Images of Ladahk

On the far western flank of India's Himalayan Mountains another great range runs nearly parallel from southeast to northwest. The highest peaks of the Zanskar Mountains like those of the Himalayas are perpetually covered in snow and threaded by glaciers. Further to the East, the Ladakh Range parallels the Himalayas and the Zanskars. Eventually all three ranges run into the Karakorum Mountains that form the northeastern boundary of the Indian State of Jammu and Kashmir. The land between and among these ranges is known as Ladakh. It covers nearly 4,000 square miles and is separated from the Changtang wilderness region of Tibet to the east by a disputed line on the maps of India and China.

Ladakh's capital of Leh is a town of nine or ten thousand people lying in the broad valley of the Indus River a day or two's journey from the Tibetan border. The valley floor is about 11,500 feet and most of the region rises to higher altitudes. Scattered throughout this valley are a number of prominent Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. The temples of Thikse Monastery are visible for miles, perched on the tops of rocky outcroppings with monks' living quarters cascading down and around them turning the whole hill into a sacred city.

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The Indian Army engineers who built the highway that connects Leh with the westerly valleys of Kashmir boast that it is the highest road in the world. It is often impassable after winter storms. Its back-to-back hairpin turns compete for the traveler's attention with an ever-ascending panorama of dramatic barrenness. A gut twisting day's drive west from Leh toward Kashmir brings us to the magically situated monastery at Lamayuru.

From there a precarious dirt track turns south for a few more hours drive. Vehicle passengers often must jump out to clear rockslides in order to proceed. Finally the jeep or minibus drops a gaggle of weary villagers, monks and trekkers off at the road head. After camping overnight on the edge of a hamlet, everyone loads up a small caravan of horses and mules and sets off on a four-day trek to a pocket of villages in the heart of the Zanskar Mountains. The first day's trail is through a long narrow canyon. The three to five foot wide trail has been cut by hand into a sheer cliff that drops to a boulder-strewn river.

This is the home of the Snow Leopard.

Everything that goes to these villages is carried on these animals. Tools and grain, sugar and tea, panes of glass, pots and pencils, shoes and sweets-everything except the rough cut timber that must be imported because this area is essentially devoid of trees. These boards are tied to the backs of men who, because of the width of their loads and the narrowness of the trail, must do what the animals cannot - walk sideways.

Everyone holds a collective breath if one animal caravan meets another going in the opposite direction. More than one villager has lost both his animal and his goods to the roiling waters below. Bridges are constructed and maintained by volunteers from the nearest villages and those who use them. Animals and humans must pick their way over missing and rotting boards. The good bridges have handrails and are built from cut lumber; the scary ones are logs slung across wire cable and held down by large stones.

After wending through this dramatic canyon for hours, the caravan finally reaches a small village where tea, biscuits and occasionally even a beer or coke provide a brief respite before the group moves on to reach a suitable camping spot for the night. Overnight stopping locations are carefully dictated by an adequate supply of wild grass for the horses and mules and sufficient distance from any cultivated fields. The growing season is so short at these high altitudes that local farmers cannot afford to lose their only crop of barley to hungry pack animals.

Camping sites are widely spaced and if the weather turns bad before reaching one, the group carries on in the rain, hail and even snow that can white out a mountain pass at any time-even in the middle of July or August. After the first day the horizon opens up and the thousand-year old trail wends its way across a rocky landscape so barren that one wonders what on earth the occasional flock of goats is possibly finding to eat. Rising nearly perpendicularly from the planes, uplifted mountains marbled with dozens of layers of geological activity are a fantasy of shapes and colors. It's easy to imagine that one is on another planet.

Patches of grass, low shrubs and a few stumpy trees whose limbs have been repeatedly harvested for firewood line the myriad streams that feed the rushing rivers. Sometimes the glacial source of the frigid water is only several hundred yards above the crossing that hopefully has a standing bridge. If not, one hopes for strategically placed boulders or an empty horse that can be boarded in lieu of trying to find a foothold on the sharply rocky bottom and then staying upright in the surprisingly strong current.

