In the Indus Valley

"If a valley is reached by a high pass, only the best of friends or greatest of enemies are its visitors." Tibetan proverb

Leh has become a Mecca for two types: earnest (and possibly German) middle aged men in desinger trekking gear, and bangle and sarong sporting Euro-Israeli-American youth. The former are attracted by some of the highest, wildest and certainly most arduous trekking in the world. The latter by the peaced-out vibe (not my words), abundance of cheap and powerful Kashmiri charas (hashish), and that whole fashionable Tibetan Buddhism thing. Neither are disappointed. Me, I'm not sure which bracket I fall into - I vainly consider myself a high-brow cultural observer, a pilgrim of the intellect, one who not only answers the call of the East but gives it a thoughtful reply. At least this is how I reassure myself as I wonder around looking lost and smelly.

Leh's old town looks the part - a tangled mess of white-washed, stone-walled houses, decorated with Mani stones (devotional tablets inscribed with Tibetan characters). It has often been compared to Lhasa pre the Chinese invasion - there's even an imitation Potatala Palace, though smaller and empty after the the Royal family's move a few hundred years ago to the nearby village of Stok, where they still live. But outside the old town Leh becomes a mess of cultures, especially now during the two warm months of Ladakh's tourist season - the Manali-Leh road is snowed over but from late June till early September. You can still fly in during winter, when Leh returns to the Ladakhis, but you may have to face parky temperatures reaching minus forty degrees centigrade. But come late June this town of 25, 000 is colonised by Kashmiri carpet sellers, Delhi-ite tour operators and Western trekkers, replacing the Turkmen, Afgan and Tibetan traders of time's past, when due to its position at the foot of the Kardang pass Leh was the gateway to trade in Yarkhand, Turkestan. (At the closure of China's trade routes after the revolution, Ladakh lost all its trade capital and had to return to subsistence farming.) But this contemporary invasion is similar to the situation of the Sikkimese I witnessed last year in Gantok - during the summer months the Ladakhis appear to become a minority in their own capital.

But the most conspicuous intruder of all is the Indian army. It's not unusual to see machine-gun and khaki clad soldiers strolling nonchalantly through the streets. They have cute little sewn-on name badges, most bearing the Sikh surname "Singh" (meaning lion) - Sikhs after all refer to themselves as "the chosen race of warrior men." My guest house was right next to an Officer's Mess, and the guards outside, obviously shit-bored, kept trying to chat with me. It was the case of the usual Indian questions: what is good name sir, what is your country name, what is your father's job, how much do you earn in England, first time India? The Edwardian turn of phrase among Indians ("old chap" and "tip-top" are not uncommon), stuck in a pre-Independence time-warp, is the most charming legacy of the British Raj, particularly among the thickly-moustached military.

Conversations with Indians can be frustratingly circular, and often resembles a check-list of standard questions. Afterwards you realise you've discovered nothing about them, but they've discovered a lot about you. Indians are reluctant to reveal their individuality to strangers, and resort to standardised, comformist opinions when you quiz them on contraversial topics. For India, like much of Asia, is a collectivist culture where the individual most play second fiddle to the will of the community. It's hard to relate to coming from an our opposing, individualist culture. I also believe this explains why the Novel, the fullest artistic expression of individuality, is a phenomenon of the West, Indian novels being an apdaptation of the Western model. But one topic Indians really open up on is domestic politics. They hate and distrust their politicians more than we do. An eloquent Benares University student I met last year on a train through West Bengal had this to say: "In our India the politicians and gundas (gangsters) are interchangeable. Many state governers are awaiting sentences for mass murder and rape. This is India"

