|
The woman beside me
vomited in my lap but I was too far gone to care. It was 1am and we
were approaching our 30th hour packed, knees to chins, inside an
ancient bus as it coughed and spluttered up and down barren
Himalayan mountainsides towards Leh, capital of Ladakh. My head was
swimming from fever and altitude sickness, my mouth so caked in
phlegm that swallowing was impossible, and white lights flashed
agonisingly behind my eyes.
As we climbed towards the Lachlung La, a pass 250m higher than the
summit of Mont Blanc, the groaning engine spluttered and died.
Turning the ignition had no effect, so the driver tried a bump
start, letting us roll backwards down the bumpy road towards the
hairpin bend and the 500m drop below, then slamming the bus into
reverse with a mighty jolt that made my head throb still harder.
After a dozen tries, and a few false starts, he conceded defeat and
ordered the passengers off. We were left by the side of the
windswept road, in the dark, gasping in the thin air and shivering
in the cold, with no option but to hitch the remaining 160km to Leh.
That was 1993, when I came to Ladakh as a gap-year backpacker, with
a group of long-haired mates dressed in yak-wool jumpers and
'ethnic' trousers, determined to explore India's remotest, most
isolated and most exotic corner. Not for us the beaches, bikinis and
all-night parties of Goa or Thailand; we would cross the Himalayas
to this little-visited region, cut off to the south by mountains and
to the north by the sniper-lined borders of China and Pakistan.
Getting there from Delhi took us nine days of buses and trains, at
the end of which lay a guesthouse with one tap for eight rooms and a
hole in the ground for a loo. We loved it.
So much so in fact, that we stayed for five weeks, trekking through
the high valleys, exploring the ancient monasteries and bedding down
in a variety of hovels. We went off to university with a working
knowledge of the AK47, a clear understanding of the difference
between amoebic dysentery and giardia, and still none the wiser
about how to talk to girls.
Fifteen years on, the trip from Delhi takes an hour, during which a
light continental breakfast is served. Thanks to India's economic
boom and the explosion of domestic airlines, there are three flights
a day to Leh during the summer tourist season. The plane leaves
Delhi's smoggy plains and soon we're flying north over hundreds of
kilometres of snow-covered peaks and glaciers, unmarked by any sign
of human existence. Gradually the snow starts to grow scarce, though
the mountains remain just as high. The monsoon clouds travel the
same route as the plane, bringing welcome rain to the baking plains,
before being forced upwards by the Himalayas and covering them with
snow. But the clouds are spent before they get this far north into
the mountains, leaving Ladakh a high-altitude desert.
Viewed from the roof-rack of a bus, or the window of a plane, its
scenery is majestic, otherworldly. The wide, flat valleys are
completely barren, covered in rocks, shale and scree in infinitely
varying shades of grey. On either side the peaks soar up, dry and
dusty save for a glittering strip of snow along the highest summits.
In this parched land, where rain is all but unknown, human life
relies on water from streams fed by melting snow and glaciers. So
just occasionally, in the midst of miles of utter desolation, you
suddenly see a flash of green where a stream and a few hand-dug
irrigation channels support a little linear oasis of trees and
terraced fields. There are poplars and willows, miniature orchards
of apple and apricot, plots of wheat and barley, and sheep, cows and
yaks grazing in tiny pastures - the lilliputian scene rendered all
the more perfect by the fact that on the other side of the handbuilt
stone walls, the yawning expanse of bone-dry wasteland stretches to
the horizon in every direction.
The plane drops steeply into the wide Indus valley, banks sharply
past the crumbling towers of Spitok monastery, and I'm back. It's
not just the journey that's different this time. I'm here to try out
a luxurious new way of seeing Ladakh, one that costs about the same
per night as my entire previous visit. An Indian company called
Shakti has renovated traditional houses in three rural villages, so
guests can experience authentic Ladakh without scrimping on comfort.
Visitors spend a few nights at each house, passing their days
trekking, rafting and exploring by 4x4.
Our first house is in the village of Stok, in the shadow of the
6,121m Stok Kangri, a peak that dominates the Indus valley around
Leh and that we'd climbed on our last trip. Afterwards, we had come
down to the village and spent the night on the floor of a farmer's
house, our jubilant spirits comprehensively crushed by the plague of
nibbling red spiders that emerged after lights out. Now, 50 yards
down the road, I feel a pang of backpacker guilt as I take a cold
towel and chilled lime juice from the waiter by the door and head
inside.
