. Even when they go out in a taxi, he jumps in to stay by their sides.
In our English classes we practiced conversational questions like "how are you?" Their automatic response to this question is "I'm fine, thanks. And you?" We taught them different feelings like 'happy', 'sad' and 'tired.' Their meditation temple, in the Tibetan tradition, is incredibly colorful, so we played a game where one person runs around the room and points to things and the group would shout the color. I taught them to do the hokey pokey to practice names of body parts. They love to sing and dance, so we also sang several versions of the ABC song. The group taught Alex "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes." We attempted to teach Simon Says (Jacques a dit, en français) with half success. We could not seem to translate the part about not doing when Simon doesn't say, but we had a lot of fun taking turns saying "Simon says, touch your head" and following along. Alex and I cannot stop smiling when we remember everyone sitting down in half lotus and closing their eyes when a Simon would say "Simon says, meditate!"
On Sunday, the girls' holiday from school and pooja (chanting and meditation), the five youngest girls and we went on an expedition to the top of the nunnery's mountain. This hill, we were told, is famously thought to be wise. We are still not sure if taking energetic little women in flip flops that do not know what "be careful" means was especially wise, but it was georgeous. And once we were all back down unscathed, I found it fun in retrospect. We first visited a meditation house nestled into the hillside and from there we trekked up to the peaks where lots of prayer flags are strung up. The girls ran all over, jumping from boulder to boulder. They made me feel my age, feeling my anxiety at the perilousness in contrast to their carefree exuberance. On the way down I finally found an expression that registered: "Let's do walking meditation!" And to my relief, this worked and we all made it to the bottom again just fine.
These nuns gave us enormous gifts of sweet openness. It seemed to be a special opportunity to spend a week with two foreigners, and it definitely was for us. We were surrounded with happy little people excited to see us and share their worlds with us. Tiny hands held ours with huge hearts that taught us about acceptance, generosity and care. I felt then as I feel now: we are blessed in this life to have experiences so grand.
On our last day with the nuns, two of the teachers accompanied us to two of the most famous monestaries in Ladakh. First we went to the 17th century Hemis monestary, which is at a higer elevation than Sabu. We felt light headed and winded walking up inclines all over again. The monestary was georgeous. Many of the paintings on the walls were painted with gold.
Next we visited Thiksey Gompa. The sisters told us that this monestary is built as a sort of replica to the Dalai Lama's home in Tibet. It is like a mystical white village built into a mountain. Because we were with monastics, we were invited to eat and have tea along with the resident monks. There are elderly monks living there all the way down to a little four year old boy in crimson robes.
When we returned to the nunnery we said an all-too-fast goodbye to the young nuns. It was terribly sad. Some of them cried and so did I. Sister Namdol, our teacher there, told me not to cry. Everything is impermanent and need not make us suffer; this is the lesson of the Buddha. This may be true, but feeling the heart open, even in saddness, is a beautiful part of living. This part, at least, does not make me suffer.
And again, before 6 AM the next morning we were off to the airport in Leh. This time we flew because we were heading all the way to Chennai. From the tip top of India all the way down to the tropical bottom. We are back in the heat with just under 50 days left here.
Merci for reading. Hugs et bisous!
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