To leave my whole life in the UK I took almost all of the Piccadilly line to the airport. As I entered the tube (metro) almost in the end of one end of the line to arrive to almost at the end of the other side there was enough room to seat and spread my things around. I took the line mostly in silence. Haiko sat next to me and in my head I apologized for all that I felt I should. In my head I wished him all the joy in the world. As slowly it was downing on me that that was it: it was the end of a phase I had tears that gently washed my face. I really needed that ride. We both did. We were proud of it. The ride was long and it was so in mist of my silent prayers and thoughts that i fell asleep. I slept only to be gently awakened by a lady who asked me whether i could let her older husband have a seat. I was so removed from the whole reality that i had not noticed that the tube had become completely full. I stood up and insisted that they both sat. When there was finally room again in the tube I sat next to her. She looked at my big backpack and asked whether i was going to the airport. I confirmed it, and as she looked south Asian, I did something I usually do not do (out of fear of choosing the wrong nationality). i asked her whether she was from India. She nodded, smiled and said ” Is that where you are going to? ” It was not so much of a question but more of an affirmation. I smiled and said that I was going to Ladakh”. She looked deeply into my eyes, she had dark dark eyes and suddenly said ” You are lucky. i have always wanted to go there. I have traveled the world but I still have not arrived in Ladakh. You must go to Man Sabor Lake, it is now in China. I am happy for you. Only those called by god arrive there. You are lucky, and I am happy for you. ” She had woken me up, woken me up from my concerns of where would I go now and she was now giving me a path I though. I looked in her eyes and I said she did not understand how much it meant for me for her to say that. She just smiled and said she knew. People around were a bit shocked byt the whole interaction. It was trully strange. Haiko who is an atheist was impressed. She hug me and wish me luck. ” Jules, it is like the Universe talks to you. That was incredibly strange.” Having Haiko tell me this comforted me even more. ” I guess it is true I will be fine. There will be people there, I will be there for others as well.

Today I received a couch surfing message from someone who is in Leh and read my profile. ” In case you decide to visit Leh I ll show you around” . I wrote back immediately telling him I was in Leh. My phone does not work here, I dont use a watch, I never have a plan so fixing a meeting seemed so distant. It seemed like something you do in the west. So I did not put much effort on it. Instead I walked with my friends to organise our Nubra Valley trip. As I was walking on the street, I heard someone call my name. I found it strange after all I do not know anyone who drives here. “Jules, it is me from couch surfing. Come I ll show you around.” I go. I apologise for my poor ability to fix a meeting. He tells me it does not matter. His uncle owns the most important hotel in town. He starts to tell me all of the projects his family does. they are all modernisation projects. Not even 24 hours earlier I had seen a documentary on Ladakhi culture.

Ladakh is a desert mountain region. Most people are buddhists but there are also muslims and some Hindus here. According to Ladakhi main scholar Ladakhi traditional life style is based on buddhist philosophy. “Everything come into existence through interdependence and relationship”. In traditional Ladakhi life style 95%of people own their land. they farm. They collective tend for all animals, and for the land. There is not rubbish, and even though they have an incredibly harsh environment with harsh winters they are able to live and maintain themselves. The documentary focused on how modernisation has been disastrous for the region. it was a classic anthropological critic, it showed the pollution of the area, the rubbish, the disruption of social cohesion, the deligitimazation of local culture, and how much more vulnerable they become when changing into a money economy.

