The Mibby Post

Date: June 16th 2005

More Mibby from Louise...

Well, we wrote a long Mibby (we never sent due to lack of email and a shortage of computer time) about our adventure over the kardang-La, the highest moterable pass/road in the world at 18,300 feet to Nubra Valley. It’s a one lane road with traffic running each way every other day. It took us 15 hours to go 140 km (usually a six hour trip) including lots of snow, getting stuck behind several army trucks several times as they got stuck and unstuck, pushing our bus out of a slushy rut at 18,000 feet (with incredible views of the karakoram range calling us onward), hours of diesel fumes, lunch finally at 10:00 at night –Maggi noodles and milk tea and finally arriving in Hundar at our homestay at around 11:30pm where we were welcomed by a kind and generous couple and their 2 young daughters (both named Stanzin) who ended up taking all 17 of us in for 3 nights, feeding us and hosting our student, Grey’s , birthday party.

We were rewarded in our long journey by a beautiful village with hundreds of flowering apricot trees, Bactrian camel rides, sandunes we literally swam down, people plowing their fields with teams of Yaks and an illegal trip over the restricted zone to have lunch in our friend Jigmet’s village. I wish I could say going over the pass back to Leh was uneventful, but it was not. Though not nearly as long trip, a huge army truck that was breaking down every couple of hundred yards (four an hour at a time) slowed our way considerably as it refused to allow us to pass until Matt, Becky, Chosang and I ran in front of it and blocked it’s way until it agreed to pull over to let us by.

The next weeks were a blur of student projects and wrapping things up –and another trip to Changtang –beautiful, stark, high and of course snowing. We stayed at our friend and guide, Tashi’s, hot spring “resort” where we all enjoyed many hot baths and watching boiling water bubble out of the rocks along the Indus river. Anna, Lily and Marley entertained themselves by boiling eggs in small, bubbling pools until they were broken or hard boiled and ready to eat!

Some of us went on a day trip to an extremely remote nunnery –they welcomed us warmly and fed us a delicious lunch. We hiked into a valle where nomads summer with their Yaks on the banks of a high altitude lake (which was mostly still frozen) our experience there was a highlight for me of the trip -one of those rare, so remote and quiet places. We got to see 3-4 foot high Black Neck Cranes. Then we saw two dogs that had followed us into the valley chase the cranes out onto the lake.. Also hikes into wide valleys that beckon you around just one more bend –in search of the last bend that opens into a high field where yaks are all playing. But as we know, it’s not getting there, it’s the journey.

Meanwhile, Matt and the girls caught a 5 hour terrorizing jeep ride (crammed in the back with two unknowned, but friendly Ladahkis) with a friend of Tashi’s who was second in command of the Kargil District police. He had a driver who flew at top speed around every hair-raising corner towards Leh where Matt and the girls returned early to meet Pauline. Along the way, the Police man saw a distant relative coming from Leh to a funeral of a common uncle. So they backtracked half an hour to attend the funeral (while matt and the girls hung out in the jeep waiting) and then back on the road.

Pauline joined us for our last two weeks in Ladakh, which was wonderful –We were so excited to share some of it with here, and I think she fell I love with the people she met and the places she saw. She joined us on our trip to Bombay and the beach south of there –an immersion into a very different and very hot Indian culture. Big flowering trees, warm ocean, India cows and water buffalos and heat!

We left Delhi minus 16 teenagers- and rode a 12 hour overnight bus to Dharamsala in the green foot hills of the Himalayas -home of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Gov’t in exile. Jon and Ashley (our co-teachers) came too –so we all unwound together and have been enjoying lots of fresh fruit, milkshakes and pancakes. Dharamsala –wow. It’s never quiet here. I actually woke up at 5:30 this morning before the cars started and it was just birds and dogs working out their territories.

So our simple hotel room has a balcony that looks ou over our perch into the plains below. The first day here we had about 20 huge vultures in the treetops below us. The town clings to the side of steep forested slopes as full as possible with houses, hotels, shops, cars and people. A constant din of noise prevails -birds, cars, people, monkeys, music, monks in the monastery below us practicing their traditional instruments for hours –a sensory overload –hard to tell is there a rally going on in the strets or is that the birds? Even at the D. Lama’s temple there is clanging symbols and hours of monks debating. Oh and the beggars with no hands and the fact that no one should drive here. Cars squeezing by eachother in narrow streets, horns honking, people wedged against the buildings trying not to get run down by the passing Rickshaw, motorcycle, jeep, bus, cow.

Indian and Tibetan residents, lots of Indian tourists, tons of Western travelors all dressed in their new Indian garb, monks, nuns, the ever present mangy dogs and wild monkeys. The other morning we woke up to a mandala ceremony on the roof adjacent to our hotel balcony. For about three hours, monks were chanting and making food offerings to a fire built on top of the Mandala.

An amazing mix of smells –pine forests, cars, food, spices, feces -one moment you smell flowers, the next –literally shit –and every possible burning smell as we rode the night bus from Delhi to here.

I guess you could say it has been a sensory overload since we left the peaceful desert and vastness of Ladakh.

This place is relaxing, comfortable and crazy, but it grows on you too. We have all become accustomed to seeing monks in their maroon robes and the stray dogs and sari or sawar kameez clad women, so many bright colors. So may delicious mangos. And though we are winding down and excited to see friends and family and swim in Curtis Pond, there’s a lot we will miss and will bring home with us.

Lots of love to all. –They just started banging a big gong in the Monastery below us every 10-15 seconds, and now horns –another ritual?