Walk the Sky...

is one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite books – the prophet by kahlil gibran.  its what came to mind during my short 45 minute flight from delhi to leh.  flying over the himalayas was unreal and was an epic introduction to the town of leh. 

it is now my sixth day in leh and my fourth day in the snow leopard conservancy office.  the hostel i will be living in for the next few months is wonderful and simple.  it is completely solar powered and the toilets are described as ‘open, long-drops,’ which makes me giggle.  

day one consisted of lots of sleep and drinking water – luckily my few years in colorado and my marathon in steamboat springs prepared me well for handling high altitude settings.  day two consisted of a bit of loneliness and sadness coupled with the feeling of being a bit lost.  being alone in the hostel and-even worse-alone in my thoughts, my poor little emotional self was put through the ringer.  and other than books my only other forms of distraction from thoughts are the lord of the rings movies and the three seasons of the original star trek - nerd alert! luckily, these feelings didn’t last for long as i decided i needed to put my big girl pants on and explore the town of leh.  ladakhi people are incredibly friendly and its easy to just wander around the market alone and feel relatively safe.  the scariest things on the streets are the stray dogs and those you just throw rocks at.

meeting the SLC staff has been wonderful as they are energetic, engaging, and welcoming.  most speak english but they are teaching me ladakhi, which has been fun and made me (and many others) laugh.  they are a great crew of people and i am excited to spend the next few months with them. 

two days ago marked the world environmental day and SLC, along with several other environmental NGO’s, organized a ‘clean-up’, a rally, and a march through the market.  [side note: one thing that i have learned about ladakhi’s is that everything is ‘cool-ay, cool-ay,’ so sometimes things happen very…slowly or, frankly, not at all]  we met at 7:30am and piled into a bus and instead of going straight to the town located at 18,000ft that we were to help clean-up, we went and had chai for about an hour and a half.  finally, we loaded again into the bus and proceeded to drive the highest motorable road in the world.  needless to say it was AMAZING and beautiful…and cold.  however, due to our late start (and sloooow bus) we only made it to 15,300ft – still pretty high and really awesome – and we didn’t clean-up anything.  instead tourists just came and took photos of the women dressed in the traditional ladaki garb while we passed our pamphlets that they (maybe) read.  regardless of the funny proceedings of the day, it was great to see what all these NGO’s are doing in this region of the world and how many people seem to care about it.  and i do love a good rally and march...

oh and did i mention the food is delicious…

love-love-love to you all!