The word is still out on whether it's called "Gompa" or "Gonpa", considering I ended up visiting many of these over the next few days, and I happened to see sign-boards with both versions. Since I encountered the former a tad bit more than the latter, and also the fact that it doesn't matter how you write the Tibetan word for "monastery" in Roman script, I shall call it "Gompa" from this point on.
What had wheeled into Leh was a tired, sleepy and dusty lot. The enthusiasm on our faces, and the spring in our stride, however, seemed to belie the arduous two day journey we had just completed. I was basking in the strong sense of déjà vu, considering the fact that I was not only living in the same hotel (which was provided to us dirt cheap, by the way), but also the same room, with the same beautiful view. I was already beginning to feel like a little bit of a local, being slightly more familiar with the town than the rest of the gang (Ruchira will point out at this time that she has been to Leh as many times I have). The weather had been rather violent the week before our arrival, and had just cleared up; so we were in that enviable twilight zone where we got bright sunshine to take a look at the fresh snow that had just arrived on the scores of peaks near us. The feeling of familiarity only got stronger as we set out to roam around town, the night of our arrival. Shao was still feeling unwell, so she decided to stay back and take rest. Mohsin, Ruchira, Manav, PP and I wandered through the streets of Leh in two separate groups, and eventually ended up meeting each other near Fort Road, at Gesmo German Bakery and Restaurant. The whole "German Bakery" concept seemed rather exotic in the beginning, but we later realized the sheer number of them that lined the streets of Leh. Most, if not all, of the bakeries in Leh are very good. The city receives a huge influx of foreign tourists every year, so finding Western (or Eastern) cuisine is really not a problem in Leh. What followed was a nice, jolly meal where we ate off all the fatigue from the road journey. PP would have me point out that we also had a Yak cheese pizza at this meal (which was quite amazing). Having packed some food for Shao, we returned to our hotel, caught the last match of the day and retired for the night.
It was next morning that I also recalled one of the major problems with my room. The sun rises very early in Leh, and owing to the altitude, also beats down harder than most places. There is something that is often said about Leh- that it is one of the few places in the world where one can suffer from a sun-stroke and a frost-bite at the same time. So, I wasn't very pleasantly surprised when I found the sun peering through the window straight at my face at 6am next morning. The view from room (called the "city-view" room) did manage to wipe away a significant fraction of my angst. The trouble with waking up the earliest in a group of six people, is the long, boring wait for everyone else to wake up. This wait is made even more unpleasant, when the said group of people forces you to make repeated trips up and down several flights of stairs (in a low-oxygen environment) in order to wake them up. Each of those trips from the third floor (my room) down to the ground floor (Manav et. al.'s room) via the second floor (Mohsin et. al.'s room) left me gasping for breath for a short while. Eventually, as surely as the sun rises in the east, the rest of the group awoke, and finally got itself ready by about noon, by which time our intended start time had faded two hours into past tense. Shao was still not feeling well, and we all decided that it would be better for her to rest it out today, because we were going to visit Pangong the next day, and that wasn't something we would have liked her to miss.
(Above: Left to right: The view from my hotel room, the ornate gate to Leh)
We had arrived in Leh at a very opportune time. The two-day Hemis festival had started that very day, and we decided to visit Hemis at all costs. More on that later. For starters, we met our driver Jigme, who was to become the mainstay of our trip. Of course, the poor fellow had been made to wait for quite a while before we boarded his white Toyota Qualis. Little did we know that we would not dispense with him till the very end of our trip. Jigme led us out on the road towards Manali, where we first passed the ornate gate to Leh, and a few kilometers down the road, encountered Shey Palace. Right next to Shey Palace, we also found the "Pond of the Holy Fish", which was teeming with Catfish, supposedly holy, and not to be hunted or eaten. Once we ascended the slope up to the main entrance to Shey, we found the place completely empty, perhaps owing to the Hemis festival. Manav also realized that climbing acclivities wasn't really his thing. Inside the main prayer hall at Shey, we saw the giant 40-foot statue of the Buddha. Climbing down the same slope was a lot more enjoyable than scaling it the other way, and we headed to Thikse Gompa, where the climb was higher and steeper. Manav and Ruchira decided to sit out the climb, while PP, Mohsin and I headed up towards the main sanctum of Thikse. Thikse, at over six hundred years old, is one of the oldest monasteries in the region. Situated on top of a hillock, the main balcony provides a really beautiful panoramic view of the entire valley. On our way back from the shrine, we also noticed the Mani wall at Thikse. Mani walls are quite a common sight in regions where Buddhism is the primary religion. They are mainly prayer walls which contain smooth stones with prayers engraved on them. Also a common sight, are the colourful prayer flags which flutter from practically any feature that fast winds can access.