Along the way, the chatter of golden haired marmots says they have spotted a threat. Ibex may cross the path on their way to the river to drink at sundown but usually it takes keen eyes to spot them clambering above in the impossibly steep rocky slopes along the trail. The very lucky might spot a snow leopard. But unless this elusive animal were distracted by a kill, it would have sighted the human first and quietly blended into the background invisible to all but the most practiced eyes.

For a brief window in mid-summer, a bouquet of blue, purple, yellow, pink and white wildflowers dot the northern slopes of the highest passes. There are six passes on this trip, the highest of which is 16,600 feet. Singe La (Lion Pass) is so named because the locals say they can see a lion in the upper left quadrant of the jagged, snow layered peak that rises above this pass. Beyond is the Trans Singela region of Ladakh, one of the most remote and poorest areas in all of Northern India.

Once winter sets in, deep snow closes these mountain bridges to the outside world and the villagers stay put for six to eight months. Only a few brave men and their yaks take the winter route in or out. It is dangerous to man and animal to travel along the frozen edges of the deep, fast-moving Zanskar River. But for some it is a necessity as it is the only way to bring in the large timbers that provide structural support for new houses or other large buildings. Except for these occasional winter forays, the villagers must rely on their horses and mules traversing the plateau and passes during the summer months to bring in whatever they need. On this trip we pass several such caravans each day.

Our destination is Lingshed village in the heart of the Trans Singela region. It is the site of an ancient but still active Monastery that serves the spiritual and physical needs of this village and five others that are within a day's walking distance. Lingshed, the largest of these scattered enclaves, has about 800 people. The whole population of the Lingshed region is roughly double that. The Monastery is tucked beneath a soaring wall of sheer granite nearly two thousand feet high. The village homes are scattered about the cascading hillsides below the Monastery--each surrounded by a bright green carpet of barley nearing harvest.

Lingshed has an agrarian pastoral economy and most people do not produce much beyond their own needs that can be sold for cash. It is not connected by modern forms of transportation or communication to any part of the world. There are no satellite or wireless links, no vehicular roads, not even a post office. Communication is by word of mouth and whenever travelers meet on the trail, they usually stop and exchange information ranging from weather conditions to recent births to reports of new fighting with the Pakistanis. These travelers serve as the local newspaper when they return to their homes and villages.

Yet, there are occasional signs of modern technology. It will be years before a central source of electricity is available but each year a few additional families add a simple solar panel to their houses to power one or two light bulbs. In the past few years, the Indian government has been pressured to provide some infrastructure to the people of its most remote regions. It underwrites some part of these solar panels though the householder must also find a way to raise cash to pay for his share. There are one or two hand constructed solar cookers to heat water but lack of funds and difficulty of delivery have inhibited the import of parabolic cookers mounted on sturdy metal frames such as are found in other parts of the Tibetan plateau.

Some people wear wristwatches or have battery powered clocks in their kitchens. Plastic buckets, nylon rope, thermos bottles and kerosene-burning pressure cookers ease some chores a bit. Still most blankets and the heavy robes worn by men and women are woven by hand and most food products are produced using centuries-old technology. Hanging beside the clock in this picture is a traditional churn to make the salty butter used in the tea that is sipped throughout the day and evening by nearly everyone past the nursing stage.

Ground barley and buttered tea are the staples here as on most of the Tibetan plateau. Sweet peas and potatoes add a little variety to the diet. Those with access to cash may buy canned goods such as powdered milk or packaged noodles. Recently some households have begun to drape government supplied heavy plastic sheets over rock wall enclaves to enable the cultivation of a wider variety of vegetables during the short growing season. As the village sits between 13,000 and 14,000 feet, there is sufficient heat and time to ripen only one crop a year.

