ALCHI + INDUS VALLEY, LADAKH | LETTERS & PICTURES FROM ASIA, 1988 | PART 13

In 1988, when I was eighteen years old I set off from New Zealand to Asia on an adventure. This is the thirteenth letter home, sent following visiting Alchi, the Indus Valley and riding a truck to Srinagar. 

• Read the very first letter from Kathmandu here.
• Read the previous letter from the Hemis Monastery Festival here.

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Dear  Everyone,

It's Saturday morning, I'm in Srinagar and it is raining. I arrived last night after a few interesting adventures. Apparently, due to the rain the Srinagar - Delhi road has slipped away and so has the Leh - Srinagar one; this I experienced. And so I'm trapped here.

On the 8th I caught the bus from Leh to Alchi with a French guy. Alchi is perhaps the oldest monastery in Ladakh and has some incredible wall paintings. From the outside it is very small, but it is the inside that makes it interesting. I never used to like those Tibetan wall paintings as I found them a bit unattractive, but now I'm beginning to develop a taste for them. There were lots of deities, buddhas and statues all painted with great detail and colour.

We stayed in Alchi that night and the next day hitched and walked to Likir, a gompa (monastery) spectacularly sitting on top of a hill; it was big and had many rooms with tunnels winding their way through it. It reminded me of the game of Dungeons and Dragons. At the foot of the hill there was a village with many terraced green fields.

From Likir we walked back to Alchi to stay the night in a small hotel there. That night there was a local party going on outside the gompa with lots of dancing, singing, music and of course, chang (local beer). It was interesting to see more dancing. Very slow. The men and the women always dance separately. They dance to drums and flute music.

The next day we decided to walk to Mangu gompa; it's one of the oldest and rarely visited by tourists. It took us all day to walk there and we found a house to stay in. Again, it seemed that a party was happening in this house and we were a real source of entertainment  because  foreigners  are rarely  seen  here;  one child even began crying when she saw us. In the end we slept outside.

In the morning we climbed the steep hill to the gompa; it was a difficult climb due to the chang drunk the previous night! The monastery was old and run down and rather spooky. All the paintings were in a bad state and the place felt very empty. We could only find one old man, who wasn't even a monk, to open the doors into the dirty old rooms.

From here we walked to Rizong, about four hours away. This was  my  favourite  gompa  built  in  an  almost  sheer  rock  cliff.  It sprawled over many levels and was really amazing from the outside. Inside, it didn't have so many interesting rooms but we enjoyed eating tsampa in the kitchen with the monks.

Oh dear, the post office closes soon and I have much more to write so I'll have to go and buy some stamps now and post the letter later.

It's the afternoon now and it has finally stopped raining. Everything is flooded because it has been raining for days. We booked a ticket to Delhi for the 19th and hopefully the road will be open by then. Tomorrow I go to Pahalgam for the day to visit Russell and see if the tape and film turned up.

Anyway, after Rizong we headed down in the afternoon to the road and hitched a ride to Lamayuru on a truck loaded with wood. Lamayuru is the most touristy gompa because it is right on the road, but it is still very nice. The important lama who gave the talks in English at Leh was there doing prayers all day with the monks and the Ladakhis. I spent two nights there sleeping on the roof of the hotel under the stars; it was really beautiful.Early on the morning of the 13th I caught a truck with an American couple. It was supposed to go right through to Srinagar arriving late that night, but instead it took three days. We arrived at the military checkpoint near Drass, the place where we were kicked off an army truck last time coming the other way, and were told that no trucks could leave until 11 o'clock that night due to the bad condition of the roads. It was four o'clock when we got there, and by 6pm there were literally hundreds of trucks waiting, six lanes wide, piled back for miles. All the truck drivers were either big, loud, macho Sikhs or Kashmiris. It was strange for us three tourists being at this huge truck stop. All there was to eat was boiled eggs, tea and biscuits from a small tea stall. It really was just a small army post, crossing gate and tea stall in the desolate middle of nowhere. It was cold, windy and raining, but I decided before we left to have a little rest on the roof of the truck, under my raincoat. I found a place on the roof of the cab. It drizzling and cold but there was no room inside the cab because there were already four people there. I kept waking up freezing cold and I had my head up against my knees so that I could fit under the raincoat. All the time I was wondering why we hadn't gone until I woke up to the sound of roaring engines. All the trucks were starting up and great clouds of smoke were billowing up into the sky. It was actually morning; the trucks  one  by  one stopped  revving  up  their engines and we didn't go anywhere! I didn't know what was happening but it had stopped raining and I was lying in a small puddle of water.