I stayed in Changspa, the backyard of Leh, which has managed to retain a rural feel, all green fields, paved alleyways and meandering goats. There's not a great deal to do in Leh - that's rather the point. Much of my time was spent drinking apricot juice (Ladakh's great export), munching on buttered Kashmiri bread and being pensive in a gompa (Buddhist monastery). I discovered Leh to be a more divided community than it first seemed. Much of the Kashmiri population are permanent settlers, and the large and beautiful Friday Mosque (built by a King of Leh in the sixteenth century under pressure from Kashmiri invaders) is a reminder that 45% of Ladakh is (largely Sunni) Muslim. Its call to prayer plays a main role in Leh's soundtrack. The ninties sall communal violence between Leh's Buddhists and Muslims, but things appear pretty stable now, perhaps due to the oppressive military prescence. However, Ladakh still resents being part of a Jammu and Kashmir state, administered from Srinagar by Muslims who have little sympathy for their Buddhist culture. Such cultural imperialism is seen in how Ladakhi primary school children are taught in Urdu (and later English), instilling in their young minds that their own language is a backward peasant tounge. Their educational system is a bastardised take on the Western model, and they are taught nothing of their own culture or history, further entrenching an inferiority complex. For years Ladakh has been lobbying the government to become a union territory, administered directly from Delhi. An effort Delhi has done its utmost to ignore.

Much is made of Leh's path to modernity, and environmentalists have made it a cause. Ladakh's harsh, dry climate and traditional lifestyle requires the most sensitive developmental approach possible. But the changes over the past decade have bewildered the locals. Traffic has increased tenfold, as has litter, beggars (many of whom travel up from the Indian plains for the tourist season), power cuts and water shortages. Legions of Ladakhiss have migrated from their traditonal rural lifestyle to Leh to join the money economy. The beauty and peace that attracts tourists is set to disappear. And these changes are being egged on by the Indian governement, which considers Ladakh a backwater that needs to participate in India's economic rise. But this economic rise is not the happy-clappy party celebrated by the Western press.

It's worth conisdering that the same hope was lavished on Indonesia during President Suharto's first decade in the 1970s. The country was frequently hailed as an "economic miracle" by Western journalists. And what happened to that miracle?

But I must confess, before my first visit to India last year I believed the hype about the "economic miracle that is India." Some British journalists even went so far as to describe a "golden age." I was geared up to witness a brave new country. But I learnt that figures - economic growth rates, mobile phone ownerships, foreign investement - don't tell a partial story, but no story at all. It's hard to believe these journalists have even been to India, or at least not to the medieval countryside beyond the major cities, where the majority of Indians still live. Sure, a metropolis like Mumbai has an awesome and growing ability to create wealth, and some of the highest office rents in the world. But the logic that this new wealth will "trickle down" to the rural power - the arguement of free-market puritans - is laughable. Prices will simply rise - as they are doing at the moment, uncontrollably - and the lot of the small-hold famer, who comprises the majority of Indian agriculture, will the stay the same. He will become unable to support his family and most likely join one of the peasant-communist groups now practicing terrorism in Andra Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Bihar. India already has enough rebels on its plate, not least in the tribal North-East (formerly Assam), but numbers look only set to increase.

But even India's cities are harsh places of cruel contrast, where emaciated beggars sprawl on pavements outside diet clinics. Mass migration to cities have seen rapid growth (exciting economists), so very speedy that transport, sewage systems, rubbish disposal or any other facet of infrastructure has been unable to catch up. Such an insupportable explosion is already taking place in Leh, where a plague of concrete suburbs is creeping its way down the Indus valley. Rows of crude concrete boxes, like much of India's new architecture, useless in heat or cold, cramped spaces where communal violence flares easily. The inhabitants are removed from their traditional environment, and are dependent for their rations of water on trucks that pass daily. Since Independence Indians have built like people without an architectural tradition - comparison with classic Mughal architecture is too depressing to bear. Modern architecture has become one the of the Great Indian Tragedies.

Leh's local buses are over-crowded, unreliable and generally just crap. I enquired about times in the station office. The chap behind the desk pointed to a board behind, listing only the first and last buses of the day to each destination. He pulled a profound smile, as if this board displayed the the meaning of life, the universe and everything. I pressed on: "but what about the buses in between?" He employed the strangely effective Indian strategy for dealing with confrontation: the dead face, which effectively says, "COMMUNICATION HAS BEEN TERMINATED INDEFINATELY."

