The Mibby Post

Date: March 15th 2005

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Recent news about home stays and the Sham Trek in Ladakh...

(written by Louise with some additions from Matt -Put your message machine on and shut your door –this is a long one!!!!)



Likir is so beautiful with the Zanskar Range outside our guest house windows. We watched the very tips of each peak catch fire in the golden sunrays of the early morning while most of the mountains remained various hues of blue. Likir is a small village with stone pathways connecting houses and fields –so many stones; stone walls like you’ve never seen, weaving around gardens and yards, enclosing narrow winding paths leading to Chortens, more diverging pathways, another house or field.



Really, everything made of stone, and houses made of earth –mud bricks with wooden framed windows –all white washed and much bigger than I would have expected. Our staff member, Jon, (who previously has lived in a farm program in Likir for a month) put house size in terms of the ancestral estate. Houses are in families for hundreds of years so they keep adding on- for the relatives, animals, storage, etc. They don’t use all the space, especially in the winter and no one has much furniture.



In winter, people are mostly in the kitchen which is usually the only heated room. Three or four generations will huddle in the dimly lit warmth every evening; sipping tea, preparing food, laughing, playing with the young ones, singing and talking. The kitchen stove, made of ornate tin and only a couple feet high is fueled by small wood harvested from willow trees, or dried dung. We sit on the floor on mats or Tibetan rugs with small low tables. Old people sit on racks of cardboard egg flats stacked and tied together to lift them off the floor a little.



Whenever we come into our house or visit any other, they immediately offer us Cha-ngarmo or sweet milk tea and biscuits while they sip away at butter tea all day. They all have a firm belief in the powers for good health of chuscol, or hot boiled water. They don’t think anyone should drink cold water (especially in the winter). To mix boiled water with cold water and drink it is to invite inevitable poor health or death. When the girls get diarrhea, they all chime in that it’s because they are letting themselves get too cold and they need to drink lots of chuscol and wear more layers of clothing.



Basically, Ladakhis wear their coats and often hats or scarves inside and outside. They can’t believe I’m warm when I only have two sweaters and a long underwear top on. They are so generous unconditionally –and kind. There’s something too to be said about being in a cohesive culture of one people with longstanding traditions and beliefs –makes us Americans with our anything goes or relativistic attitudes seem wishy washy.



The food in the villages by this time of year –end of winter –is very simple, but good: potatoes, rice, bread, onions, some carrots and of course the home-made noodles in the tukpa or soup. Oh, and delicious dahl! We had a couple of eggs two mornings, which the girls were very excited about. It’s not so hard for me to be vegetarian, but Anna definitely misses meat and so do Lily and Marley, though they are some what satisfied by eggs and cheese.



Lily has been most adventurous food-wise and with spicey foods, Anna is close behind and of course, Marley holds her own. Fortunately for Marley, our new Ladakhi friend, Pumy, joined us on the trek and convinced the host family on the first and second night to prepare a special plate of French fries just for her! Back at SECMOL, you would see us making grilled cheese (from individually wrapped little squares of American cheese and white bread –all that is available in Leh this time of year) sandwiches quite often!



Anna got quite sick with sharp pains in her belly on the first night in one of the mountain villages on the Trek. We made her a hot water bottle and she slept, but the next morning she was still very weak and out of it when it was time to start out. Thank goodness for the “fat, farting” (as Anna described them) ponies!! She was able to ride most of the way that second day with me holding her, except for near the top of the mountain pass (too steep for ponies) over which Jon and Tashi (our guide) and I basically carried her.

Luckily, I had homeopathic dysentery which she doused for and I gave it to her every 10-15 minutes. By the time we got to the next village, the runs were gone and she lay in her bag reading all evening.



[Matt’s insert here...]

The next day, Anna was fine as we hiked in brilliant sunlight through canyons and passes until we reached the base of the final, highest pass (13,500 feet). Everyone was nervous as we approached this part of the trail as we could see from the distance, a snow covered, 60 degree mountain face with an unbroken plain reaching at least a 1000 feet to the top of the pass. The trail of soft spring snow was only a single boot width in places as it switched back and fourth towards the summit.