Yet, in many respects daily life in Lingshed has not changed in hundreds of years. The only wheels are stuffed with written prayers and turned round and round by hand. The terrain is too steep for a bicycle, a baby stroller or even a wheelbarrow. Human legs and shoulders are the wheels and carts of this society where everyone contributes physical labor.

No one has running water in his or her house. In the winter, ice covering the local streams has to be chopped to allow the water to be dipped out by bucket. People spend the winter months holed up with their livestock on the ground floors of their homes breathing the sooty smoke of fires made from dung, dried grasses and small branches. Kitchen walls like these in the monastery are blackened with smoke and respiratory problems are common.

There is no doctor trained in western or allopathic medicine in the village or close by. A health worker paid by the Indian Government gives inoculations and tries to teach basic hygiene and disease prevention techniques. But he cannot conduct surgeries or practice emergency medicine and has to throw out most government-supplied antibiotics because they are so long past their expiration dates. Though a superficial look suggests that the villagers are in robust good health, a myriad of diseases and chronic conditions plague many including the youngest children.

The villagers are almost wholly dependent on the traditional system of Amchi doctors using carefully prepared mixtures of medicinal herbs, roots, precious stones, barks and other natural ingredients to treat a vast array of illnesses. Amchi doctors are either ordinary householders who have been trained by a father or grandfather or a young man or woman who exhibits enough interest in the practice to be trained by other elder Amchis in the village. Ancient texts give detailed descriptions of the ingredients and methods for mixing and using these herbal remedies. The recitation of certain prayers during preparation and administration of these medicines is integral to their healing power. One of the texts shown here was written by the great, great grandfather of the head Amchi doctor in the village of Lingshed.

There is an elementary school but in past years it has offered classes only intermittently, as no government paid teacher will stay in this remote area for even a year. Recently an Austrian NGO has built and furnished a solar heated school building in Lingshed with proper toilets, a playground and living quarters for several teachers who will be paid by the NGO. Some children have been sent to Leh to be educated in the hope that they will return and be teachers in the school. The government provides high school facilities in Leh for all children from the Trans Singela area but many do not go, as they are needed by their families to work on the land or accompany pack animals back and forth to the roadhead.

Although most villagers have no formal education, they are knowledgeable of their cultural and religious heritage and generally honor both the ceremonial practices and compassionate precepts of Tibetan Buddhism. Every home has an area or even a room set aside for the family's alter which holds statues of Buddhas and other great teachers as well as religious texts and precious artifacts. Once children have been raised and married and taken over the family land for agriculture and grazing, most elders use their time to practice and prepare for their death and rebirth. The spinning of prayer wheels and fingering of malas (rosaries) while murmuring prayers become the accompaniment to all of life's activities.

The Lingshed Monastery is believed to be more than a thousand years old. It has a population of about 60 monks. During early morning prayers, young initiates scamper about serving butter tea and balls of tsampa (ground barley) to ancient men who appear on the verge of crumpling into dust while robust middle aged monks lead the deep throated chanting and myriad of ceremonies that characterize daily monastic life. It is still common for families to send one or more of their young boys to be educated at a monastery in the hope that at the age of decision the boys will choose to take vows and commit themselves to the serious practice of Tibetan Buddhism.

Recently the Lingshed Monastery and others throughout Ladakh have experienced a drop in their populations as young monks in their late teens and early twenties have been aggressively recruited by the Indian Army. In recent high altitude battles with Pakistan near the line of control that has divided Jammu and Kashmir for over 50 years, the Army found that young men who have grown up at altitudes such as those of Lingshed fare much better than the best trained soldiers from the lowlands of India. These recruits are also well disciplined and accustomed to hard work.