So I took the save-the-planted approach of renting a battered bicycle to visit the nearby monasteries of the Indus valley, of which I managed only Shey and Rumste. Tibetan Buddhism is far removed from the teachings of Gautama Siddhartha. The Lumbini prince pleaded that he should not be idolised after death, but Tibetan Buddhist monasteries are crammed with Buddha statues, before which the faithfull leave offerings ranging from flowers, packaged foods and half-empty whisky bottles. Add to this numerous depictions of Boddhivistas (enlightened beings who have chosen to forgoe Nirvana to instruct the living), various Demons of the Sky and Earth, and an impenetrable symbolic system. The old pagan Bon religion of Tibet was not wiped out but given a new, more sophisticated home. The loud, clanging rituals of their pujas (collective prayers) certainly has the hysteria and theatre of pagan ritual. Borrowings from Hindu Tantricism (the funky belief that sex and drugs aid communion with the divine - a grossly simplified but fun definition) are seen in the statuettes of Boddhivistas straddled by naked women, the psychedelic wax sculptures before the altars and the murals of flayed skins, both animal and human, found in (often locked) side chambers.

High altitude (Leh sits at 3,500 metres) robs you of oxygen, and has the effect of halving your fitness. The cycle uphill back to Leh almost destroyed me. Yet two days later I was back on a bicycle, but undertook a less strenous expedition. Some other travellers and I were taken by jeep to the top of the Kardung pass, the peak of allegedly the highest motorable road in the world (5, 600 metres - it was freezing in just a T-shirt), and we were left to cycle back down to Leh on loose gravel, trying not to die. Before we left, the bike shop owner shared a few pearls of wisom: "when you go sharp corner, break before turn, not during turn, please. Otherwise you skid and go off cliff. This is big problem for me."

A couple of days later I clubbed together with three Franks for a five day trek from Lamaryu to Chilling. An agency provided us with a guide cum cook, some donkeys to bear our luggage, and some charming inbred donkey men, whose job was to egg their animals along - namely walk behind them, shout and beat them with large sticks. Yes, we were entirely incapable of fending for ourselves in the Ladakhi wilderness, a barren place of few villages. On the jeep ride ro Lamaryu we passed many dark-skinned Bihari labourers, looking lost and cold in these Himalayan climes. They are drawn far from their villages to maintain Ladakh's roads for 80 rupees (one British pound) per day. It's dangerous work, and stone memorials by the roadside commemorate the unlucky. Such is the state of Bihar.

After exploring Lamaryu Gompa and exchanging many a "Julay" (Ladakhi greeting) with cheery peasants, the donkeys were loaded and we set off. Our guide cum cook was an interesting mongrel called Rahoul, of Tibetan and Bengali parentage, but born and bred in Dharamsala (Himachal Pradesh), that large-scale Tibetan refugee camp turned backpacker magnet (where Westerners can look and point at Tibetans in their cute clothes and bangles - oh dear). The food he managed to knock up out of rusty pans in a cramped tent was some of the best I've had in India. It ranged from Punjabi to Bengali to Tibetan to Italian. But Rahoul's persistent cheerfulness began to wear on me - surely no one has the right to smile like that all the time? Ok, sorry, I musn't let my misanthropy rear its ugly head again.

After so much solo travel, moving in a group felt claustrophobic. And I disliked being "guided." Furthermore my French trekkers partners, agreable as they were, were unfit, uninterested and demanded stops every half an hour. We even cut short most of the last day's trekking, forgoeing a high pass, because the dear Franks couldn't take it anymore. We diverted to a nearby road to wait for a jeep back to Leh. In the long evenings my trekking partners held lengthy conversations, in French, me nodding inanely at the side. But all things considered, the trek was an incredible experience with stunning scenery, and allowed access to Ladakh at its most traditional and picturesque, remote from any motorable road. There was one alarming incident. On the last night we idiotically set up camp next to a slope piled with loose rock. During supper large stones began to tumble down towards us. One sharp bastard hit me hard on the foot. After moving our tents behind a clump of trees we felt safer. Marginally.

Immediately after arriving back in Leh I fell to food poisoing - possibly a boilded egg in that day's packed lunch, which smelt fine but looked a little fluffy (but by that time I felt industructable). I spent a sleepless night groaning and making messy trips to the toilet. That was last night, but I've almost recovered now. I'm already planning my next trek, eight days in the Markha valley, this time just hiring a guide and sleeping in villages. Can't wait.

