Stone hut and waterwheel

Sometimes karma reaches back and twists a knot that unravels, or bends away a path that went to a cliff. There is no sense of movement to betray that embrace by a different universe. Not the lift of a butterfly's wing nor the drift of a cloud. But later, years later, cuddled in the warmth of one you will love forever, you breathe easier in the cool of near dawn under a full moon in a dream you never saw before. Then you know, you just know.

The summer unsheathes the gnarled bronze and copper muscle of the Himalayan range up to around 5000 metres and the permanent snow line begins. There are no trees or shrubs of any kind except on the valley floor where the snow melt helps cultivate summer crops, a reminder of how temporary and fragile life is on this orb of rock and water.

Thikse gompa Ladakh 1982 ©

I was in Kashmir and Ladakh for several weeks before I met Beth. She was as tall as me and American, though I am not very tall. It was 1982 and the world was flooding with strange and exotic opportunities for us first world baby boomers.

We trekked together for a short time in the harshness and sometimes breathlessness of Ladakh. Later I tried to convince her to stay with me in a small hotel in Leh. She had grander plans. 

The next day we caught the bus down the valley to Hemis Monastery for the festival or Tsechu. Hemis is the largest monastery in Ladakh and belongs to the Dragon order of Mahayana Buddhism. 

Padmasambhava accompanied by chams dancers at the Hemis festival 1982 ©

The festival happens on the 10th and 11th days of the fifth month of the Tibetan lunar calendar - usually June in the gregorian calendar -  the accepted birthday of Padmasambhava (Guru Rinpoche). Mask dances or chams performances, part of the Tantric tradition, are performed only in those gompas that follow the Tantric Vajrayana teachings.

Bypassing Hemis itself we walked an hour up the small valley behind it to the shallow smoke blackened cave where Tantric master Gyalwang Gotsang (1189–1258) is said to have stayed for months. The cave has since been surrounded by the Gotsang hermitage, a retreat for monks.

Unveiling the thangka showing Padmasambhava ©

That night Beth took the bus back to Leh and I camped in the small birch wood next to the monastery, beside the rivulet and small stone hut with the wooden water wheel that endlessly ground barley for the monks' meals. The monks gave me some of the flour - tsampa - to make porridge and to mix with hot tea and yak milk to drink. Barley also gets brewed into the local beer or chang.

This small wood, with the chirping chatter of the stream and the low grinding of stone on stone as mantra, is a clement refuge amongst the powerful awe of the ranges. And in the absolute dark and chill at 3500 metres the faint chanting of the monks a hundred metres away soon brings on sleep. I hope that now grown wood is still there 40 years on.

The wood with rivulet, stone hut and water wheel ©

After the festival the next day Beth went back to Leh and places beyond. To assuage the passing loneliness I crossed the Indus River and walked up the opposite valley, beginning on a broad flat alluvial plain that quickly narrows into steep side valleys and at the top the pass - Chang La* about 5,500 metres - makes a soft shoulder above the permanent snow line. 

I left slightly after dawn. At first my steps were slow and heavy, tramping on memories from near and far. Memories capture and confine us and sometimes drag us back and down.

The air felt like suspended ice flecks at that hour even in summer. The ranges rise from each flank of the river around 3500m to the peaks that stretch towards 6000m. The snow at the top is now strawberry ice cream.

The walk is steady and easy following snowmelt streams. Light sweat freezes on my cheeks. I will the sun to get itself higher. I have only a paper map of broad scale. It tells me I have about 25 km to walk with a gradual climb of about 2000 metres.

Walking becomes a meditation and the thrum in my body from the morning cha soon settles to a murmur. The day asks nothing more of me than the gentle touch of my feet on the mountain slopes.

I am possessed by what I know is a weirdly wired brain. It cruels my being in the world. The shrouding shyness, stilted speech, overwhelming insufficiency, inform greater isolation than where I am walking now.

I am here alone because that is what my brain wills. I have learned to love the silences.

So I walk for more than 6 hours without seeing another person. I am strangely content with no human contact. Around the village of Sakti in a side valley there are fields of barley and corn along the streams.

Walking is simple. Thinking and obsessing is hard.

I reached the snow line in the early afternoon. The snow is soft and the air thin and breathing difficult. I walked as far as I could, sinking up to my thighs in cold soft snow, taking about 15 minutes to move 50 metres.

When I took a selfie - tricky with an analogue camera, even at sea level where there’s plenty of oxygen and no snow - the sky behind me appeared dark blue from the thin air. There was no way I would reach the top. 

Looking back from near the top of Chang La* ©

In a small flat side valley corralling his mixed herd of lazy dzo and yak was a tall and deeply tanned Tibetan herder spinning his prayer wheel. He beckoned me over and made it quite clear that I was stupid to attempt to cross the pass this late in the day. 

He indicated he was staying in the valley until first light tomorrow. The snow would be hard and he would go over the pass towards the lake I had been hoping to reach. 

His gestures said I was welcome to stay with him. I could see no tent or covering of any kind, and the night would be cold enough to freeze hard the soft snow I had tried to climb through. I guessed he settled amongst the sleeping yaks for warmth. I had only a balaclava and a goat wool pheran I'd bought in Kashmir, and just a little food and water left.

I was aware enough to know my brain was addled by the shortage of oxygen and the exertion. The aloneness was sated and I had been more than stupid enough for one day.

So I thanked him and headed back down. There was a waning gibbous moon that spread cold blue light. I reached my tent in the wood well after dark. The monks were chanting the day's last prayer. I was asleep before they finished.

* There’s now a road over this pass at 5340m (17,584ft) - 30m lower than Everest base camp - where the oxygen content of the air is about 50% less than sea level. The road goes to Pangong Lake. Pangong is split by the agreed Line of Actual Control marking the disputed border between India and China. On the pass there’s a small army outpost with a sign that says “10th highest motorable pass in the world”, though the tourist descriptions say its the second or third highest. There’s also a few huts with a sign that says “Highest terrestrial high altitude research station in the world”.