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Campaign on Ice: A working trip to Ladakh
Welcome to Kushok Bakula Rimpoche Airport, Leh. The temperature
outside is -12 degrees Celsius. I had arrived in Ladakh, but a
Ladakhi welcome had already been bestowed on me the previous day at
New Delhi airport, where I was met by a smiling Stanzin Norbu from
the 17000ft Foundation (17000ft.org). I was here at the invitation
of Sujata and Sandeep Sahu, founders of 17K, to help them provide a
training-orientation to Heads of some 100 Government Primary
Schools, where they had set up their School Libraries as part of
their programme with rural Ladakhi schools.
It seemed at first sight that there were just two things in
Ladakh: ice, and space. From my bedroom window, on the ground
floor, I could gaze upon the sunlit spires of mountains on the far
shore of the Indus. I had been given a list of clothing material to
buy and I got it all from Decathlon here in Bangalore, the most
important part being a Goose-Down-Jacket-with-a-hood. I had
thermals and skiing-gloves and fleece sweaters and fleece caps and
a balaclava and skiing-clothing ( form-fit trousers and shirt ) and
a baggy waterproof pair of trousers. I had been asked to take
Diamox tablets for altitude sickness and I felt no ill effects
whatsoever.
I spent the first day getting used to all the clothing I was
wearing and took a walk into Leh. All that rustling of clothing
made me turn around more than once, but I was alone. Never have I
seen snow-swept, sunlit streets so desolate: there was not a person
in sight, it could have been a ghost town. I did trudge up into the
market street to finally see some cars and people. Breathing was
not easy that first day, and it was not just the cold. The words
thin air took a new, precise meaning for me once again.
The training began the next day and I spent two days lecturing
in Hindi to the Heads from Govt Schools there; some of these
schools are located at 15,000 feet ! Training began at 1120 (after
the first period; it is after all a college for Teachers) and ended
at 4 pm on both days. Most of these HMs are were very young, the
average age must have been 25-30 not more. Schools in Ladakh are
shut from December to February; that is when the Teachers complete
most of their training for the new academic session. The training
was held at the DIET (District Institute of Education Training).
The training rooms had hot stoves called Bukhari-s, three of them,
with chimneys leading through the roof. All the
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Staff members sat in groups around the bukhari-s and every hour
or so, a woman would come in and add firewood to the stoves. Lunch
was a strange tea-and-bun affair of 20 mins; on both days we hit
the town restaurant for lunch at 430. I had some interesting food,
the best being a thukpa, a spaghetti-laden soup with veggies; very
satisfying "winter" food.
The training was on Libraries: how to set them up, how to grade
books, match these to children and their reading abilities, and how
to measure that the Libraries have impact. We also talked of the
various creative activities that we could conduct in Libraries. At
the end of the two days, the Principal of the Institute Angmo
Phuksong gave me something I was not prepared for: she honoured me
with a long silk scarf, called a Khatok, which she formally hung
around my neck. It is a very Ladakhi way and also a very big deal,
I was told.
I was reading Pankaj Mishra's An End to Suffering: the Buddha in
the World, an apt book for this place. The travels and thoughts of
the author mingled with my impressions, as I saw Abbaley and
Ammaley, our hosts, sit in the sunshine working the beads and
reciting the Name four lakh times. There were shrines with large
red and yellow prayer wheels at street corners; a steep hill in
upper Leh seemed to have a monastery on top, but it seemed beyond
me to attempt to get there. I contented myself with listening and
humming Tyagaraja's Manasa Yetulortune in that lazy morning
sunshine and talking in Tamil to the two house cats, who insisted
that I part with some of my puri-s.
It snowed on two days, both times in the morning and continuing
through most of the day. It was not snowing at 6 AM when I awoke,
and the garden was bare; by 630, there was a carpet of white that
grew 2 inches as I watched. Across the Indus, the mountains turned
completely white that morning. On both days, when the sun went
down, it very rapidly grew really cold. Folks, the geese know what
they have on. The goose-down jacket kept me completely comfortable,
as did the thermal leg-wear. My shoes however, did not prevent my
toes from freezing, despite the double layer of woollen socks that
I was wearing ! Blankets in the room were two very heavy razai-s;
plus a sweater, a head cap and the room heater was on. After a
while, I either lost my head completely or I got used to the cold
perhaps or the thukpa was working, for I was walking around
barefoot in the room and to the tiled loo and even washing my feet
each time with cold water. Water was delivered to the room; two
buckets of ice-cold water and a half-bucket of hot. Brushing,
shaving and laving myself with the cold water was, well, fun. On
the last day, the bucket had pieces of ice floating in it too!
The day before I left, we were free, so we drove 30 kms to
Nimmu, west along the Leh-Kargil highway. Stupendous scenery with
vast open fields and slopes
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and towering red-brown mountains covered generously with snow.
Nimmu has a Bihari-run shop that sells deadly samosas but sadly,
the joint was closed that day. While we waited for our friend Dawa
to catch up with his friends here, we wandered across the street,
the highway that leads to Kargil in the west. An Army truck with
snow chains over its wheels was parked there, the driver looking
like a Telugu man for all I could tell. Across the street, a tiny
and brilliantly coloured J & K Transport bus was parked and
ready to go, the driver insistently honking to coax the reluctant
passengers out of the tea-shop. Must have been just the thin air,
but I thought I saw Mithun Chakraborty drape a blanket over Anita
Raj's shoulders as they both climbed up and sat on the freezing
roof-top. Koi shaque? The bus disappeared in a flurry of snow and I
hummed Zeehaale Muskin mukon baranjhish, but my voice would just
not come out in the cold. My nose was also hurting with an
insistent bleeding, a common affliction for me when I visit cold
places.
A short drive and here we were at Sangam: the Indus, flowing
from the South-East, meeting the Zanskar, coming in from
South-West. The already broad Indus was almost completely frozen
over but for two 20-feet wide streams separated by icy islands; the
Zanskar was laden with pieces of ice, and even the water had a
different colour! Paani da, rang vekh ke, Akhiyan jo hanjhu rul
de....certainly the sparkling sunlight, the champagne air, the
untouched snow and the immense peaks around me had my eyes
streaming. I walked as far out on the ice as I could; I swept away
the inches of snow to see the frozen ice-glass water of the Indus.
And took a GPS reading that put me dead in the middle of the Indus
( 34.165305N, 77.332089E ). Lovely!
Ladakhi girls are good-looking. Period. And the children are
adorable! As I departed, my host's little grand-daughter culled
some apples from her rosy Kashmiri cheeks and offered them to me as
a parting gift. Abbaley gave me a hug and Ammaley, a handshake.
I know that I will go back there again, to be once again part of
the Campaign on Ice.