Duncan

We have now been in Ladakh for one month and two days. I have never felt so at home in a place so far away from New England. Ladakh is a world of its own. It has its own language, trees, mountains, culture and especially its own people. The world that exists here is one of not only tradition but also of innovation and advancement. Yes, the slow permeation of the stench of westernization is also apparent, but life here is so simple it almost isn’t real to me. The people here use anything and everything they can to support themselves and their families. Its separation from the rest of the world is so apparent in the smiles of the people, the ancient flow of the Indus River, and the immaculate beauty of the Himalaya.
Buddhism has made its eternal mark on this society, which is almost entirely based on the Buddhist way of life. Ever since the second spreading of Buddhism to Ladakh around 200 BC by the Indian King Asoka it has been the way of life for over one thousand years in Ladakh. On the last day of our previous trek in the Sham region we stopped to visit Tamisgong monastery, where the treaty of Tamisgong was signed in 1684 setting the boundary between Ladakh and Tibet, which still exist today. To be in intimate contact with such rich history is something that can be surreal to the senses. It is very hard to appreciate how much history and how many stories are engraved into the stones and the cliffs.
The Leh palace, which was built during the Namgyal Dynasty, Ladakh’s most prominent Buddhist reign, has come to be a very familiar sight. It is built on a brown cliff overlooking Leh and it has become an almost weekly experience to look up to it walking into the Internet café or the bakery we ravage for cookies and sweets. Now only a museum, the Leh palace is an artifact left by Ladakh’s golden dynasty. We have yet to explore it, but I hope it is in our future.
Two other events, which will remain in my memory for a long time, are the festivals we explored in February. The Stok festival and Matho Nagrang are Buddhist festivals which are centered on dances of the Buddhist tradition. Stok is more focused around the story telling of Buddhist life through dances, each dance representing a different stage of life. The entrancing nature of the colors and the simple natural movements of the monks were incredible, but only for a few hours. The next three hours seemed to never end, and were extremely repetitive. It is hard appreciate the tradition if you are an outsider, and foreign to the culture. Matho Nagrang was a sea of the social spectrum of Ladakh, and was much more popular. On one end of the spectrum were teenagers with western clothes and Pepsi, there for the sole purposed of the social scene. On the other end were Ladakh’s elder generations, there because they believed in the Buddhist traditions, and they were meaningful to them. This festival’s main attractions were the monks who were called oracles, and who supposedly could cut themselves with swords and leap from rooftop to rooftop blindfolded. These and other such salient features of Ladakhi culture are things we are lucky to literally be able to touch and feel their beauty.
Life here is a test. It has tested my ability to live in a place where I need to throw myself into the world, and assimilate myself in a way I have never needed to do before. I have adapted, and this place has morphed into home. It is the new family I’ve joined here, my intense happiness when the sun shines and the sky is cloudless, and even the five radios all playing simultaneously that makes feel this way. Something here makes me feel at home in a whole new way I’ve never experienced. It may not be better than home, but it is just as meaningful.