Diary of an Internet Addict

At the point of the publication of this post, at least a month would have passed by. But my longing to return to Ladakh has not lessened.

Day 2 would be one of the longest days we would have in Ladakh, because of the number of things we did, and the places we went. So brace yourself!

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View of the outside from Glacier View Guest House

Itinerary

• Stok Palace (skipped)
• Thiksey Gompa
• Hemis Gompa
• Shey Gompa (I think we skipped because I don’t recall going here)

On this day, we embarked our 2nd day of traveling without one companion, who was not feeling well. All in all, we were out for around 5-6 hours. We had a pretty late lunch of sorts.

The 3 monasteries were relatively near Leh. I didn’t know this yet, but towards the end of the trip, I realised how we frequently passed the towns in linear fashion.

Thiksey

As we got off the car, our guide said we had 30 minutes because it was nearing lunch hours. Thiksey had plenty of stairs. We huffed our way up for about 15 minutes, took some photos and then climbed our way down.

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I think our guide was astonished that we were really quite fast, or maybe he was astonished that we were taking him literally. Afterwards, he asked us to take our time at Hemis.

Hemis

Before we reached this place, we actually had to pass through a really wooden bridge that was wide enough just for the car. We were practically screaming as the guide smiled on in amusement.

And then, there had to be a large pot hole in the middle of the road (which the guide successfully navigated through).

We spent a fair bit at this place.

As with the other monasteries thus far, we climbed up and up, which was not a problem. It was the climb down later, when there was not handrails that was.

As we laboured, a group of kids ran up, bypassing us, much to our envy.

After the last flight of stairs, we emerged into a courtyard. (And here is when I attempt to write a description of it since I have no photos. I wasn’t sure if it was allowed.) The courtyard was all sand. There was a sheltered walkway on the right and a covered patio on the left. At the end of the sheltered walkway was a flight of steps facing the courtyard, and a door that was semi open. After those stairs were some stepped sitting area. If I recalled correctly, directly across the doorway where where we entered was a building with a set doors that was darkened but probably were open.

As we walked in, there was a sheltered walkway lined by bronze prayer wheels on the right. A passage that joined the walkway stretched from the side of the doorway we had just entered from. Later we would see some monks running from this direction to join us.

We hugged the right side of the courtyard and stood around wondering what we should do next. At the patio on the left, now across us, a group of monks sat around. Some, with drum-like instruments in their hands.

After a few minutes, most of them ran into the centre of the courtyard, and lined into a circle. The drums started up, and they shuffled around in some performance / dancing. I didn’t take photos because I wasn’t sure if that was allowed. But it was pretty interesting. I think most of them looked quite happy doing it, some looked unsure, and a couple were reading some scriptures from books while doing it.

We watched for a bit, then the door at the top of the steps opened. We took off our shoes (dratted shoelaces!) and stepped into the dim interior. There was a place to put footwear, and then another threshold to cross over, into a squarish-like room.

It seemed, essentially, like a place where the monks studied or meditated or prayed in a group. There were cushion seats on the floor and low tables in rows. There were artifacts around the room – with one or two that were pretty scary. I think it was a mask.

We exited soon enough, where we watched the performance for a bit more and walked back to the car parked outside.

Leh

Back in Leh, we picked up our dearly-missed companion and went for a very late lunch (around 3pm-ish). That’s like early dinner for our still-unused-to-timezone-difference bodies. And yes, we were afraid that our companion might have starved to death or something.

We were heading out towards Pangong the following day. Thus, having spent the night shivering in cold the night before, we decided, we possibly could not survive Pangong with the kind of stuff we had packed. So we went to restock shawls and thermal wear at the Tibetan Market. The items were sort of cheap (well, cheaper than in Singapore anyway!) and it was a really pleasant place to be shopping in because i) lack of people and ii) it was a largish compound that was hemmed in ie. no roads where vehicles blow stuff into our face. A good analogy would be, it is like the old Geylang Market (if you have been there before some…10 years back?) but not as stuffy because of the climate in Ladakh and definitely dryer with way less people.

We dropped by the pharmacy to stock on some medication and oxygen tank (just in case, and yes, it’s for real).

Didn’t get lost this time around!

Then we were back at our guesthouse in the evening, in time for a short nap and packing for the trip out, before dinner.

Later, after dinner, we set up our cameras for capturing stars (we have some really good photos!). We finally crawled into our beds sometime after 12am.

 

Tips

1. Universal Traveller innerwear was extremely itchy to my poor dry skin. Being the one with dryest skin, I was the first to be scratching all over my body. Later on in the trip, I discovered that Uniqlo innerwear wasn’t as itchy, so I wore that and wore the Universal Traveller innerwear over it.
2. My nose actually started having bloody clots at this point, which kind of freaked me out a bit. It was because my nostrils were probably very dry and started flaking. Again, I was the first to experience this.
3. For dry skin, coconut oil was pretty useless. So was apricot cream which I bought at the apricot shop. I would continue using it until I gave up. If you have really dry skin, you might want to try…I’m sorry, no recommendations here. Something more moisturising I guess.
4. No matter where you are in Ladakh, you can see stars if the sky is clear. Bring a decent camera that you can set the shutter speed to long. It should be sufficient. You don’t need to bring out the big boys.