I arrived about 3 days ago to Leh and am still regrouping
from my ~1 ½ weeks in Zanskar. Zanskar
Valley is an amazingly beautiful place situated between the Himalayan and
Zanskar mountain ranges. To say the
least the 1 ½ weeks provided an anything but relaxing and expected field
excursion. But as Yvon Chouinard says
‘its not an adventure until something goes wrong.’ So let me regale you with the details of my
BIG adventure…
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| Zanskar Valley - our road to Padum |
The trip began at 4am on a packed tight Ladakhi bus with
blasting Ladakhi music (not a huge fan).
The first bus trip lasted 10 hours to Kargil. The road was bumpy, windy, and - when I dared
to look out the window – slightly terrifying; some how though, I managed to
sleep through a majority of it. The
second day of the trip lasted 16 hours and began at 2am, which meant that
somehow despite the bumpy, dirt roads – I slept, though I do remember hitting
my head against the window several times.
The second day took us through some amazing passes, beautiful mountain
views, narrow switchbacks, harrowing heights, and finally to Padum. From Padum, K.C. (SLC-IT field officer and
also the prince of Zangla), Monica (a very nice Hungarian woman), Galyson
(trekking guide and friend of K.C.), Lobby (quiet Zanskari man and also friend
of K.C.’s), and I took an hour long taxi to our semi-final destination,
Zangla. Here, Monica and I stayed with
K.C. and his family – wonderful people!
K.C. lives with his wife, mother, father and 3 children; and it was such
a gift to stay with them. Communication was difficult but luckily, I have learned a few Ladakhi words
and phrases that bode me well on this trip.
The most important being dik-dik, which means 'enough, enough.' You use this forcefully in response to
don-don, which means 'have, have.' So as
they are trying to force feed you more food by saying 'don-don', you respond
stubbornly with 'dik-dik.' This was a very
constant and important interaction throughout the entire trip with about
everyone I met.
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| Phugtal Monastery stupa |
After a day of rest, K.C. and I headed out of Zangla with our
small backpacks to begin surveying the different villages in Zanskar. While I loved being in a new place, I
struggled with my loss of control in how anything went. K.C. kept me as informed as he thought I
needed to be, which usually meant he would just tell me which taxi to get into
and sometimes he would let me know where we were going – not always
though. I felt a bit like a child but I
suppose as a usually fiercely independent person, its good to be humbled.
The plan for our Zanskar trip was to survey 8 villages and
140 households – fat chance. I kept
telling SLC-IT it would be impossible in a weeks time to do that but they
seemed convinced that because I was with K.C. we would accomplish it all. Well, we didn’t, oh well. One of our first obstacles to overcome in
Zanskar was the fact that I am a foreigner and everyone in Zanskar (and Leh
too) thinks all white people are insanely rich.
So K.C. and I had a hard time finding a taxi that would take us to our
first village cheaply– they wanted us to rent a jeep for Rs. 3,000 instead of Rs.50
for a taxi. Well, finally, K.C.
succeeded in convincing a taxi to take us.
All we had to do was hike about 30 minutes down the road and they would
pick us up. Once on our way, our plan
was to stay in Anmu that night, a village with two households. To get there we took a 3 hour taxi to the end
of the seemingly never ending winding road, where we hiked about 45 minutes
with a monk and another man to Anmu. We
stayed the night in Anmu and pre-tested the survey, which ended up being a
disaster. Throughout my trip to Zanskar
and interacting with some of the villagers, I learned quite a bit about SLC-IT
and their programs. Turns out, it was
very different from what I had previously understood. I won’t go into details but to say the least
it caused me to have a mini-15 minute breakdown and completely scrap the survey
I had spent so much time over the last 4 months working on. Luckily, I have always had a pretty resilient
attitude – something I probably owe my parents too – and I was able to get over
the normal feelings of failure that come with projects falling through.
In everything in my life, I have always wanted to hold
things loosely enough for them to have room to change. My expectations, hopes, and visions for how
life should go, rarely match up with reality.
Sometimes there is disappointment but, more often than not, I have
learned to let the questions I am asking change and my ideas to shape shift. This instance was no different than many things
in my life, so I let my project change into what would benefit SLC-IT and allow
for the villagers to express what was necessary. I also kept a nice little reminder verse in
my head: Genesis 4:7’…sin is crouching at your door. It’s desire is for you, but you may rule over it.’ The permission and choice implied helped as I
pulled myself back up by my bootstraps and warded off feelings of frustration,
inadequacy, and failure.
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| You probably can't see the trail but this was our path. |
So from Anmu, we hiked 2 hours to Chas to find that everyone
was tending their fields. So while we
waited for our interviewees, we hiked to an incredible monastery called the
Phugtal Monastery, which was built thousands of years ago on the face of
mountain in caves. It took two hours to
hike to and there were times when I was a bit scared of how high we were, how
steep the sides of the trail were, and how easy it would seem to just fall off
to impending doom. Luckily, I made it
and the moments of terror were worth it.
On the way, we saw fresh snow leopard sign in the form of tracks, scat,
and rock scent with hair. I have not
seen a snow leopard yet but I’m getting close, so I am hopeful that before I
leave Ladakh this summer I will have had a glimpse. We’ll see.
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| Phugtal Monastery |
After interviews in Chas, we hiked the 2 hours back to Anmu
– had breakfast – did a few interviews and then headed to Icher, which would
entail a 3 hour hike where K.C. almost got knocked out by a falling rock - disaster
averted. When we arrived in Icher, a
beautiful town with about 40 or so households, we rested for a bit before
starting any interviews. During our
rest, however, the universe had different plans for us – unfortunately. When I awoke, I had wrenching pains in my
stomach and a high fever. The best we
can figure out is that I got food poisoning from our breakfast in Anmu (I ate veg, everyone else ate non-veg breakfast...). So for the next few days, I was completely
incapacitated. The next day we headed
out early from Icher to Padum (not in our original itinerary…) where I met a
doctor in a field and was prescribed 4 different pills - who knows what they
were, I took them anyways. Needless to
say, we didn’t get much more surveying in and we had to skip 4 of the intended
villages. I’ve never had food poisoning
before and I hope to never have it again, I was a pretty miserable little
mess.
With my past experience with field work, I should have known
better to expect everything to go smoothly but I suppose I cant shake my
idealist self. So, after a few more days
with very little surveying and a lot of rest, K.C. and I headed back to Leh –
on what felt like the most miserably long jeep trip ever. Instead of taking two days to travel from
Padum to Leh, we opted for a 4am – 1am trip packed tight with other Ladakis
(one of which had car sickness the WHOLE trip…). But it was nice to return to my little makeshift
home in Leh after such an eventful field excursion. I still am struggling with
eating now, as every meal seems to look exactly the same as the meal that made
me sick – rice, dahl, and vegetable, ugh! And I’m still in the process of figuring out exactly what my project for
SLC-IT will look like over the next month and a half. Struggles.