I hear my new friend speak. His plan is to create a factory to produce oxygen. How would it run I ask? On diesel, he explains. I tell him about the documentary and ask his opinion. He, not surprisingly has a very different point of view. He tells me he lived most of his life in Nepal.” i was important there, close to the royal family..but then the maoist came. the day the king returns i ll go back.” I say nothing. i ask him what he thought of the inequality. ” There wasn’t any. What have the Maoist done?” I am curiously listening it all.
This conversations takes places in sandy mountains. Every now and then I see a stopa. a horse, and of course mountains. Occasionally there are green patches, mostly it is desert. It is Afghanistan to me. Rocks and rocks. The air dries my nose. How can people survive here? It is a true testimony to human ingenuity. He is polite. I hear his thoughts. I do not agree with his developmental view but I am thankful to hear his thoughts. He stops the car. We are now in a complex with Buddhist colorful flags. it is by a river. I walk towards the river. the sun is unforgiven. It is hot as it never is. I kneel down close to the river and touch the water. I feel it refreshed my hand. As I am in silence listening to the humming of the river my new friend suddenly says: ” This water carries too much history. it ends in Pakistan.” “Where does it come from” I aks ” From a sacred lake in Tibet, it is called Man Sabor”.

From the small touristic village of Leh you can always see around you
mountains, some are brown, some are spiked with snow. They surround
you in a strange way. They surround you but you do not feel captive,
instead you feel protected. From wherever you are in the village you
can see in the mountains the Gompa, the tStopa and the Palace. They
seat there powerfully making me feel in Tibet. They look like the
constructions I had seen in films or pictures of Llasa.

We were advised not to climb there in the first two days. We should
first acclimatise to the altitude. So during the first day we ventured
through the streets, the shops, and alleys. 2 out of our 3 German
friends decided to sleep. Olly who is 24 decided to follow us. A
Brazilian and a Israeli woman overwhelm anyone, but specially young
German boys. It took me the whole day to find out that Olli had never
flown out of Europe before. He had never left Germany, Austria and
Denmark. I could not even begin to imagine how it was for such a young
and sensitive boy to land from the saxon-scandinavian world in Delhi.
He did not want to waste a single second. He was dazzled, amazed by
all that, all that that even I having been in so many places am
overwhelmed by.

We all felt intermittently sick. Nothing too bad, just the occasional
reminder that we were used to more oxygen. Whenever these reminders
came i drank coffee, water, salt, and in my own invented potion i felt
better. So much better in fact that we decided to climb the mountain
the following day. I am no trekker, I have no experience in any of
this but I wanted to go. I am not very sure why. It was not that I
wanted to reach the Palace, I just went without much thinking about
it. And so the 5 of us: the three German Tobias, Paul and Olli, and
Liron (Israel) and I started our path. First through the city, than
through the alleys, than through the stairs, until we eventually
reached the palace inthe middle of the mountain. We climbed every
stair we looked at every single view. We were not really trying to
arrive anywhere we were just going and seeing. There was no one in a
hurry, no one who needed to arrive anywhere. We took every view, every
step, every breath. amd word with care.

Inside of the old palace, of old walls, and small doors, with almost
anything inside without any signs we naturally made our way to a
temple. I removed my shoes, went in and I sat in front of the Buddha.
I closed my eyes and had a short meditation. It was nothing dramatic
just a sense of emptiness. We climbed every stair till we reached the
roof. From there we saw the village, the mountain and there in the
distance all the way up in the mountain laid the white and red
constructions of the Gompa.

We went down, the Palace and started our walk towards the Gompa like
mountain goats. We went up in zig zag, climbing slowly the sandy,
arid, dried, rocky mountain. I breathed slowly, deeply, it was for me
a walking meditation, one step at the time, not really concerned with
arriving, I just walked. I walked in silence, as the lack of air and
the place naturally make you do so. One step at the time. It was in th
end not a difficult climb. We took our time. The time of within. So
when I reached thr big Buddha I did not even know I would encounter
inside of the temple I sat down and close my eyes. I meditated, I
prayed, I stood in silence. tears shed through my face. they were not
sad. They were not happy. It was just water.