(Above: Left to right: Mani stone at Thikse, giant Buddha statue at Shey)
(Above: The view of from Thikse)
By the time our visit to Thikse ended, I was rather enthusiastic about reaching Hemis in time for the mask dance. Luckily for us, the mask dance had just begun when we landed at Hemis Gompa. Right outside the Gompa, there was the usual humdrum and festivities, complete with food and game stalls. We took our positions on the top-most courtyard of Hemis Gompa which gave us a bird's eye view of the mask dance unfolding in the main courtyard. Drums and gongs played in a rhythmic beat, as the mask clad dancers rose and fell with the sound of the drums. I didn't exactly understand a lot of what was going on, but it was interesting to watch. After the mask dance ended, we visited the Hemis museum. A short meal at one of the food-stalls outside the monastery gave us some m
uch needed nutrition. The one thing that really struck me while visiting these places (as had done last time) was the striking use of colour. Colour is something that just stands out the moment you enter Ladakh. The land is bare and brown, the sky is stark and blue, and any greenery (usually right next to a stream) stands out in contrast. The prayer flags fluttering at every corner only add colour to the picture. The same is true of all the monasteries we visited. All the interior walls were covered with frescoes, usually depicting Buddhist gods, or parables from the scriptures. All frescoes were painted in bright and striking colours. On our way back from Hemis, Jigme took us for a little bit of off-roading. We later realized that this was one of the many manifestations of his rather adventurous spirit. We made a small detour to the Stok palace (right), which had shut down by the time we reached it. To be very honest, we were more interested in finding yet another "hole-in-the-ground" toilet that exploring the palace, which I recalled from last time, has little to offer if you're looking for something new.
(Above: Clockwise from top left: Mask dance at Hemis, a masked dancer, a monk beating the drum, statue of Guru Lhakhang at Hemis)
When we landed back at the hotel, we were glad to find Shao in a much better condition than the morning. I had promised Shao we'd go somewhere in the evening, and we decided to visit the Shanti Stupa. I was secretly amused at the amount of energy I could draw out of thin air (no pun intended) when I was travelling. Ruchira was to leave the next morning, so she and Mohsin wandered off in one direction and the rest of us got ourselves a cab and headed for Shanti Stupa, just as the sun was beginning to dip behind the Stok range. The Shanti Stupa was constructed by a Japanese organization on top of a small hill overlooking Leh. The structure itself is quite beautiful, with Buddhist art and statues of the Buddha in various forms; but it's a whole different thing when you visit it around sunset. The lights of Leh town are beginning to come to life, the snow on the mountains, with its pink colour borrowed from the setting sun, is beginning to fade from view. If you are lucky, like we were, the moon might rise early and lend a serene, white gleam to the snow right after sunset, just as the Stupa's own lights flicker to life. The four of us were the last people to leave the Shanti Stupa, just as it began to get very windy. We had our driver drop us off at Changspa, which houses a lot of Leh's hotels and restaurants and found ourselves a quaint little garden restaurant which had a small TV with the football match on it. Food cooks very slowly at high altitude, so every meal in Leh is a rather relaxed and elongated affair, just as this one was. We returned fairly late at night, shortly after which Mohsin and Ruchira returned from dinner.
(Above: Top to bottom: Shanti Stupa, Leh by last light from Shanti Stupa)
All in all, our first complete day at Leh had provided us with a nice buffer between a tiring journey and the pandemonium that was to follow the next morning. The next day we would visit, sans Ruchira, the Pangong Tso, without which anyone's first journey to Leh would be incomplete.