All the best to those in Blighty and elsewhere,

Ben x

Kinnaur, Spiti, Lahaul

"Was is fanciful to think of these Himalayas, so well charted and perhaps once better known, as the Indian symbol of loss, mountains to which, on their burning plains, they looked back with yearning, and to which they could now return only in pilgrimages, legends and pictures?"
V.S Naipaul

I checked out of the YMCA, whose flower pots and quaint Christian motivational wall inscriptions are entirely in keeping with Shimla. It was the 6.45 bus to Kalpa. Almost all India is awake by this time. It was to be the first of my epic bus journeys. A sweet 12 hours.



State bus rides are a staple of the Indian experience. The buses themselves beggar belief: how can a machine that battered still function? Well, the word 'function' is open to interpretation. As we turned the mountain corners the seats slid from side to side, wires popped out from the dials next to the steering wheel - the driver divided his attention between equally between shoving them back in again on the actual road before him. A wheel had to replaced half way through. Every part of the bus rattled, but the din was clearly not enough - the driver cranked up hindi pop music on blown out speakers. A troop of school kids sang along, loudly.



The condition of Indian buses is an example of a commendable cultural trait stretched too far. Indian abhor waste, and everything is to be squeezed until all its use is exhausted. A charpoy is lounged on until it snaps, a building is refurbished only when the roof caves in. And a bus is driven until its wheels spin off in the road.



As always, there was lots of stopping. Chai stops, lunch stops, temple stops, driver-shares-a-cigarette-with-an-old-friend-in-a-random-village stops. This driver seemed aquainted with half of Himachal Pradesh. All sorts hopped on and off; costumes changed. Men appeard in woolen waistcoats and short cylindrical hats, the women in headscarves and pantaloons. The saris had vanished. An old man in traditional Kinnauri dress sat behind me, coughing into my neck. It grew worse; he started to gargle and soon passed out, snot and spittle coursing down his chin. The bus stopped at a police station and a burly policeman marched in and brutally dragged him out by the shoulders, the old man glazed. We left him propped against the railings outside the station.



But Kalpa is worth 12 hours of almost anything. Allegedly the winter home of Shiva - the village's beautiful wood-carved Shiva temples (complete with phallic lingams) hinge of this legend. Kalpa falls gently down the side of a mountain, thin streams threading through fields of cannabis, past stone-walled slate-roofed farm houses. The snow-capped peaks of the Kinnaur-Kailish range rose on the other side of the valley - from my guest house balcony I felt I could almost touch them. It was a place of stillness - the locals themselves seem scarcely to budge. My will to do anything curled up and died. I ate, ambled, read, wrote and dreamed. Each performed in managable segments - relaxation as a mechanical process. The Indian plains felt far away - it was spelt out in the people themselves, heavily featured and heavily jewelled. Not a dhoti in sight. Their Hinduism has an animistic edge; on one ramble I came across a village exorcism, a couple kneeling while a draped idol was swayed on a palaquin above their heads and a pandit mumbled. But some locals were of a more recognisable type - a bandana and bling clad tea shop owner kept tyring to sell me his 'very very good price' cannabis, and also seemed to think that endlessly listening to Shakira was in keeping with his gansta credentials. I shared Kalpa with a few other travellers, all Israeli, all permenantly stoned, mostly on bikes. They call this the 'Humus Trail.'



On the bus to Nako I entered the Spiti valley, and left behind the trees and flowers. Nothing but towering rock and dust, a mountain desert. But these words do little justice to the austere beauty of the place. A lunar landscape, no place for man. If gods exist anywhere, they'd certainly be kicking around here.



This branch of the Indo-Tibetan highway is described by the Lonely Planet as the most terrifying road in India. The road was barely wide enough for our bus, and every meeting with an oncomiing bus was followed by a wiggly dance gracing the edge of a precipice. We passed a village called Pooh, which felt very far from A Hundred Acre Wood. Before Nako the bus stopped at one of the many military checkpoints in Spiti, where an impressively moustached soldier checked that my Inner-Line permit was pukka, as well as jotting down the usual information concerning me. It is strange to be defined by your age, nationality, passport and visa number; other than these you offically don't matter.



