Leh - final day

Tuesday 26 April

 

The final full day in Leh – and stricken down by a touch of Delhi belly (or whatever the local equivalent is) I have been resting all day. It’s spring here and people are preparing for summer crops; digging out gardens, watering the soil. Store keepers are cleaning and painting their premises, preparing for the summer influx of tourists. But I prefer it like this, quiet and with most of the tourist traps closed. But next time I should have warmer clothing.

 

The skies have been perfectly clear, dark clean blue, bright sun. This afternoon some cloud came in and a sudden gust of wind blew up a dust storm.

The first day it was a struggle to climb up to my second storey guesthouse room but with 24 hours rest I was able to get about and by yesterday morning sufficiently acclimatised to be able to start walking and even climbing without getting short of breath. Leh is on the side of a hill, and so any walking involves going up and coming down. We had an early morning climb to the Shanti Stupa, built by Japanese monks as part of a movement for world peace; then after wandering round the market took a taxi up to the vertiginous heights of Namgyal Tsemo Gompa and then a slide down the mountain to the Leh Palace.

 

People here are certainly fit and clamber round as agilely as mountain goats.   

 

The “Oriental Guest House” is a friendly place, run by a large family who spend the day pottering round – cleaning, preparing the garden, carrying children, cooking. And a grandfather who occupies himself sitting in the sun, spinning his prayer wheel and generally keeping an eye on things. It sprawls over three traditional style houses. We are in the cheap rooms – about $5 per night with shared bathroom promising running hot and cold but more usually dribbling warm and very cold. But that’s no hardship when you can lie in bed and look out at the Himalayas. In any case, water is scarce here and we shouldn’t waste it. In the same ecological spirit we are offered the use of a traiditional Ladakhi toilet – a hole in the floor, falling into a chamber below – open to the outside and from where the farmers take their manure.

 

From here we fly tomorrow to Delhi, back to noise and chaos.