There are ensuite bathrooms; double beds with thick mattresses,
fluffy pillows and soft white duvets; chests of drawers and bedside
tables in dark sheesham wood, custom-made in Jaipur. On the flat
roof are wicker chairs and a pagoda giving shade to the embroidered
cushions where we sit and take in the view, across the Indus to Leh
and down the valley to where the monasteries of Shey and Thikse
perch on distant ridgelines. The village is at 3,650m and so, under
orders to do nothing on the first day except rest and acclimatise,
we loll about reading for the afternoon. Later, tea and biscuits are
brought and we start a pre-dinner game of Scrabble.
Over a three-course supper (pumpkin soup, then big copper bowls of
spiced chicken, aubergine, spinach, cauliflower, rice, potatoes,
mutton momos and so on), one of the Shakti team explains how, by
lounging around in such gracious ease, we are actually doing our bit
to help the locals. At the start of this year, the company leased
the village houses from the families that own them, then carried out
extensive renovations, creating three double bedrooms for guests in
each. Traditional Ladakhi houses are large enough that the families
can carry on living in the rest of the property, while a team of
Shakti staff - chef, waiter, drivers, guide - moves in to tend to
the guests, travelling with them from house to house.
The company sees it as a sort of third way, getting money directly
into developing villages, without swamping them with hordes of
backpackers or plonking a five-star hotel in their midst. Shakti
makes charitable donations and uses local staff and suppliers.
All very well, but a travelling retinue? A private chef? The old me
recoils at the thought of having become a 'low-volume, high-value'
tourist, of the kind so prized in responsible travel circles. We
used to revel in inverted snobbery about the different strata of
travellers in India. Most respected were those who carried nothing
but a 'roll' (a few clothes rolled in a blanket tied at each end and
strung over the shoulder). Then there were those, like us, with
(painstakingly) battered old rucksacks. We sneered at those with
holdalls, and laughed out loud if we saw a suitcase. On this trip I
don't carry my own luggage once.
Looking back it occurs that we might have been spending rather more
time obsessing about fellow westerners than getting to know India.
As we take a slow, acclimatising stroll around Stok, I'm shocked
when our guide explains the most basic Ladakhi word - jhulley -
which, depending on inflection, means hello, goodbye, please, thank
you, and I'm sorry. Shocked, because in the five weeks of our
previous trip we'd totally failed to pick it up.
Of course, backpackers can rightly take pride that 100 per cent of
their cash goes straight into the community rather than being carved
off by travel agents and tour operators, plus they are often the
first to pioneer destinations most in need of foreign money. But it
also has to be said that once there, they do tend to seek safety in
numbers, sticking together in increasingly westernised ghettos.
Every backpacker in Ladakh heads straight for Leh, but on Shakti's
week-long tours, it merits only a brief visit. Instead, after two
nights in Stok, we move on to Taru, a farming village of 400 souls,
just half an hour's drive along the valley from the capital, but
which doesn't merit even a word in the Footprint, Rough Guide or
Lonely Planet books. Perhaps there's no reason it should - there are
no guesthouses, no restaurants, no cafes. Before Shakti renovated
one of
the houses, there was nowhere for tourists to stay at all. So though
there are the hand-towels, the Scrabble, the Italian wine and
Laphroaig in the drinks cabinet, we are actually that rarest of
things, the first tourists in a new, untouched, destination. OK,
it's not first contact with a lost Amazonian tribe, but as I go for
a twilight jog, the villagers all beam as they shout 'Jhulley!' and
the children scream with delight as they chase after me.
Lolo, the
18-year-old daughter of the house we're staying in, is back from
university in Jammu, so the following afternoon she leads us off on
a walk through the village to visither sister Angmo, a teacher in
the school. The leaves on the tall, thin poplars are a bright autumn
gold, and the villagers are sitting at the edges of the fields
toasting barley for their store cupboards before winter sets in.
Irrigation streams burble all around, and after crossing a
succession of
wooden bridges, we reach the dappled shade of an apricot orchard. It
feels a bit like rural Tuscany marooned in an idealised
pre-industrial age and I find myself fantasising about living here.
Inside the school, the charming kids in green uniforms and red
school ties shyly rise to wish us 'good afternoon', but the harsh
reality of life in Taru suddenly bites when I look around and see
the classroom doesn't contain a stick of furniture.
There are currently
five teachers and 21 pupils, aged four to 16, so when Angmo asks us
what are the main differences with schools in the UK, instead of
crying out 'where are the desks?' we mutter something about how much
worse our pupil to teacher ratio is back home. Like any good,
self-flagellating liberal, I go on to quiz her about the negative
impacts of the arrival of tourism in the village. Are the outsiders
destroying the local culture? Using up all the water?
Sowing seeds of dissatisfaction that risk tearing apart the fabric
of the community?