Spotted from far away Nako was an oasis of rippling green. The villages of Spiti most appear as these bright mirages, chanelling the Spiti river off into fields of crop, their green the more intense against the brown rock slopes that rise either side. And as with many of the other villages of Spiti, Nako was solar powered. Commendable, but the electricity suffered from Hamlet syndrome: to be or not to be. Come the evenings it would spring to life, shine for ten minutes, cut off for twenty, flicker back for ten. And so on.



Nako was a medieval cluster of stone-walled Tibetan houses, fluttering Buddhist prayer flags splitting the roofline like TV ariels. It overlooked a lake, crisscrossed with strings of futher prayer flags. There was no reminder of India, natural or human. The people had adopted mongoloid features, and in place of of the village Hindu temple stood a Tibetan Buddhist Gompa, decked with grinning photos of the Dalai lama. Spiti is a micro-culture, an amputated toe of
Tibet. That it should have found itself in India is strange but lucky - India has persued no cutural revolution to date. Instead, India has spent millions of rehabilitating Tibetan refugees, largely in Dharamsala and a northern suburb of Old Delhi. It is surprising India hasn't flaunted this humanitarian trump card more, to prove itself to the West as a cuddlier ally than China could ever be.



The bus from to Tabo was where the real fun started. A landslide had fallen a mile on from Nako. We had to hop out the bus, walk a mile, pick our way over the fresh scree, wet our socks in a stream, then wait for almost three hours for the connecting bus. There was another case of bonding-in-mutual-suffering, this time with an American college graduate, Dave, with whom I'd end up travelling for the next week. He'd just finished a years internship for some company in Chandigargh, where he'd been helping them phrase things the 'American way.' One wonders how long, as India rises and the US Empire fades, before American companies start interning young Indians for the opposite reason.



After another tedious military checkpoint, Tabo emerged as another pool of green wedged between steep brown slopes. David and I stayed in the newer monastery, next to the older World Heritage Monastery. Staying in the monasteries of numerous religions is one of the great possibilities of Indian travel. On my last trip I stayed in Hindu, Jain, Hindu Tantric and Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. But on this jaunt I'm confined to the latter. The conditions are usually basic - in Tabo monastery a rat scuttled over the ceiling above my head all night - but always worth it for the atmosphere. In 1996 Tabo's older monastery celebrated its one thousanth birthday. The Dalai Lama rocked up for the occasion, to cast his spells, smile at cameras and spout the old World Peace message. Providing you find a monk milling around, he can escort you inside the monastery, shine a weak torch at beautiful murals and even provide a simple commentary: "look, here Buddha! Yes yes, very very old! Look, again, Buddha!"



We befriended two American girls, Chemi and Tori, who were volunteering to educate the little brats in the Tabo primary school. Chemi's knowledge of the Spiti language and familiarity with the locals led to several invitations to tea in local houses. We explored hermit caves in the nearby hillside, now hermitless, and the next day took a day hike to visit a genuine hermit monk, who chemi was somehow related to. He knocked the four of us up some rice, subje (curried veg) and tea. Salted tea, the Tibetan way - try to think of it as soup and you just may stomach it. We exchanged nobs, smiles and some basic Spiti words, then left him to his Deep Thoughts. He is probably right now spinning his prayer wheel in his crumbling monastery half way up a mountain.



The Himachal Pradesh governenment clearly regards Spiti as a backwater, not worth of comprehensive bus service. In the largest of villages there's only two buses a day in either direction, which all show contempt for their scheduled timetable. The ninety minute delay for the bus to Kaza was wholly expected.



Kaza is the capital of Spiti, but it wouldn't dwarf a Sussex village. It was hemmed in by the usual steep rocky slopes, up which monks had impossibly scrambled to scrawl devotional graffiti in giant, multicoloured Tibetan characters, visible from miles off. Lines off prayer flags were pitted at equally dizzy heights; on one scramble up a slope I got caught in several lines of them, eventually ripping them down - bad karma.



The bus dropped us off at the path that led steeply up to Dhankar, an isolated village wedged in the armpit of a mountain. Another millenium old monastery still stands, and another smiling, nodding monk is eager to point out the Buddhas for you. This monastery sat spectaculary on top of a high verge overlooking the confluence of the Pin and Spiti rivers. An equally ancient fort is set on a rock even higher than this. We stayed at the newer monaster nearby.



