On September19, Phil, Kirsty (Mark was going on a trek with his father) and I headed west from Leh, down the Indus, by jeep. The Indus Valley narrowed considerably into a rocky gorge, with a few villages along the way. We soon passed the confluence of the blue-gray Zanskar River, coming from the south, and the muddy Indus. It took a while for the two rivers' waters to mix.
Our first stop was Basgo, in a pretty little side valley with a ruined fortress and two monasteries accessed by a steep, but relatively short, climb. The monastery prayer halls were locked, but there were great views from the rooftops. We could see the villagers harvesting barley below. From Basgo we headed west, then north into a side valley to the monastery at Likir, on a rocky hilltop. It had some beautiful prayer halls and more great views of the valley and surrounding stark, brown mountains from the rooftops. The barley fields here were already harvested. From Likir we headed to Alchi across the Indus, where we had lunch and then visited the small, old monastery right next to the Indus, a little unusual because usually they are on mountaintops, or at least up above the nearly village.
From Alchi we recrossed the Indus and continued downriver. We turned off the main road at Khalsi, where the main road crosses the Indus to head to Kargil, and instead continued along the Indus on a narrow road through spectacular canyon scenery, with a few villages of barley fields and many more trees than upriver, some with leaves turning yellow. After about 40 miles on the narrow road along the river, we stopped, gathered our backpacks, and hiked about 10 minutes on a rocky path to the village of Dha. We passed women carrying crates of tomatoes on their backs to a waiting truck and we passed tomato fields on our way to our guesthouse, arriving just before dark. Dha is at only about 9500 feet, a few hundred feet above the Indus, so we felt relatively warm, and even had dinner outside the guesthouse under a grape arbor. We had delicious fresh tomatoes and even had grapes and peaches for desert.
Dha is a small village, with only paths (the road is below, along the Indus), and with 38 families and 250 people, 100 or so of which, we were told, are away working. The people are called Dards or Brokpa, and are very European-looking. One woman we saw had startling blue eyes. One theory is that they are descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great. Another is that they are descendants of the Aryans who migrated into India and Europe thousands of years ago and have never intermixed. They are Buddhists, but with animist traditions.
I took a walk for about an hour an a half before breakfast the next morning, walking through the village and along the fields to the upper end of the village and then along an irrigation channel to a bridge over a tributary of the Indus. Dha is a very beautiful village, with an abundance of agriculture after the harsher conditions upriver. I passed trees of apples, apricots, pears, peaches, mulberries and walnuts. There were patches of tomatoes, beans, cabbages, barley, millet and alfalfa, and some other stuff I didn't recognize. And lots of flower patches. The older women in traditional dress wear their hair in three long braids with bright flowers on the tops of their head. I also passed lots of rock huts with wooden doors that house goats and sheep at night. Many were being let out to graze.
After breakfast our guesthouse host gave us a great tour of the village, passing the houses and fields, with great views down to the Indus and up and down the valley. He knocked some walnuts off the trees and we cracked them and they were delicious. We headed up to the new fields, created in the last 20 years by a second irrigation canal coming from the Indus tributary, and to a rocky pinnacle with prayer flags, with great views of the village, fields, and beyond. Afterward, I walked around on my own and came across two very European-looking old men sitting in the sun. They motioned for me to sit on a rock next to them and we had a sort of conversation. One man had a handlebar mustache and the other had three coin shaped objects on the edge of one of his ears. Nearby an old woman in traditional dress was shelling apricot pits to get to the nuts inside. Apricots were also drying on nearby rooftops.
It had clouded up in the late morning and we left about 1, after lunch under the grape arbor. Before lunch a man was boiling barley nearby to be used for beer, using very little wood, but a lot of straw and some dung to keep the fire going. We came back the way we had come the day before, crossed the Indus at Khalsi, went into a side valley and then zigzagged up switchbacks on a steep brown mountain, rising about 1800 feet, with great views as we ascended. About 4 we reached Lamayuru, at about 11,500 feet, with a monastery towering above the town on a rocky pinnacle. We checked into a guesthouse and then I watched barley being threshed by a team of two yaks and three dzos (half yak, half cow) led by a guy who guided them in a circle by a rope (they were all tied together by their horns) and sang while he did so. Two or three women kept adding bundles of barley to the threshing circle. Nearby a man and two women were winnowing the barley with wooden pitchforks. It was all quite dusty, but I watched for more than half an hour. At one point they added another dzo to the team. The two yaks were on the outside, and all the animals kept trying to eat the straw when they got the chance.
