Friday, October 12, 2007
Diggar La
Day 3 of the trek, we wake to an unexpected morning frost and water dripping through our tents onto our sleeping bags. The frost is an indication of an oncoming snowstorm and after breakfast in the dining tent - delicious as always and something that will be sorely missed - the leaders, our Himalayan coordinator Namgial, and our guides and pony men meet as the sun rises to discuss whether we should mount the highest ascent of our trek during the snowfall or to delay. After some deliberation we decide to proceed with the climb. Camp is packed up and we begin our ascent of the Diggar La which stands at 17,230 feet. The day started out easy enough but it soon became excruciatingly painful and slow. We ran into a terrible snow storm and high winds the whole way up, and our hands start to lose circulation, so the guides tell us to roll our shoulders and spin our hands to get blood flowing to them. Several students begin to have headaches from the altitude and Kat, one of the girls, falls ill enough that she is placed on a pony and led so that she does not overexert herself. I am fine except for a natural shortness of breath at such a high altitude and I carry the items of several other students who are suffering from the altitude. We climb for what seems like five hours in the snow, finally making it to the top. I scream out "Kiki Soso Largalo," the Ladakhi phrase of accomplishment on ascents which roughly translates cheesily to "The gods have made me victorious." We take pictures at the summit, take a bit of a rest, and enjoy the most incredible view. We reach camp fairly easily on the descent, running down the mountain. Dinner is quick and we all fall asleep easily. The next morning we enjoy a more leisurely walk but on the way hear several rumbles. The sun is out and I ask one of the leaders, Erin, about the sound. She suggests that the snow is melting has started rolling down the mountainside we climbed the day before. An avalanche has perhaps occurred, wrath of the gods, but Diggar La has blessed us with its passage.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Sabu Oracle
Before the trek, we drive through a desert and past dozens of squatters' houses - in Ladakh, a squatter isnt someone who is living in a home that isn't theirs, but a person who builds a part of a house on a piece of land to claim that property on the off chance that development comes to it. The leaders have told us that we are going to visit the Sabu Oracle - essentially a woman who the Buddhists and local villagers believe has the ability to be possessed by spirits and then channel their supernatural powers to give advice to those who seek it.
We walk into a house that we've stopped at, remove our shoes, and enter a room with dozens of pots and pans hanging, mats laid on the floor facing incense burners and cups filled with salt, water, and candles, and a shaft of sunlight dropping through a hole in the ceiling directly onto where I choose to sit. A woman enters the room looking haggard and with her hair wet, and kneels in front of the incense. She lights the incense and starts to chant, and the room fills with the scent of cinnamon. She begins to chant, quietly at first and then building to shrieks interspersed with singing. She throws salt behind her to the left, water behind her to the right. She sways back and forth. The incense seems stronger now, the sunlight more obviously on my face - I'm engaged in the process of her possession. The oracle begins to sweat, her hair even wetter than it was. Suddenly she stops swaying and lets out what seems to me to be one tremendous shriek as she turns toward the group - her eyes seem to roll back into her head. All is quiet, and the incense much less strong than before. Our translator and coordinator Namgial tells us that she is ready for questions.
She gestures to the first of us and they go up - I wait my turn as I hear some people ask intensely personal questions and I wonder what i should be asking - I dont have any deep seeded issues with myself or others and I dont want to ask about the future...I want knowledge about myself. Eventually I just decide to come up with the question when I get there. The oracle gestures to me, and I scoot in front of her, careful not to rudely let the soles of my feet face her.
"What is your question?" asks Namgial.
Then it hits me, something simple but that I've been wondering about myself for a long time.
"I want to know why it was so hard for me to come up with a question for you, Oracle, why I had such difficulty thinking of something that was important for me to have answered or affirmed. how do I come up with the questions I should be asking myself?"
The oracle rocks back and forth, throws some salt behind her shoulder, and slowly speaks in Ladakhi. I listen to the syllables and try to find hidden meaning before Namgial translates. The Oracle and Namgial share a conversation before I hear my answer.
"She says that you have a curious and active mind," Namgial turns to me and says, "but that you have a flickering consciousness. For you to know the questions you must ask, you must be in touch with your inner consciousness before your mind. She says that you must meditate."
I lean back disappointed at my answer. I was expecting something specific, something deeply personal, an insight into myself that I hadn't already been told by another Ladakhi. But meditation is a standard buddhist practice here, and I had heard it. My skepticism in the oracle is confirmed in that moment.
