Sham

Last week marked my second and final visit to the field to conduct my surveys.  Sham Valley sits just west of Hemis National Park.  Not only is it beautiful, it is also one of the places in Ladakh where you are most likely to spot a snow leopard.  Well, FAIL.  Still no sightings though I have seen ample sign.

Jigmet, Gyalson, Angmo, and I headed out of Leh in the open-backed gypsy with all of our gear towards Saspochey.  Traveling in the back of the Gypsy has become one of my favorite ways to travel.  Its typically bumpy, dusty, and – at times – a little frightening but, as you are holding on to the seat as best you can, the fresh air while driving windy roads through the mountains offers strange peace and refreshment.  Our first stop on this trip is a small town about 2 hours from Leh called Saspochey.  Here we stay at a school house and prepare for the nature trek we will take 8 children and 6 teachers on the next day.  

We wake up at 5 to begin the slow – very slow – hike, riddled with tea breaks and photo opportunities, to the towns summer pasture located at 4,550 meters.  The hope is to share some identification skills and wildlife knowledge in a hands-on way with this small crew.  We also hope to see abundant wildlife in the valley – again, FAIL.  Though it was an incredibly beautiful trek, over the 9 hours we saw little other than a few bird species, wildflowers, and one ibex.  Jigmet was not entirely pleased but the rest of us had a great time enjoying a nice sunny day in the mountains.  When we finally returned to the village, we find out one of the local woman saw a snow leopard near the village earlier that day.  Naturally.  Good for her, bad for us. 

The next day we began our real work – Angmo and I surveying the households of 5 different villages and Jigmet and Gyalson collecting motion-triggered cameras from 9 locations.  Both proved to be exhausting work.  Angmo and I ended up surveying 26 households with much more success than in Zanskar…and I did not get sick this time – wahoo!  One of my favorite things about this survey work, though it has not turned out the way it was supposed to, is getting to experience genuine, sweet hospitality.  Each household we approached, whether they were in the middle of doing something, hosting other people, or taking a rest; they stopped, invited us in, and fed us tea and food until I about burst.  Out of the 26 households, nobody was bothered that we were there asking questions or bothered that we interrupted their work.  One of the things I know I will bring back with me to my little house in Durham is this sweet sense of hospitality towards strangers.  It’s not something we see much in the U.S.  Time is too precious it seems and life is too busy to stop and show kindness.  I know this because I’m guilty of it.  But one of my favorite things about the human mind and soul is its profound ability to change.  So here’s to renewed priorities – people.

So as Angmo and I moved between towns, sometimes trekking or driving, we met person after person who had stories, opinions, and suggestions for SLC-IT.  We started each day early and ended late, completely exhausted and counting down the number of households left to go.  As tiring as talking and translating all day was for Angmo, I found that listening to a language I don’t understand and conversations I cannot be an active participant in equally exhausting.  I miss the art of conversation – I fear I may be loosing it.  Though by the end of our surveying, I was able to understand what some people were saying through certain words and body language.  In addition to our own work, we got a chance to share in the Christmas morning like feeling that comes with camera trap work.  I’ve missed that feeling that Paige and I used to get after we collected our 40 camera traps back in my Rocky Mountain Wild days.  All huddled around the computer Jigmet, Gyalson, Angmo and I would see what the last two months produced for the ongoing population assessment that SLC-IT is working on.  They got some great photos of a snow leopard marking its territory through rock scent and some great nighttime shots of a Pallas cat, which apparently is very rarely documented in Ladakh. 

And thus ended my surveying.  As much as I loved being in Sham Valley, there was something nice about coming back to my little room I call home that I may or may not be currently sharing with bed bugs.  So now its back to the office where I will spend the next few weeks entering data into spreadsheets, figuring out how to make sense of it, analyzing it, and then writing up a nice report for SLC-IT to add to the 10 year program evaluation they will be conducting next year.  To say the least, this is the part of the project I am less than thrilled about but luckily I have two visitors –J.B. and Ryan – to look forward to in mid-August!  Then the real fun begins…

oh me oh my

I’ve become lackadaisical about updating this blog; maybe I’m just not cut out for the blogging world.  Jury’s still out. 