What had wheeled into Leh was a tired, sleepy and dusty lot. The enthusiasm on our faces, and the spring in our stride, however, seemed to belie the arduous two day journey we had just completed. I was basking in the strong sense of déjà vu, considering the fact that I was not only living in the same hotel (which was provided to us dirt cheap, by the way), but also the same room, with the same beautiful view. I was already beginning to feel like a little bit of a local, being slightly more familiar with the town than the rest of the gang (Ruchira will point out at this time that she has been to Leh as many times I have). The weather had been rather violent the week before our arrival, and had just cleared up; so we were in that enviable twilight zone where we got bright sunshine to take a look at the fresh snow that had just arrived on the scores of peaks near us. The feeling of familiarity only got stronger as we set out to roam around town, the night of our arrival. Shao was still feeling unwell, so she decided to stay back and take rest. Mohsin, Ruchira, Manav, PP and I wandered through the streets of Leh in two separate groups, and eventually ended up meeting each other near Fort Road, at Gesmo German Bakery and Restaurant. The whole "German Bakery" concept seemed rather exotic in the beginning, but we later realized the sheer number of them that lined the streets of Leh. Most, if not all, of the bakeries in Leh are very good. The city receives a huge influx of foreign tourists every year, so finding Western (or Eastern) cuisine is really not a problem in Leh. What followed was a nice, jolly meal where we ate off all the fatigue from the road journey. PP would have me point out that we also had a Yak cheese pizza at this meal (which was quite amazing). Having packed some food for Shao, we returned to our hotel, caught the last match of the day and retired for the night.
It was next morning that I also recalled one of the major problems with my room. The sun rises very early in Leh, and owing to the altitude, also beats down harder than most places. There is something that is often said about Leh- that it is one of the few places in the world where one can suffer from a sun-stroke and a frost-bite at the same time. So, I wasn't very pleasantly surprised when I found the sun peering through the window straight at my face at 6am next morning. The view from room (called the "city-view" room) did manage to wipe away a significant fraction of my angst. The trouble with waking up the earliest in a group of six people, is the long, boring wait for everyone else to wake up. This wait is made even more unpleasant, when the said group of people forces you to make repeated trips up and down several flights of stairs (in a low-oxygen environment) in order to wake them up. Each of those trips from the third floor (my room) down to the ground floor (Manav et. al.'s room) via the second floor (Mohsin et. al.'s room) left me gasping for breath for a short while. Eventually, as surely as the sun rises in the east, the rest of the group awoke, and finally got itself ready by about noon, by which time our intended start time had faded two hours into past tense. Shao was still not feeling well, and we all decided that it would be better for her to rest it out today, because we were going to visit Pangong the next day, and that wasn't something we would have liked her to miss.
(Above: Left to right: The view from my hotel room, the ornate gate to Leh)
We had arrived in Leh at a very opportune time. The two-day Hemis festival had started that very day, and we decided to visit Hemis at all costs. More on that later. For starters, we met our driver Jigme, who was to become the mainstay of our trip. Of course, the poor fellow had been made to wait for quite a while before we boarded his white Toyota Qualis. Little did we know that we would not dispense with him till the very end of our trip. Jigme led us out on the road towards Manali, where we first passed the ornate gate to Leh, and a few kilometers down the road, encountered Shey Palace. Right next to Shey Palace, we also found the "Pond of the Holy Fish", which was teeming with Catfish, supposedly holy, and not to be hunted or eaten. Once we ascended the slope up to the main entrance to Shey, we found the place completely empty, perhaps owing to the Hemis festival. Manav also realized that climbing acclivities wasn't really his thing. Inside the main prayer hall at Shey, we saw the giant 40-foot statue of the Buddha. Climbing down the same slope was a lot more enjoyable than scaling it the other way, and we headed to Thikse Gompa, where the climb was higher and steeper. Manav and Ruchira decided to sit out the climb, while PP, Mohsin and I headed up towards the main sanctum of Thikse. Thikse, at over six hundred years old, is one of the oldest monasteries in the region. Situated on top of a hillock, the main balcony provides a really beautiful panoramic view of the entire valley. On our way back from the shrine, we also noticed the Mani wall at Thikse. Mani walls are quite a common sight in regions where Buddhism is the primary religion. They are mainly prayer walls which contain smooth stones with prayers engraved on them. Also a common sight, are the colourful prayer flags which flutter from practically any feature that fast winds can access.