I move into an empty space and allow the next student in after I am gestured away by the oracle, and I sit within my mind for a while. and then I notice that the sunlight from the oracle's ceiling is shining directly on me again, but I'm sitting in a completely different spot and not much time has passed since when I left. I dont know what I feel about spirituality but I did feel power sitting in the shaft of sunlight, the sort of thing I sometimes get when i look at a flower in the wind and my body tingles for no reason. Someone else is crying next to me, and I put my arm around them and pull them into my shoulder. I decide to meditate every day as long as I see fit. Maybe things at the Oracle's arent so bad after all.
We walk into a house that we've stopped at, remove our shoes, and enter a room with dozens of pots and pans hanging, mats laid on the floor facing incense burners and cups filled with salt, water, and candles, and a shaft of sunlight dropping through a hole in the ceiling directly onto where I choose to sit. A woman enters the room looking haggard and with her hair wet, and kneels in front of the incense. She lights the incense and starts to chant, and the room fills with the scent of cinnamon. She begins to chant, quietly at first and then building to shrieks interspersed with singing. She throws salt behind her to the left, water behind her to the right. She sways back and forth. The incense seems stronger now, the sunlight more obviously on my face - I'm engaged in the process of her possession. The oracle begins to sweat, her hair even wetter than it was. Suddenly she stops swaying and lets out what seems to me to be one tremendous shriek as she turns toward the group - her eyes seem to roll back into her head. All is quiet, and the incense much less strong than before. Our translator and coordinator Namgial tells us that she is ready for questions.
She gestures to the first of us and they go up - I wait my turn as I hear some people ask intensely personal questions and I wonder what i should be asking - I dont have any deep seeded issues with myself or others and I dont want to ask about the future...I want knowledge about myself. Eventually I just decide to come up with the question when I get there. The oracle gestures to me, and I scoot in front of her, careful not to rudely let the soles of my feet face her.
"What is your question?" asks Namgial.
Then it hits me, something simple but that I've been wondering about myself for a long time.
"I want to know why it was so hard for me to come up with a question for you, Oracle, why I had such difficulty thinking of something that was important for me to have answered or affirmed. how do I come up with the questions I should be asking myself?"
The oracle rocks back and forth, throws some salt behind her shoulder, and slowly speaks in Ladakhi. I listen to the syllables and try to find hidden meaning before Namgial translates. The Oracle and Namgial share a conversation before I hear my answer.
"She says that you have a curious and active mind," Namgial turns to me and says, "but that you have a flickering consciousness. For you to know the questions you must ask, you must be in touch with your inner consciousness before your mind. She says that you must meditate."
I lean back disappointed at my answer. I was expecting something specific, something deeply personal, an insight into myself that I hadn't already been told by another Ladakhi. But meditation is a standard buddhist practice here, and I had heard it. My skepticism in the oracle is confirmed in that moment.
I move into an empty space and allow the next student in after I am gestured away by the oracle, and I sit within my mind for a while. and then I notice that the sunlight from the oracle's ceiling is shining directly on me again, but I'm sitting in a completely different spot and not much time has passed since when I left. I dont know what I feel about spirituality but I did feel power sitting in the shaft of sunlight, the sort of thing I sometimes get when i look at a flower in the wind and my body tingles for no reason. Someone else is crying next to me, and I put my arm around them and pull them into my shoulder. I decide to meditate every day as long as I see fit. Maybe things at the Oracle's arent so bad after all.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Dhomkhar and Leh, Ladakh
This post is pretty much copied and pasted from an email because the internet is especially bad today so excuse me for it not being as put together as usual.
I just got back from a homestay in dhomkar village, which is in ladakh, the himalayan section of india and also the province containing kashmir and jammu, the border of pakistan and a pretty dangerous place. but no worries, i was in the very very friendly part of kashmir, where people don't even notice the conflict between india and pakistan. the only reminders were being woken up by the sound of an Indian Army caravan driving past the house, fifty trucks filled with soldiers standing rigid in military exercise. and then right next to that would be my family and i, milking the cows, harvesting potatoes, cleaning clothes in the stream of glacial meltwater and dancing to the sounds of yaks in the field. i guess it was kind of like the mountain school if you spoke a nonsense language and i could hardly communicate with you, and we were in the himalayas, and the indian army had a base nearby. almost like the mountain school...
that was kind of a spaced out paragraph and i dont really know why because i am having such an amazing time here and couldnt be feeling better. so maybe i'll just write list of all the crazy things that have happened
- i ate spaghetti and yak meatballs at a restaurant
- toilets in ladakh and in india are...well they're matters of patience at best. basically they dig a hole in the ground, a kind of compost toilet, but there's no toilet seat and there's no toilet paper, so you squat and do your business and then the indian method is to use the left hand and a bottle of water to wipe, rinse, repeat. so far i've been able to avoid that thanks to my packing toilet paper in my backpack but indians are understandably disgusted when you touch your face with your left hand or grab food with it.
