Camel rides and more

Sleeping in a tent wasn’t as bad as I thought it was. It was pretty warm and quiet. Or at least, I thought it was quiet. Apparently there was a donkey braying outside. I didn’t notice. As soon as I woke up, I was ferried first to our bathroom, to brush, and then to the communal bathroom, to take a shower. Half-asleep, I stumbled to the bathroom. It was clean, but the water was not nearly as warm as it was in Leh, and it was colder in Nubra than it was in Leh. Somehow, I took a shower, and headed back to the tent. Breakfast was at 8:30, so that’s when we went. From our tent to the dining hall was only a two minute walk, but there was a huge garden in the middle. I was walking with my grandmother, and she pointed out all the different vegetables. There were potatoes, tomatoes, beans, peas, cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, basil, garlic, and lots of other flowers. According to the hotel staff, vegetables only come from Leh once in a week, and they’re quite expensive, so people learned to become self-sufficient. In fact, almost every hotel has a vegetable garden of the same size, and most families have vegetable gardens.

After breakfast, we went to a monastery in Diskit. The climb to the top took 120 steps, after which I was completely out of breath. Although the altitude to Nurba is less than Ley (10, 500 feet to 11, 580 feet), it was still quite taxing. I guess that’s why most travel agencies recommend carrying around oxygen cans (which we also bought-it looks just like an air-freshener can). The monastery was quite similar to the other monasteries, except for one main difference. At this monastery, many, many people were working, either dusting, painting, sweeping, or doing other household-type chores. Why? Because his Holiness was coming. To the Ladkahi and Tibetan refugees (which there were about 5,000 of in Ladakh, all who lived in camps consisting of 80 families), their God was coming in front of them. Imagine the amount of pleasure that these people must be feeling that they volunteer to spend their time preparing for his visit. All of us believe that God exists; to these people, their God is coming in front of them. And in fact, his Holiness is a great man. A few years ago, he went to Turtuk, a predominantly Muslim village. He saw the poverty there, and decided to give 20 kids a scholarship to his school. Not only is he a spiritual leader for the Tibetans, but he has become a social, political, moral leader as well.

Statue of the Future Buddha

Sprucing up the monastery for the visit of His Holiness The Dalai Lama

After Diskit, we went to another place in which there was a statue of the Future Buddha. Unlike the typical statue of Buddha, who is sitting in the cross legged position, this Buddha was sitting in a chair. This was because the future Buddha is getting ready to come to this Earth and spread his teachings. As soon as his calling comes (which is supposed to be in about 2,500 years), he will get up from his seat and come to Earth. Here we also saw people working to clean the place for his Holiness’s visit. There was more work here, because the people here were actually creating a courtyard for his Holiness to come and speak to all the people of the surrounding villages. Most people working were girls, as most Ladakhi boys would go to the Siachen glacier to work as tour guides and other similar types of work.

We then went to Hanbur. In Hanbur, my mom, dad, brother and I went on a camel ride. It was an interesting experience. I’ve never ridden on a camel, so as soon as the camel got up, I screamed (because the camel straightens out its front legs first and then its back legs, I felt as though I was going to fall off). It was a 15 minute ride to the sand dunes (yes, this place had rock mountains, snow-capped mountains, rivers, waterfalls, trees, and sand dunes-everything was here) and back. When we got back, we were told to sit straight up, again because the camel bends his front legs first, which means you could potentially fall off). Camels aren’t indigenous to this region; during the time of the Silk Road, these Central Asian camels (from Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, etc) were left. Eventually, the population of camels grew to 200.

After that we had lunch, and came back to our tents. Surprisingly, there was power in our rooms. Of course, at 4:30 in the afternoon, you don’t really need light, but still, now I know that it exists in this valley. Dinner was at 7:30, so we had about three hours to kill. After doing sudoku for about 30 minutes, my dad, brother, grandfather, and I decided to play Black Queen. We played outside our tent, and probably because we were making so much noise, one of the camp’s managers, Sunny, came over to see what we were doing. He was blasting music from his cell phone (Hotel California, to be exact). I was surprised that he was playing songs that I actually recognized, but apparently this valley is more connected to the world than I thought.

As we were playing Black Queen, Sunny told us a little more about his life. For 10 months he stayed away from his family, 5 months in Ladakh (this was his first time working in Nurba Valley, he was previously working in Ley) and 5 months in Goa. Between his time in Ladakh and Goa, he went home and celebrated some festivals (like Diwali). One of his biggest complaints was that there was absolutely nothing to do in Ladakh. In Goa, he was working as a bar tender till about 3 am, and then from 3 am to 5 am, he would drive his motorcycle from disco to disco. Nothing like that happened in Ladakh (for the most obvious reason that power was a huge problem). Although he said that he was saving more money here than in Goa, he also complained that there was nothing to do with that saved money-essentially, this was an extremely boring place to be. He hoped that next time, he would be able to go to Hong Kong or Singapore instead of Ladakh.

After playing for almost 3 hours, we went to dinner. Surprisingly, there was still electricity in the camp. It was amazing to actually see what we were eating. Even when we went back to our tents, power was still there. With light in the tent, it wasn’t as bad as it was on the first day. Because there wasn’t enough light to do anything productive, 9 pm was when the lights were turned off (we had a choice to do that-aah, freedom).