Recognizing that enticements of military life such as a guaranteed salary and access to worldly activities in Leh or larger cities such as Delhi could have a devastating effect on the ability of the monastery to maintain itself, the village elders and senior monks had a series of late-night meetings in the summer of 2000 to address the problem of attrition. As a result, a number of families pledged 15 new students to the monastery with the hope and expectation that many will choose to stay when they are old enough to make that decision. The boy pictured here is one such child. He has already demonstrated an active interest in monastic activities and is spontaneously demonstrating a traditional dance that he learned from observing his elders.

Because of its remoteness and altitude, Lingshed may be one of the last places on the planet to show visible signs of modern economic and technological life that most people take for granted. But change is inevitable and both attitudes and practices in Lingshed are in transition. As more and more young people leave the village to be educated in Leh or even just make the trip to buy supplies for their families, they bring back ideas of how to live that differ from those of their parents and grandparents. Some will want to become consumers and will need to find ways to earn cash to make their purchases. Some will be educated to teach or practice western medicine or tend a shop instead of herding yaks and goats and tilling the land with wooden ploughs as their mothers and fathers do.

In many communities throughout the world these transitions happen without conscious planning or even recognition of what is happening until social, religious, family and economic systems have been turned into a chaotic confusion of upheaval, rejection, disaffection and disparity. A few remote areas, having been spared the abruptness of change forced on them from the outside, have acted consciously to induce changes that are consistent and supportive of positive traditions and that maximize whatever benefits changes bring to the largest possible number of people. The Buddhist Kingdom of Bhutan is a good example of this kind of conscious planning. The remote village of Lingshed in the ancient Kingdom of Ladakh, now an integral part of India, is another such place.

The impetus for conscious management of change in Lingshed has been a local monk named Ngawang Jangchup. In 1968 at the age of 19 he left his friends and family in Lingshed and traveled to a great Tibetan teaching monastery in India to study for an advanced degree in Buddhist philosophy. After twenty-three years of study and a final examination before His Holiness the Dalai Lama, this child of poor illiterate farmers was awarded the Lharampa Geshe degree, the highest that can be obtained in the Gelugpa Tibetan Buddhist tradition. In 1991 Geshe Ngawang Jangchup returned to Lingshed and was surprised and saddened to realize that his family and friends were living in as poor conditions as they had when he left.

Geshela ("la" is an honorific designating respect) decided to do something that would improve both the temporal and spiritual lives of the lay people and the monks. He began by teaching Buddhist philosophy to the monks and was enthusiastically received. The following summer he returned to Lingshed and in meetings with both lay and monastic leaders began to plan projects that would improve peoples' lives without destroying their cultural foundations. In a meeting with HH the Dalai Lama that same year he was encouraged and inspired to begin a series of teachings for the lay people of Lingshed and surrounding villages. Those teachings in the form of "Seminars" have been held each summer since 1993.

This nearly weeklong event is a high point in the cultural life of the local villagers. It offers a respite from the fields and from housework but not from the care of children who attend the Seminar along with their parents. Each day Geshela gives teachings from Buddhist texts that offer ways to develop a peaceful mind and compassion for others. Monks offer butter tea and tsampa to the audience as they sit in the open through a day that may include merciless heat, dust storms and even passing thunderstorms. These children are maintaining their ranks even as they fall asleep in the midday sun.

For the women, this event is akin to opening night at the opera. Dressed in their finest clothes, fanciest capes and wearing much of the families' wealth in the form of ornate jewelry, many also wear a heavy, hot perak on their heads. This wool-faced headdress is covered with hunks of turquoise and coral; hand pounded silver and pearl beads. Here in a startling juxtaposition of modernity and tradition, a cultural troupe of local women perform folk dances and sing into microphones powered by a large battery.

The women are participating in an organized group called the Lingshed Cultural Troupe. It is a part of the villagers' plan to preserve their cultural traditions while improving their lives. Men and children also participate by performing songs, dance and theatrical skits during the summer Seminars as well as on other significant occasions. The group has also started to conduct adult literacy classes during the winter months when no one can work the fields or herd animals and they plan to undertake projects to preserve various religious shrines and sites throughout the area.