- i just visited this amazing school called secmol right outside of ladakh's main city, leh. essentially for a long time kids here had to learn everything in urdu, which is used mainly in pakistan and is a kind of really artful written arabic script thats incredibly difficult to learn. and then all of a sudden in 10th grade they would have to learn all their classes in english, without the preparation of english beforehand. the 10th class exams are a huge deal here, kind of like the SATs, and determine whether kids can go on to higher secondary school and then college, and basically everyone failed, but secmol is this alternative school where they take kids who fail the 10th class exam and actually teach them english so that they can retake it. there's a semester program based here called the vermont intercultural semester and there are a bunch of kids tms -aged going to school along with the ladakhi kids. i love how there are so many connections to my life in a foreign country.
- my homestay mom had one tooth.
- ladakhi dance is amazing and you need to learn it.
- the differences between different sections of india are amazing. delhi was so wild, so up in the air all the time and then everything in ladakh is so relaxed. i was never stared at here, or only because in india, everyone makes noise for a white man's business. but the competition for it here is much more subtle, a friendly smile rather than an arm pulling you inside a store.
- schedule wise, im about to go on a 10 day trek through the himalayas. i have my camera ready. please send me emails while i'm gone so i can come back and have something waiting from you.
LOVE LOVE LOVE
zach
I just got back from a homestay in dhomkar village, which is in ladakh, the himalayan section of india and also the province containing kashmir and jammu, the border of pakistan and a pretty dangerous place. but no worries, i was in the very very friendly part of kashmir, where people don't even notice the conflict between india and pakistan. the only reminders were being woken up by the sound of an Indian Army caravan driving past the house, fifty trucks filled with soldiers standing rigid in military exercise. and then right next to that would be my family and i, milking the cows, harvesting potatoes, cleaning clothes in the stream of glacial meltwater and dancing to the sounds of yaks in the field. i guess it was kind of like the mountain school if you spoke a nonsense language and i could hardly communicate with you, and we were in the himalayas, and the indian army had a base nearby. almost like the mountain school...
that was kind of a spaced out paragraph and i dont really know why because i am having such an amazing time here and couldnt be feeling better. so maybe i'll just write list of all the crazy things that have happened
- i ate spaghetti and yak meatballs at a restaurant
- toilets in ladakh and in india are...well they're matters of patience at best. basically they dig a hole in the ground, a kind of compost toilet, but there's no toilet seat and there's no toilet paper, so you squat and do your business and then the indian method is to use the left hand and a bottle of water to wipe, rinse, repeat. so far i've been able to avoid that thanks to my packing toilet paper in my backpack but indians are understandably disgusted when you touch your face with your left hand or grab food with it.
- i just visited this amazing school called secmol right outside of ladakh's main city, leh. essentially for a long time kids here had to learn everything in urdu, which is used mainly in pakistan and is a kind of really artful written arabic script thats incredibly difficult to learn. and then all of a sudden in 10th grade they would have to learn all their classes in english, without the preparation of english beforehand. the 10th class exams are a huge deal here, kind of like the SATs, and determine whether kids can go on to higher secondary school and then college, and basically everyone failed, but secmol is this alternative school where they take kids who fail the 10th class exam and actually teach them english so that they can retake it. there's a semester program based here called the vermont intercultural semester and there are a bunch of kids tms -aged going to school along with the ladakhi kids. i love how there are so many connections to my life in a foreign country.
- my homestay mom had one tooth.
- ladakhi dance is amazing and you need to learn it.
- the differences between different sections of india are amazing. delhi was so wild, so up in the air all the time and then everything in ladakh is so relaxed. i was never stared at here, or only because in india, everyone makes noise for a white man's business. but the competition for it here is much more subtle, a friendly smile rather than an arm pulling you inside a store.
- schedule wise, im about to go on a 10 day trek through the himalayas. i have my camera ready. please send me emails while i'm gone so i can come back and have something waiting from you.
LOVE LOVE LOVE
zach
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