I then walked up to the monastery, passing through the little village as goats and sheep were herded into their evening quarters. One old woman was particularly energetic with them, scampering up the inclines rapidly and throwing rocks at them. It was a steep but short climb to the monastery. It was past 5 and the prayer halls were locked, but I could walk around the main building, with prayers wheels on the sides, and the two chortens next to it, with stupendous views of the valley and town below and the mountains beyond on all sides. One section to the east was a sort of South Dakota-syle badlands. An older monk with a hand-held prayer wheel was making a circuit of the monastery and chortens, and I talked to two eleven year old monks and one fifteen year old monk, the latter with a Yankee wool hat with "NY" on it. They spoke some English and were quite friendly. Later I went through the courtyard of the monks quarters and about 15 young ones, including the three I had talked to, were loudly reciting prayers, trying to memorize them, here and there around the courtyard. An older monk was also there, apparently to make sure they stuck to their lessons. He was carrying a switch.
From there I walked up to the hill above the monastery, with a little temple and prayer flags, for even more spectacular views of the monastery below and the countryside beyond. I made it down to the guesthouse just before dark. At dinner there were two Brazilian woman besides the three of us. I spoke some Portuguese with them, as one didn't speak much English, and it slowly came back to me, though often Spanish or Italian words came out instead. They had spent 3 days at a lecture by the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala.
It was sunny the next morning and I got out about 7 and walked along the road down past stacks of barley, men and women transporting barley to town by donkeys, and denuded barley fields with yaks, dzos and donkeys grazing on the stubble. There were great views in the early morning sunshine back towards the monastery high above the town. After breakfast the three of us walked up to the monastery, visited the prayer halls, and walked all around, including up to the prayer flags above the monastery for those fantastic views. We descended the monastery and left Lamayuru at noon, heading up to a pass at about 13,800 feet, with rocky, serrated ridges near the top. We descended into a high valley and then crossed another pass at about 12,500 feet and then descended into the scenic Wakha Valley. Stopping at the town of Mulbekh, we saw a thousand year old, 25 foot high Maitreya Buddha carved into a solitary, steep rock right next to the road and then took a narrow road above the town to a ruined fortress and two restored, but apparently empty, small monasteries. The site was fantastic, with a narrow, rocky access path to the monasteries and great views of the valley and the Zanskar Range beyond.
From Mulbekh we proceeded to nearly Shargol to see another monastery, this one seemingly wedged into a hillside. Shargol is the dividing line between predominately Buddhist and predominately Muslim areas, and we had begun seeing mosques and women and girls in headscarves. It is only 20 miles from Shargol to Kargil, but it took us an hour and a half, not so much because the road was bad (though it wasn't good), but because it was narrow and there were a lot of trucks coming the other way, including a convoy of maybe 100 army trucks. They are the kings of the road here. We got to Kargil a little after 5. It's at 9200 feet, so feels warm. The main street was busy with stollers,. All the women and girls are in headscarves, and there are at least two posters of the perpetually scowling Ayatollah Komeini (the Muslims here are Shia), though among the currency on display in the restaurant we ate in last night is an Israeli note. The people are very friendly.
It was overcast and even rained a bit today, though it has cleared up in the afternoon, and I took a walk around town, in part along the fast-moving Suru River, which flows to the Indus. Lots of people were on the main street and school kids were just getting out of class. The "Line of Control," the de facto border between India and Pakistan, is only a few miles away, less than 5 I think. We seem to be the only foreign tourists in town and have spent part of the day arranging the next leg of our trip to the Zanskar Valley. We leave tomorrow morning.
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