Students, staff and ponies carefully picked each step as, like a line of ants, we marched higher and higher. A miss-step, or fall would have certainly sent us careening down a snow field with little chance of arresting our descent until we reached the bottom hundreds of feet below. It was a sandy surface beneath the snow, and no large rocks or cliffs below so I do not believe it was life threatening. But as I held Lily’s hand up the entire slope, I was at times thinking of how I might respond if she pulled me off balance from behind. I think we would have been in for quite a ride.



Everyone behaved bravely –the girls were really amazing; refusing pony rides and pushing up and up for close to an hour. All gave quite a cheer when we reached the tremendous mountain splender and safety of the top! Snow covered peaks extended into the distance in every direction as far as the eye could see. Cookies were handed out by our guide while everyone rested before the final descent into our last village of the trek.



This last part of the trip was not without interest. Anna had convinced me to join a couple others in a precipitous sliding fest down a snow shoot that dropped a hundred and fifty feet or so when I heard a call from Louise down below that someone had hurt her knee. Visions of ACL injuries or worse were entering my head when news came back up the trail that it was only a severe bruise from a pony kick! (We were told not to walk too closely behind). So Anna and I had a grand time surfing down the slide, she on her butt and me riding my pack like a boogy board on waves.



[Back to Louise’s recollections of our trek...]

We saw Snow Leopard tracks twice on our journey. Most of the group went on a side trail to a higher village on the second night, while I stayed in a lower one an extra night to rest with the few sick students. We thought tracks would only be seen at the higher elevations, but due to unusually heavy snow fall, the leopards have come down really low. We saw tracks just outside this first village as well as the final village on the trek.



This final mountain village, Ang, had had 12 animals killed by leopards in the previous week. Pommi was shown a sheep by the villagers that had a huge puncture wound in it’s neck from a leopard, but survived. They asked Jon if we had any sheep medicine, but we didn’t! Ed had a blast tracking the leopard’s paths through the village and above. He observed that they always kept a stone wall between them and the center of the village; crept under very low tree branches, leapt from large boulders at least a dozen feet before landing and all in all, lived up to their reputation as one of the most illusive creatures in the world.



More reflections on our home stays (Louise and Matt)



All the houses have flat roofs and a ladder or stairs to go up. The roofs are walled with dry hay and or alfafa for winter feed and sticks for fuel. They are festooned with prayer flags and are a great sunny spot to hang out and see the views. Many older people will assemble there in the middle of the day, spinning with a small hand spindle and chatting with each other while they’re warmed by the sun.



The first village appeared like a tiny medieval enclave perched on a gravel peninsula high above a deep canyon and dwarfed by a vast expanse of white peaks. Terraced fields, held back by a series of low stone walls, descended to an uneven cluster of three or four, mudstone dwellings. Huddled in a protective formation with prayer flags and hansom windows, these homes formed narrow, two-story passage ways in a maze like fashion. Very old, and seemingly unchanged, walkways might reveal a wondering Yak with pointy horns or an elder villager circling the small gompa in the center of an inner courtyard –chanting and fingering his beads as the sun dropped behind the mountains and the gentle night sky enveloped this remote community.



All the rooms that our family stayed in had two entire walls of windows with amazing views of canyon’s and mountains. Five out of seven nights, we were in unheated rooms (extra blanket provided!). We woke up with thick frost inside the windows and a reluctance to make the trip to the freezing stone outhouse with hole to squat over. I’m not sure how cold it was, but at least 20 F or colder.



The last two nights we had heat –once a gas heater that felt like a hot bath! And once a little portable bukari or woodstove for which they poked a hole through the ceiling to ventilate with a narrow pipe. While the windows made rooms very warm in the daylight sun, the cold at night definitely makes me appreciate heat and hot water!



In the mornings we asked for water to wash with and got a tin of warm water to splash our hands and face clean. Otherwise we were quite dirty on the trek with one change of clothes for the week, often wearing all our layers at the same time.



Back in Leh, we enjoyed a warm welcome and hot pizza (Ladakhi style!) served at our now familiar Oriental Guesthouse. A bucket of hot water to wash our whole bodies in, our one change of clean clothes brought in from SECMOL, and we made the transition from the timeless remote village life to bustling Leh with the now unfamiliar sounds of internal combustion engines, horns and shouts. Fortunately, we could still gaze out to Stok-Kangri, the 20,000 footer among it’s lest lofty, white mountain companions encircling Leh, reminding us of wilder places and the mysterious lives of our hosts in the hill villages we had just left.

Hope all is well with you, our family and friends!

Matt and Louise and family...


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