Week 6: Out and about

14/06/09

As Tom mentioned in last week’s blog, we’d been having some problems with getting the girls to come on time (or to come at all). However, after talking to them it has been going much better. This week we tried again to get them to do a drama – this time about a Ladakhi story – which they did really well. We only got one day, Tuesday, with the boys at their hostel because, due to the next day being a holiday, all the hostel students had gone to town on Thursday afternoon. On Friday, Mr. Tundup had organized a huge picnic for all the older students – at least 700 of them! – in a nearby town called Shey, a bit further south from Choglamsar where we had the other picnic. Tom and I were also invited but decided to first go with Jason and Yung Chen to visit Spituk gonpa. The gonpa, like most others, sits high up on a hill overlooking Spituk with the glacial blue Indus River running through it. Built in the 15^th century and founded by King Graspabumlde, it was the first ‘Yellow Hat’ (a Buddhist sect) monastery in Ladakh. We walked up and down steps winding between the sturdy white-washed mud-and-stone monasteries and temples and past walls and roofs covered with colourful prayer flags. We went inside one small red-painted building where there was a tiny dark room in which the walls were lined with terrible wooden masks and in which stood a number of large stone statues of the gods, their faces covered with decorated cloths out of respect. We also went inside the main temple where a number of elderly monks where sitting and eating lunch and reciting hymns. The room, smelling of butter tea, barley bread and burning candles was elaborately decorated – every wall was covered with paintings of the protector deities and from every column hung colourful hangings. At the back of the large room were photos of H.H. the Dalai Lama and other important lamas as well as statues of gods – all shrouded with white scarves. There was also a table of offerings including silver bowls of coloured water and flour and butter made into shapes. When we went outside again we were shortly followed by the monks who offered us butter tea and bread. We walked through to a courtyard after this and looked inside another similar temple which held the Kangyur and Tangyur (The Discourses and Commentaries) in wooden shelves along one wall. Up above the temple we took in the view of the Indus valley for a while before heading to the picnic site.

To get to the picnic we headed for Shey where we turned into a road on the right at a fish farm. Beyond the farm was a beautiful long Teletubbyland-like narrow pasture with a gurgling stream running through it. We soon found everyone – little clusters of makeshift tents and speakers around which groups of students where enjoying themselves in the sun and dancing together. Tight-walking over the stream on a few wooden poles we found ourselves sitting in the teachers’ spot with some of the teachers we’d become friends with at the last picnic. It was another sunny day and we spent most of our time playing cards until it was time for a most delicious lunch of rice, lentils, potatoes, stewed vegetables and whatnot followed by yoghurt and fruit. Tom and I have decided to give up on trying to eat meat here – the vegetarian food is so much better.

Later in the afternoon Jason and the two of us decided to drive down the road to the next town, Thikse, where there is another gonpa. This is a very well-known gonpa and there are postcards and posters of it all over the place in Leh. This is not surprising because it’s really spectacular. Thikse used to be a very small village, almost all of which clung to the side of a steep hill on top of which is the gonpa. However, in the last 10 to 15 years it has grown incredibly fast – it now stretches far into the distance along the valley floor. I reckon it must be at least three or four times the size. The most famous thing about Thikse gonpa is that it houses the largest Buddha statue in Ladakh – and it is enormous – literally 2 storeys high. We climbed up a large staircase to get to the second floor of the building and were greeted by a humongous golden Buddha head. You could look down to the bottom floor to see the bottom half of the Buddha, His two massive golden feet pointing up at you as he sits in the lotus pose. His smooth, serene face is framed by a huge intricately decorated headdress. The whole of the temple was surrounded by a continuous line of golden prayer wheels on which the mantra om mani padme hum is written. Climbing up higher we went inside another temple much like the ones we had been in at Spituk but this time empty of monks. Up another couple of flights of steps we got to the rooftop on which there was a library. Something I really like about these buildings is their windows which are usually very tiny and have a thick black border around them. Sometimes their wooden shutters and frames are painted with little patterns which have mostly been worn away over time which gives them a beautifully rustic look.

From the top of the gonpa we had another sweeping view of the valley in which Thikse lay – at this point Tom realized that that was where he did a home-stay when he came to Ladakh on the school trip a few years ago. At the bottom of the gonpa hill is a large barren plot of land in the middle of which is a tiny L-shaped building which is one of Lamdon’s satellite schools which we visited on Wednesday with Mr. Tundup. The 75 students – from Kindergarten to grade 8 - are taught in the 10 classrooms. We met the principal and a volunteer teacher from England who told us a bit about the school and we had a look in the classrooms where classes of up to 11 students (usually only 4 or 5) where taking classes. It must be fantastic having such a teacher to student ratio and we really hope that we can spend a few weeks helping out at this school although we’re not sure yet where we would be most helpful. We also visited the Lamdon school 3km down the road in Shey which was slightly larger (about 180 students) and had a hostel where the majority of the students stayed. We’ll probably do some treks first before visiting one of these schools for a few weeks but we’re looking forward to it already as it will be quite different from being in Leh.

We headed back to the picnic, narrowly missing a small canyon in the middle of one of the small back-roads, where more cards were dealt. Someone thought it would be fun to go for a walk through the pasture along the stream where we entertained ourselves with poo-sticks and jumping from bank to bank. However, I ended up being exploited for being the guinea pig to cross a boggy patch and returned to the picnic site later with bog-coloured trousers.

The rest of the weekend hasn’t been very eventful because Leh is on tax-strike and everywhere – literally everywhere – has been closed since Friday morning. Apparently there used to be no taxation in Leh but now the government wants to add it. Word is that no one is opening up again until their demands are met – a good time to go walkabouts?