And then we climbed even more and we sat under the nepali/tibetan
colourful flags. The sun was warm, the wind made them fly over us. I
took a few steps towards the edge of the mountain and alone I sat down
looking at it all. All I could say was thank you. I repeated the word
first in my mind, than slowly they started to come out of my mouth.
My vocal chords vibrated thankfulness. Looking at the mountain I could
not do anything but to repeat several times “thank you”. I felt so
much gratitude, and love, and joy. And i wanted to share it with the
world. I wanted to thank the hardship, the difficulties, that which i
did not want that made me have to keep going. I wanted to thank it
all. I thought of all people I love and it overwhelmed me to see how
lucky I am to love so many, to love so much. I felt gratitude for my
travelling companions. For their courage to leave the safety of
Germany, the world they know and suddenly also close their eyes and
meditate. We stood there, and every person we encountered became a
friend. They became someone we shared sometihng special with. We
laid on top of the mountain under the flags looking at the blue sunny
sky and we knew we were forever connected by this. And there I finally
understood that sometimes we need to take time, fight less, struggle
less trust in the path. 7 years ago I became very good friends with
Andrew, an English man who was studying religious studies in Holland.
As the total atheist that I was I condescendingly looked at him and
said “are u a believer?” He hesitated for a second then said ” I
guess I am a believer trapped in the body of an atheist” to what I
responded after short consideration ” I guess I am an atheist trapped
in the body of a believer”. Yesterday as I sat looking at those
mountains. As the air rarefied itself, as I thanked, and thanked and
thanked I finally freed the atheist from my body into the universe, I
realized that I do not want to have a “Ivan” relationship with the
world. In Dostoyevski terms I choose the relationship with the self of
Alyosha.

It looked like a gigantic beach full of enormous sand castles. So dry, what I imagined to be Afganistan. Every now and then I could spot a green clearing in the middle of the majestic mountains. So brown, so arid, so devoid of emotion I thought. Something like a relief after the muddy streets in Delhi, the exaggeration of emotions. Maybe I ll dislike it and go back to Delhi, were Manu, my friend bid me farewell in the middle of the night. Maybe is time for me to hear the call of the Mekong. But as soon as the plane landed, as soon as the chilly air hit my face, as soon as i felt the imponence of the mountains, recognised the familiar tibetan and nepali faces my heart filled with joy and all the pain, all the sickness seemed to also depend on higher levels of oxygen to be able to be felt here.
Within seconds I was found by my new Israeli friend. It took seconds for her to find me, like this randomly, she asked me a question and now we share room, trip, stories, and excitement for it all. Like me she has no plans she needs to be nowhere but within. We walked the gorgeous Tibetan like alleys and rejoiced at every traditionally dressed Tibetan woman we saw, at every colourful Pashmina, at every conversation we had with Nepalis, Tibetans, “Kashmirans”. We visited the Israeli centre, the Muslim Tibetan who sells a bit of it all, we strolled the streets with newly found german friends. As we sat around a table to have coffee and I spoke of my love for the Israelis and the Palestinians I know I rejoiced at thinking that Germans and Israeli share now the same table.

It all takes time is what Leh seems to be gently murmuring to me. Some things are just slow we need have patience but never loose faith. The most magical moment of my first day in this lovely place was to enter the enchanted music shop of this village. A young boy lets us in in the minuscule cubicle where laid dozens of different instruments. I played a guitar, he took a Kalimba, then a flute, then a clarinet, then an instruments I had never seen. he taught me to blow the clarinet I failed miserably at it. He told me he would play for us the most magical instrument that existed. i expected an Indian citar, or an unknown nepali or Tibetan instrument. To my enormous surprise he played the Didgeridoo.

Most instruments were built by his father. As he blew this Indian made Didgeridoo I thought I were in a fairy tale where a beautiful young boy could make music of all that he touched. We were all fascinated. We were enchantedely kept in this little room that contained music and people of the world. “Music is life, without it we are nothing” he explained. I smiled remembering how for the Nambiquara the flutes are religion itself. What connects us with whatever it is that we connect. In this magic place I felt like this…connected to people through time, through culture, through the creation of these instruments. Connected to some kind of mysterious force in the land of Ladakh in the silence of the morning, in the music of the water, in the mixture of these estrange and yet familiar shop. And now I must go and disconnect because here being connected through the internet seems profane, here the connections must be of the archaic type.
Love,
me