The past few weeks have marked a lot of firsts.  I had my first motorbike ride in India and then my first motorbike accident (very small, not even a scratch).  My first attempt at acrobatic yoga – Google it, it’s awesome - and Thai massage.  My first trip to Tso Morirri, which resulted in my first time pushing the broken down truck up a mountain road, my first ride in the back of a cargo truck driven madly by monks, my first taste of salty high alpine Ladakhi lake water, my first time sitting on a beach this summer, and the origins of a mysterious cough I cannot seem to get ride of.  Last week also marked the beginnings of my data entry and report writing – thrilling stuff.  I had my first facial, tried many different traditional Ladakhi foods for the first time, and saw my first herd of Ladakhi Urial.  So many, many firsts as of late.  These new experiences have been refreshing as the weight of the failure and difficulties of this project and organization have, at moments, been grim to bear. 

Oh and one unfortunate second – bed bugs!  While visiting villages in Sham Valley, Angmo and I had some unexpected visitors.  Caitlin – if you’re reading this – THEY’RE BACK and in India!  The middle of the night paranoia has returned, damn.  So far in the last two months I have shared my bed with rats and bed bugs.  Definitely not welcome guests.

Despite multiple set backs, I’m still enjoying my little home here in Ladakh.  I have a feeling I will dearly miss things here once I return.  In the mornings, I have developed a routine of hiking up to a place where you have an amazing view of the peaks and the town of Leh.  Its incredibly peaceful and I enjoy my meditations with Oswald, Kahlil, or St. John of the Cross.  Different spiritual guides for different days.  I have also taken to collecting fallen Tibetan prayer flags on my daily meditative hikes.  Prayer flags are hung everywhere in Ladakh and its beautiful to see them strung about the mountains signifying important Buddhist spiritual places.  While I love seeing them soaring as flags are meant to soar, for whatever reason I find the fallen, broken ones more beautiful.  I suppose I have some proclivity towards fallen, broken things.  But there is something bittersweet – redemptive, maybe? - about collecting fallen prayers.

It’s amazing how time has moved here – already near the end of July!  But so many friends, emotions, and experiences have come and gone.  I can only hope to be a changed woman from all of it.  In fact that’s become a constant prayer in my meditations.  Oh! I love ch-ch-ch-changes, who would ever want to stay exactly the same?  That’s the gift of time, I suppose.  Just like Bowie says ‘turn and face the strange.’

I do believe my thoughts here are more than scattered – I apologize for the current state of my mental environment!

Kirk out.

And we're back!

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… 

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.

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.

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. 

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.

Off to the field...

Finally, after almost four weeks, I am heading out on Wednesday at 5am for Zanskar Valley to start the field component of my research.  It will take us 2 days of travel to reach Padum, the main town in Zanskar.  I will be travelling and working with K.C., the field manager for that region.  He will be my interviewer and translator at the 8 different villages where we will survey.  I am very excited to finally be making headway on my project but also a tidbit nervous that it could go horribly awry, especially since this is my first go at research of this kind and the pre-field time here has looked completely different than what I was hoping for.  Oh dear! 

I will be staying with K.C. and his family for the 2 weeks I will be there and then we will both head back on July 9^th.  From what I hear, Internet access is sparse but I will document as much as possible and update the blog when I can.

What Zanskar may look like...

Prayers and good thoughts would be greatly welcome and appreciated!

Puga...

Road to Puga.

After the craziness of the film festival – borderline bust of an event – the office took a trip to a place called Puga, about 7-8 hours away from Leh through beautiful and diverse country.  Of course we were to leave at 6:30 but in Ladakhi time it was more like 9:30 and then we had to stop for breakfast… I am still perplexed as to what time I should actually arrive anywhere here.