It was getting back to Kaza that the wobbly Spiti bus timetable hit us the hardest. Before we took the long scramble down to the village of Sichling by the road, a monk in Dhankar assured us that a bus left there as 11am. But the good people of Sichling had this to say: "Sorry friend, first bus go 9.30am, next bus 6pm." Sadly, crap information from locals is a fact of Indian travel. But it is rarely a case of crafy locals out to annoy locals - mostly simply wish to appear helpfull, and hide their ignorance through fictional answers.



Right, so hitching it was. But though we sat by Spiti's main highway, a vehicle farted along only about once every twenty minutes. None stopped for us. We tried every tactic, xeven standing in front of the path of oncoming vehicles. So we waited; I ploughed through V.S Naipaul's (excellent) 'An Area of Darkness' and David read an historical account of the American war of independence; clouds bunched and shredded above us. Three hours passed; a jeep eventually conceded to stop for us.



Next, Kaza to Kibber. Kibber once claimed to be the highest village in world; now it must settle for the highest village with a motorable road and electricity. Still, at 4200 metres it felt pretty lofty - you all looked tiny from there. On the bus ride there we stopped at what claimed to be the 'Highest Petrol Station in the World' (probably a rather easy claim to get away with). David and I tried walking higher. The altitude set in. We reached a breaking point, where every step winded us, and catching one's breath was a matter of five minutes. It renewned my sympathy for athsmatics, which begs the question: could inhalers be sold as trekking accessories?



The bus ride from Kaza to Keylong (crossing from Spiti to Lahaul) was another twelve hour joy, with a change in rainy Gramphu, where I bade a sad farewell to David as he continued down to Manali (which I decided to skip - one can have too many long-haired, stoner Israelis). But to up the fun factor of the trip, the bus was fully booked from Kaza, meaning I had to stand most of the seven hours to Gramphu, being thrown from one side of the bus to the other on the mountain bends, swearing in front of a variety of old Indian ladies. Thankfully the scenery was sublime.



Keylong derives its existence mostly as a stop-over between Manali and Leh, but it was pleasant enough. And a shock too: here was India again, saris and bindis and moustaches. Trees were growing naturally again too. I bussed sideways into the Pangi valley, to a village called Mudgargh, rapturously recommend by an American medical student I met on the bus from Kaza, who had spent the summer shadowing an Indian country doctor in Spiti and Lahaul. It certainly was pretty, but there was nowhere to stay, so I had to trek back down the valley to the tiny town on Udaipur (a far remove from its Rajastani namesake), where an army of toothless peasants took turns to stare at me.



The bus ride from Keylong to Leh, crossing from Himachal Pradesh to Jammu and Kashmir state and a whole lot of nothing, is a rite of passage for India backpackers. I can't imagine a more excruciating but beautiful 16 hours. There was literaly not a shred of civilization the whole way. And landscape was not of this earth, more like the fifth moon of Jupiter. Only the odd goffer popped out of the dry earth.



On these mountain roads, vehicles have an all too frequent habit of tumbling off the cliffs at sharp corners. You read about it in the Indian newspapers all the time. This is a problem. But the Indian Government has a solution: erecting witty signposts. "After whisky, driving risky." "Are you driving to a party? Then why drive so dirty?" "Drive safely, be home for safe-tea." "If you love her, please divorce speed." "Better Mr Late than a late Mr." And that's just a handfull of them. Yet surprisingly, vehicles still keep tumbling off cliffs. Wittier singposts needed, evidently. But the drivers have their own solution: placing garlanded plastic idols of their favourite Hindu gods (mostly Shiva) on their dashboard, to keep a divine eye on the road for them. What could possibly go wrong?

This now being Jammu and Kashmir state, the Indian military have set up shop in every available corner. I have never seen anything like it - they have created a barrack metropolis on the approach to Leh, with row upon row of bored looking sikhs cradling sub-machine guns.

So, that wraps it up for this epic session. So, how is Leh then Ben? you may well ask. For that answer my friends, you shall have to wait till next post. Coming soon.....(honest)

Love Ben x