A flicker of
bemusement crosses her face as I stare hopefully. 'Not at all,' she
says. 'We are so happy to have tourists - it's good for the children
to meet new people from different cultures and it's good for the
village too. I hope we'll get more and more tourists. Please, you
must come back next year.' Thank goodness there's still the longhaul
flight to feel guilty about.
A flicker of
bemusement crosses her face as I stare hopefully. 'Not at all,' she
says. 'We are so happy to have tourists - it's good for the children
to meet new people from different cultures and it's good for the
village too. I hope we'll get more and more tourists. Please, you
must come back next year.' Thank goodness there's still the longhaul
flight to feel guilty about.
Angmo goes on to
explain that the really big change in the past four or five years
has been the arrival of television. We discuss the potential
downsides but it's clear that it's a bit of a godsend. For six
months of the year, Ladakh is snowbound and there's nothing to do
but sit indoors. Temperatures drop as low as -40C, rooms are heated
by burning dried yak dung, and ice melted for drinking water. 'We
work like yaks for six months of the year, we sleep like marmots for
the other six,' goes the local saying.
In such a harsh
climate, even Shakti can't guarantee luxury. Though the bathrooms
boast the company's own range of organic beauty products and the
taps are gleaming, often during our stay there's no hot water, due
either to freezing pipes, falling water tables or power cuts.
Instead we are given buckets of hot water from the kitchen - this
must be the most expensive holiday in the world where you wash from
a bucket.
But, though you can
obviously get used to the cold towels, morning coffee and biscuits
in bed, and the surprise picnics laid out on white tablecloths on
the banks of the Indus or under the shade of a willow, over the week
it becomes clear that what we're really paying for is a privileged
glimpse into Ladakhi life, easy access to a concentrated experience
of another culture.
Most tourists visit
Thikse Gompa (meaning monastery), but our guide, Siddartha, makes
surewe're there at dawn and takes us to the roof, where two monks
stand waiting in flowing red robes.
As the first rays
of morning sunlight stream down across the valley, they blow a
salute through conch shells, warding off evil and announcing the
start of prayers. Next Sid takes us to sit with the monks, some as
young as eight, in the main gokhang, or prayer room, where they bang
drums, chant and blow horns in a ceremony that's both chaotic and
strangely calming. Then we are shown into a back room, to see the
venerated statues of the gompa's protective deities. I'd come to
Thikse before, but didn't see half of this.
The following day,
Sid arranges permits for us to drive up to the Khardung La, at
5,602m, the world's highest motorable road. In Ladakh, height
records are all around and ever more esoteric - there's the highest
ice-hockey pitch, the highest golf-course, the highest gas-bottling
plant, but this is the big one.
At the summit, five
times higher than Snowdon, he gives us prayer flags to tie to the
rocks, explaining that as we do so, we must shout the traditional
call and response: 'Kiki soso ... Lyargyalo' ('May good energy
prevail over evil'). As the flags flutter in the wind, he says, they
will scatter their prayers for world peace and harmony. Below us, a
convoy of army trucks is regrouping at the pass, belching fumes into
the crystal mountain air, before heading north towards the Siachen
Glacier, the front line of India's long-runnning dispute with
Pakistan and Ladakh's other superlative, the world's highest
battlefield.
Our final house is
in Nimoo, another rarely visited village, and is owned by Tashi
Norboo, who happens to be the goba, meaning village head. He's also
the amchi, the traditional medicine man, and the chorpon, the man in
charge of irrigation. He leads us around the village, dressed in his
goncha, a deep maroon robe, explaining how the village is split into
quarters and his deputies build and knock down little stone dams
every six hours to ensure they all get the same amount of water. To
preserve water, washing is banned except on Sundays and Wednesdays.
He talks about
plans for a massive new irrigation canal to counteract the receding
glaciers; about how the villagers pool their labour to build houses
and tend livestock; about his daughter, who, rather than
concentrating on his traditional remedies, is studying medecine at
university in Delhi; and about how delighted he is to see tourists
coming to the village.
As he takes us off
to have a go at archery, all the other villagers stop and greet us
respectfully. Just like in Westminster, money buys access, and in
Nimoo, we're with the boss.
Essentials
Tom Robbins travelled with Cazenove + Loyd (020 7384 2332;
cazloyd.com), which offers an eight-night trip to Delhi and Ladakh
from £3,687, staying one night at the Imperial hotel in Delhi and
seven nights in Ladakh on a fully inclusive basis, including return
international and internal flights with Jet Airways, the services of
guides, chef, driver and porters, as well as rafting trips and
walks. |