During the Seminars, the village elders hold a series of meetings during which they discuss and make consensus-based decisions regarding wide-ranging issues in their villages. Such meetings can best be compared to the New England Town Meeting. While women are invited, they rarely attend often citing the need to care for children at home. However, their concerns and perspectives appear to be considered. As in most Tibetan Buddhist societies, girls and women command much more respect than their counterparts in other traditionally organized religious cultures. The village leader shown here has several children but has chosen to send his youngest daughter to private school in Leh because he feels she will most likely benefit herself and others in the village by this investment in her education.

Perhaps the most ambitious and far-reaching project undertaken by Geshela, the Lingshed Monastery and the villages has been to build a nunnery--the Lingshed Chomo Gonpa. Until several years ago women from the surrounding villages had no opportunity to obtain a religious education unless they were sent far away from their homes and families. There was no institution to harbor an unmarried woman whose family had died or one who might not marry due to a physical or mental infirmity. Initially the nunnery was established in an old farmhouse and almost immediately it had a population of over 20 girls and women. The oldest nun, Ani Tshering Dolma, is in her early 50s and occupies a position of leadership in the nunnery based on her dedication and her senior age.

Using funds from supporters in Europe, the U.S. and Asia, Geshela has been able to buy enough land in Lingshed to locate a two-story building to house and feed the nuns. A temple, library and classrooms are scheduled for future construction. The Nunnery was dedicated in the summer of 2000 and has sufficient land for the nuns to cultivate their own fields and tend several yaks. The goal is to make the nuns self-sufficient in terms of food production and management of their own affairs. Presently some of the nuns, especially the younger ones, are expected to return to their families' homes during the growing season and help cultivate the crops that will in turn be shared with them.

The Lingshed Nunnery now houses more than 25 nuns and all are being taught to read and write Ladakhi, Hindi and English. Once they have achieved a degree of literary and the Nunnery is able to identify a Buddhist philosophy teacher willing to endure the harsh conditions of Lingshed year-round, the women will pursue more systematic religious studies. For now, several monks are providing religious instruction and helping the women learn how to manage their organization. This nun Ani Tsewang Dolma is a very fast learner and has already taken the first prize for her studies as well as a leadership role in religious affairs.

Having secured a stronger base for both secular and religious education, the next focus of development activity is improving health care through the traditional Amchi doctor program and more sophisticated use of western medicine. A building has recently been constructed to store both locally collected herbs and those precious minerals and other substances that must be obtained from outside the area. Here the local Amchis will collectively prepare herbal medicines using formulas and prayers found in traditional medical transcripts. A goal is to purchase a collection of these local medicine texts and create a library in the building that will also be used as a community clinic and staffed on a rotating basis by several of the local Amchis. Geshela and the Local Doctors Committee are seeking to establish an endowment to fund these medicine and text purchases and provide on-going training for all the local doctors. Improving the health of all generations is a major priority for the Lingshed development program.

The villagers are also anticipating the time when they will be able to house and maintain a western medicine clinic in which simple surgeries, medical emergencies and problems in childbirth can be handled. Geshela would like to support the education of several girls and believes that at least one of them would complete medical training and return to Lingshed to provide this much needed medical service. It is anticipated that the traditional medicine system and the western medicine system would complement each other's strengths and compensate for weaknesses. Just as the very old and the very young join hands in mutual support and remind us of the interdependence of all things, the development process of Lingshed and surrounding villages is one that combines the strengths of this ancient culture with the benefits of modern technology and knowledge.

These words and pictures are dedicated to the people of Lingshed and the other villages served by the Lingshed Monastery. The projects described here are implemented through the hard work of local residents and a few foreign volunteers. However, money to buy wooden beams and glass windows for the Nunnery and traditional medical texts for the Amchi clinic library must come from the generosity of others. The pictures throughout this site are available for purchase and all proceeds after production and delivery will be donated to benefit the Amchi and Nunnery projects.