(Above: Left to right: Mani stone at Thikse, giant Buddha statue at Shey)
(Above: The view of from Thikse)
By the time our visit to Thikse ended, I was rather enthusiastic about reaching Hemis in time for the mask dance. Luckily for us, the mask dance had just begun when we landed at Hemis Gompa. Right outside the Gompa, there was the usual humdrum and festivities, complete with food and game stalls. We took our positions on the top-most courtyard of Hemis Gompa which gave us a bird's eye view of the mask dance unfolding in the main courtyard. Drums and gongs played in a rhythmic beat, as the mask clad dancers rose and fell with the sound of the drums. I didn't exactly understand a lot of what was going on, but it was interesting to watch. After the mask dance ended, we visited the Hemis museum. A short meal at one of the food-stalls outside the monastery gave us some m
uch needed nutrition. The one thing that really struck me while visiting these places (as had done last time) was the striking use of colour. Colour is something that just stands out the moment you enter Ladakh. The land is bare and brown, the sky is stark and blue, and any greenery (usually right next to a stream) stands out in contrast. The prayer flags fluttering at every corner only add colour to the picture. The same is true of all the monasteries we visited. All the interior walls were covered with frescoes, usually depicting Buddhist gods, or parables from the scriptures. All frescoes were painted in bright and striking colours. On our way back from Hemis, Jigme took us for a little bit of off-roading. We later realized that this was one of the many manifestations of his rather adventurous spirit. We made a small detour to the Stok palace (right), which had shut down by the time we reached it. To be very honest, we were more interested in finding yet another "hole-in-the-ground" toilet that exploring the palace, which I recalled from last time, has little to offer if you're looking for something new.
(Above: Clockwise from top left: Mask dance at Hemis, a masked dancer, a monk beating the drum, statue of Guru Lhakhang at Hemis)
When we landed back at the hotel, we were glad to find Shao in a much better condition than the morning. I had promised Shao we'd go somewhere in the evening, and we decided to visit the Shanti Stupa. I was secretly amused at the amount of energy I could draw out of thin air (no pun intended) when I was travelling. Ruchira was to leave the next morning, so she and Mohsin wandered off in one direction and the rest of us got ourselves a cab and headed for Shanti Stupa, just as the sun was beginning to dip behind the Stok range. The Shanti Stupa was constructed by a Japanese organization on top of a small hill overlooking Leh. The structure itself is quite beautiful, with Buddhist art and statues of the Buddha in various forms; but it's a whole different thing when you visit it around sunset. The lights of Leh town are beginning to come to life, the snow on the mountains, with its pink colour borrowed from the setting sun, is beginning to fade from view. If you are lucky, like we were, the moon might rise early and lend a serene, white gleam to the snow right after sunset, just as the Stupa's own lights flicker to life. The four of us were the last people to leave the Shanti Stupa, just as it began to get very windy. We had our driver drop us off at Changspa, which houses a lot of Leh's hotels and restaurants and found ourselves a quaint little garden restaurant which had a small TV with the football match on it. Food cooks very slowly at high altitude, so every meal in Leh is a rather relaxed and elongated affair, just as this one was. We returned fairly late at night, shortly after which Mohsin and Ruchira returned from dinner.
(Above: Top to bottom: Shanti Stupa, Leh by last light from Shanti Stupa)
All in all, our first complete day at Leh had provided us with a nice buffer between a tiring journey and the pandemonium that was to follow the next morning. The next day we would visit, sans Ruchira, the Pangong Tso, without which anyone's first journey to Leh would be incomplete.
6 comments:
Oye! in the first bit, wandering around Leh, you kind of forgot Manav!!! :P :P
Haha! Omission corrected! :P
Hello, Siddharth. I stumbled upon your blog(s) through Our Delhi Struggles. And, although your pics are astounding, pray, tell me, why did you discontinue your booze diaries? That blog is far more entertaining.
@Sursanchari: Sorry for the late response, just discovered your comment! I don't know whether to be happy or sad about your comment! But Booze Diaries got discontinued primarily because fun stuff kind of drifted into a regime where it could no longer be shared publicly! :P
you still write? Where though?
@Imperfect: I write, off and on...There's much less time to write now. Hoping to increase.
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