Three-day Sightseeing Bachanalia

More or less, by accident, I have gone far over my sightseeing quota.

Saturday morning I was going to climb up to the palace, have a leisurely look around and call it quits for the day, but I my way I passed the Lala Cafe. There is a poster on the door of my guesthouse advertising walks of the old town starting from the Lala Cafe but I could never find the Cafe. Suddenly, there it was so I went in and a walk was about to start in a half an hour so I waited. The walk is conducted by LOTI, Leh Old Town Initiative, which is a local non-profit dedicated to the preservation and renovation of Old Town in Leh. Old town is built on the hill below the palace and has been crumbling into ruin since owners were leaving their houses and living elsewhere. LOTI will renovate their houses for them on a fifty-fifty cost basis but leaving the owners with full title to their property. Many owners have taken them up on this. LOTI tries to keep the exterior as it was while making the interiors inhabitable. They also have renovated other buildings such as an early traders' mosque. They are also installing covered drains throughout the old town. The drains are just channels in the middle of the sidewalk, and LOTI has deepened and cleaned them and covered them with a metal grill which in addition to improving drainage makes walking safer.

The walk is great. Their is a a lot of clambering and climbing up steep hillsides on only the faintest of paths, but I got to see the insides of many buildings I never would have seen and I learned a lot about Old Town's past, present and possible future. The towns are built on the hillsides to preserve as much arable land as possible. The chapels, and other religious edifices are beginning to blur but I took a lot of pictures until my camera broke and I hope they will jog my memory.

Yes, my camera broke. It suddenly stopped responding to any commands, and no troubleshooting has helped. So even though my landlord offered to loan me his camera I decided to go cameraless for at least two days. On Sunday, I joined an Israeli couple I met and their Israeli Chinese Medicine Doctor for a tour of Shey Palace and Hemis and Thiksey Gompas. It was my first ride outside of Leh and the landscape is stunning. The mountains seem taller than in the city and they go on, range after range. I believe Shey Palace has not been an official residence since the mid-nineteenth century when the Dogras, I believe, invaded Leh and deposed the king and moved him to Stok. Before that the king divided his town between Shey and Leh. I remember little of Shey Palace except the climb to the roof and my first panoramic view of the Indus Valley. Up until this time I had been impervious to the landscape of Leh. I thought it was beautiful, but it didn't get under my skin. That morning, the green fields along the river, the bare ground beyond and the variegated mountains worked together to lift my spirits and make me happy to be alive. Hemis is perhaps the most famous of the monasteries in Ladakh. It has a spectacular setting in a deep canyon with steep walls splotched with red from lichens. As we approached it we passed some women sitting by the road spinning thread and selling very small socks that wouldn't even fit the smallest of us. They were friendly and the children were charming and we went on our way. The monastery is many-storied and it was the first place I saw Tantric paintings of a demonic looking male being holding a female being across his hips in an intercourse position. It turns out these are usually in rooms where the guardians of the temple are kept but they can turn up anywhere. There was a set in a room that was basically a library. Here Talma suggested that we mediate for 15 minutes which was a great idea. I was beginning to flag and sitting for 15 minutes cleared my mind and gave me enthusiasm for the rest.

If Hemis is the most famous monastery, Thiksey is the most photographed. It is right and pours down the hill like a small Portola. In Thiksey there is a great room where the guardians are kept. It is small and dark and all the images are veiled and it looks very ancient, very elementary.

By the end of the day, I was exhausted but I signed on for another palace and two more monasteries the next day. The palace is at Stok where the king and his family are now resident. There is a great museum which includes the state rooms. It is not as spectacular as the museum at Hemis monastery, which is the best museum I have been in in India, but being laid out in the palace rooms, it is very interesting and some of the objects, especially the jewelry are very beautiful.

Then there were two more monasteries to go. Up until now we had been southeast of Leh, now we headed west on the Srinigar road. We saw Spitok and Phiyang. The sounds and images that are most present now are from Phiyang were a group of monks were in the middle of a seven day prayer sequence with drumming and small boy monks blowing trumpets from time to time. The wall paintings here were dark and hard to see but worth looking at with the sound of the chanting in the background.

Then back to Leh, where the Israeli doctor gave me an acupuncture treatment for pains I have been having in the hip area. He has a great beside manner. He has been traveling for months finding clinics to volunteer in where ever we go. He was at the monastery school at Spitok for a month so the head of the school invited us in for tea and we met some of his patients in the monastery. Yesterday, he didn't go with us into monastery but stayed at the cafe which is by a small dispensary and he helped treat a monk who had sprained his ankle playing football and another patient and then he went out and treated our driver.

Tomorrow I am taking it easy. All I have on my schedule is the Women's Association where they show a film on Ladakh in the afternoon and the Ecological Center which has information on Ladakh and a shop with articles from local craftspeople.