Leh Gompa
Ladakh, India 2004: The city of Leh
I shot this from the window of our hotel in Leh. It’s a good thing that I could see it from the room, or else I might have missed it. I didn’t see that much of Leh because at 11,500 feet, I was exhausted all the time. I wanted to wander in the town which was a walk of less than a mile from our hotel, but I didn’t have the strength.
We had a car and driver and each day we were taken to one or two of the many nearby gompas or monasteries. We’d walk around a bit and get some photos. When we got back to the hotel in late afternoon, all I could think of was taking a nap before dinner.
Our guide was a young man of about twenty. He owned his own tiny van and he was something of a dandy. He wore his jeans low like a hip-hop singer. Isn’t it funny, how a young man in the Himalayas wants to dress like someone from the ghetto? Someone who had no clue about the words of hip-hop songs will listen with pleasure when they are played on the radio…and they played them on the radio!! I guess it was a change from the traditional music of the Ladakhi people. We all like a change now and then.
Sometimes when we visited a monastery that was special to him, he would buy a bottle of ghee and pour it into the flickering butter lamps. And if I accidentally did anything considered irreverent, he’d correct my behavior. He still respected his culture and religion.
Ladakh was once called Western Tibet. If you want to see Tibetan culture, you should visit Ladakh as the Indian government hasn’t destroyed it the way China has in Tibet.
You see the Himalaya Mountains in this photo. Don’t they look different from what you expect? We usually see them covered in deep snow. Who knew that underneath is a high desert?
Not only was I sick from the altitude in Ladakh, but I also got a frisson of claustrophobia when I’d look at the Himalayas. Row after row of forbidding crags surrounded us. I had the irrational idea that we would never be able to get over them to the wide open spaces that I love.
One more thing, look to the right of the gompa…you will see faint a string of prayer flags sending holy messages to the cosmos.