Up north in India, pushed up against a couple of tense borders, lies a parrot’s-beak district that would be Tibet if some mighty tall Himalayan mountains weren’t poking up in between. The approach by air reminded me of the stunning entry to Lhasa—peak after snow-covered peak, giving way suddenly to a brown valley full of more prayer flags than trees.
People in Ladakh speak a variation of Tibetan, eat Tibetan, dress Tibetan, and worship Tibetan. The peaks appear to unite rather than divide the two regions. Some peoples would be put off by a soaring natural boundary, but not Tibetans. As a friend pointed out, they like it up high—“what they don’t like is having to come down.”For the first day or so, a slight headache told my friend Edie and me that we were above 10,000 feet. Once we acclimatized, it remained to get used to the lack of water, noise, and warmth. The skies were clear but the temperatures wintry. Not much grows there. Despite the peaks, and the river Indus (tumbling through from its source in Tibet on the way to becoming Pakistan’s main artery), Ladakh qualifies as desert.
Edie and I took a trek over several 13,000-foot passes. We often stopped to add or subtract layers. Our guide, a 22-year-old Ladakhi woman, never did that. She simply wrapped a free end of her long scarf over the top of her head and kept walking.
In Ladakhi villages we followed long belt-high stone walls, edging terraced fields or guiding streams. Sometimes we found wall remnants standing alone, built for reasons long forgotten. Taken together, the walls form the skeletons of the villages. They need frequent upkeep; the municipal health depends on their strength. Shorter, stouter walls appeared here and there, topped with dozens of slate slabs bearing the inscription “Om Mani Padme Hom.” I remember also seeing these devotional offerings to the local spirits in Tibet, where they’re known as “mani walls.” We always passed them on the left.
Like in Tibet, we gravitated toward monasteries. Usually monks and nuns seemed to be hard at work, but not too busy to stop for tea with us, or to unlock a room. Unlike in Tibet, such places were plentiful. Even the smallest villages seemed to have more than one. Pictures of the Dalai Lama were displayed frequently.
All the cultures of the huge Trans Himalaya Region were mixed up together in Leh, Ladakh’s main town. Mosques mix easily with monks there. People hawking apricot seeds set up on the curb outside internet shops. Everyone seemed able to speak at least three languages. After staying for four days in 100-person villages along our trek route, the pace in Leh felt pretty fast.In total we spent just over a week in Ladakh—about the same amount of time I spent a couple years ago in Tibet. Both places have many lessons to teach the world. Both places are chock full of soldiers (the dicey border areas nearby Ladakh have led the Indian government to create countless security outposts). And in both Ladakh and Tibet I worried for the disappearance of a culture.
The Indian government of course has no formal policy aimed at extinguishing “Tibet-ness.” It just happens. Even though in Ladakh—unlike in China—the Tibetan brand of religion is freely practiced, a new generation of Ladakhis is growing up less interested in traditional local ways than in the ways of the world. And as much as people like Edie and me might come and try to learn about Ladakh, we inevitably import our own ways that the locals try to adapt to or imitate. The tools we use to understand Ladakhi culture, such as airports, internet shops, and trekking agencies, also all play a role in the dilution of that culture.