Black-necked cranes

We took three cars and about 11 people and were to return the same day we went – we ended up spending the night, shocker.  Another lesson learned in India – don’t count on things ever going as planned no matter how much everyone says it will.  The road to Puga was awe-inspiring, driving over small mountain passes, through deserts, rickety bridges, small towns, and always following the Indus River. The purpose of the trip was to drop off clothes, blankets, games, etc. to a school for nomadic children.  During the beginning of the summer, Puga is home to a nomadic tribe of people called the Changspa.  Throughout the year, these people move from pasture to pasture with goats and sheep.  They sell pashmina, meat, cheese, etc. as they move.  In 2004, some teachers were brought to Puga to set up a school for the children of these nomads.  So for 9 months of the year, about 50 children leave their parents and go to school.  It was very interesting speaking with the head teacher and meeting the children.  However, with most things like this, it brings up an interesting tension between traditional livelihoods and modern development.  Nomadic peoples are typically illiterate and non-educated in this area but it has not been necessary to have schooling.  So, it brings up questions of what is truly beneficial.  Hmm, just thoughts.

Chanspa man using a fork to pull out pashmina very very forcefully.

Very happy boy with pink socks.

Despite my internal tension, the trip to Puga was a breath of fresh air after the film festival.  It consisted of...

having to hide in the car at military checkpoints because foreigners are not allowed in restricted areas without special permits of which I did not have – shocker, dancing to loud Indian hiphop both inside and outside the car, windy mountain roads following an incredible sea green Indus River, adorable nomadic children calling 

Dancing

me madam, conversations with the Changspa as they use a fork to pull pashmina from their goats, a rock scramble adventure with Pankhuri, having chai with some random strangers camping, visiting a hot spring at night, seeing a shooting star in an unreal night sky, almost getting run down by a very large scary herd dog, Pankhuri and I getting a harsh scolding from SLC staff for the last 6 items in the list, seeing two nesting black-necked cranes, blue sheep and a pika, and riding in the back of an open truck back to Leh.  What a success of a trip…

Pankhuri sitting in our rock cove.

Kardun-la Pass, ~ 18,000 ft.

2 weeks in...

so, it’s taken me a little while to adjust my sleeping to the time change and life here.  The last three nights I finally have been able to sleep through the night and not wake up at 5 in the morning.  Its been glorious.  Except last night I was awoken by something quite different.  Around 3 am I felt a little something jump on my feet causing me to awake abruptly and release a little scream.  a rat...a rat jumped on my feet!  I have no clue what the little thing was after but the rest of the night left me a little sleepless.  Rats in the hostel, in the kitchen, and even on my floor – fine, no big deal.  Rats in my bed – uh, I don’t think so.  What if he nibbled on me?!  So I am currently rat-proofing my room with large rocks…

despite my night filled with the little pitter patters of rat feet, life here in leh has improved every day.  I am getting more and more comfortable in this different lifestyle.  I am also coming to terms with the amount of solo time I have and am getting better daily at controlling my own thoughts.  As a deeply emotional person, this has been hard for me in the past, as I can sometimes get easily overwhelmed [uh consumed, maybe] with my emotions.  But practice makes perfect – well, maybe not but baby steps.  I don’t know that I have allowed myself to be quiet in a long time.  I have kept life busy and moving – maybe intentionally- and so this extreme change in the pace of life here has been jarring.  This is quite possibly the reason my first week here saw many tears – but I’m no stranger to tears and, in fact, I think they can be really beautiful.  As Kahlil says ‘the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.’  Phew, thanks Kahlil.

Over the past two weeks, SLC has been gearing up for Ladakh’s first annual International Film Festival, which has just finished its second day.  The shan (ladakhi for snow leopard) is the mascot of the festival, which places SLC as the festival’s cause partners.  So since I have been in the office, everything has been focused on preparing for this festival.  For the festival, SLC has a booth with a multitude of activities for festival goers. The first day, the stall saw some interest but since then it has been slow going, which has just been painful for us volunteers.  In the past I have helped plan two smaller film festivals and, in watching how the festival people have planned this one, I’m not entirely sure they have thought most things through.  But nonetheless, it may be good exposure for SLC, as that is not been their strong suit in the past.  Oh, and we all had to wear traditional Ladakhi dresses on the first day – very hot and uncomfortable.

Once the festival has come and gone, Ill get more of a chance to work directly on my project with some of the staff members.  And hopefully Ill get a chance to do some more exploring outside of Leh – I have yet to have a day off from work/the office…

p.s. the internet is weak so pictures aren't working, next time...