So we waited all day until 10pm that night. We had been at this nothing checkpoint for thirty hours, living off only eggs, tea and some horrible glucose biscuits. The tourist buses all turned up as well as hundreds of other trucks and taxis. All sorts of rumours were flying around but nobody really knew why the road was closed, or what time we were leaving, or anything. I couldn't go for a walk anywhere because we could leave at any time.

One thing that was really exciting though, was that I got to see the Dalai Lama. One of the rumours had been that he was coming the other way so all the traffic was stopped because of it. He flew by in his car, smiling and holding his hands together like the Pope. I am reading a book by him, so it was nice to see this famous man. All the gompas have a large photo of him in the main prayer hall.

There were a lot of people who had, or were going to miss their international flights from Delhi. All the flights from Leh had been cancelled and the road was blocked. I talked to one guy whose flight to Spain was in two hours!

So, at 10 that night we were given the OK to go but it took an hour to eventually get moving, with six lanes of truck drivers all trying to get on to the road at once. There were lots of jams as you can imagine! We then drove for four hours to the pass and then got held up again for another eight! It was raining hard and I shared a tiny space with the driver's assistant so I didn't get much sleep. Also, I had to get up to vomit because I had eaten too many boiled eggs at the truck stop.

At about 10 o'clock the next morning we set off across the Zoji La in the pouring rain and wound our way around the cliff down to Kashmir. All the rivers were really wild and often the road was quite flooded. I never saw any slips so I still don't know if it was that or the Dalai Lama or maybe a crashed truck, which was another story, that held us up.

So, very tired and hungry I arrived in Srinagar, still in the pouring rain. I ate a big plate of rice, which was the first proper meal I had had in three days.

It was a very strange and tiring journey; at first I was impatient but then I just gave in to the situation  I just didn't care. Once or twice it just made me laugh, being stuck in the rain in the middle of nowhere with no food. It was a crazy situation.

Now the road to Leh has definitely slipped away and there are no flights, so everyone is trapped there. The road to Delhi has also gone so there have been riots from people trying to get on the planes. When I went to the tourist office to book my ticket to Pahalgam there were hundreds of people in the airline office and lots of police were there with their batons.  It's really crazy. I feel sorry for all those people who have planes to catch from Delhi.

I really want to get to Delhi too, to get some mail and to phone you all; that's my only hurry. I'm still thinking of going to China the Pakistan way because it sounds really exciting, but I'll decide when I get to Delhi. If I did this perhaps I will try to get work in Japan; apparently you can make a lot of money there even though it is expensive. It depends if you are lucky.

Anyway, it is now dinner time so I might go and have some rice, dahl and chapatis with this Australian guy who is in my dorm. I decided not to stay in a houseboat because they can often be such a hassle. This dorm is full of houseboat refugees.

I hope everything is OK back home and you are keeping my surfboard  polished  and  waiting  for  me.  I'll  probably  be  talking  to you on the phone before you get this letter.Srinagar

18 July 1988

Postcard of a Dard woman from the Lower

Indus Valley,

Kashmir.

Dear Everyone,

Yesterday I went to Pahalgam but it took seven hours because of the floods. The films didn't turn up, unfortunately, but the tape did. Russell took it to the post office and put it in the poste restante at Srinagar, but when I went there today it had been stolen. I was really angry and kicked up a stink, but it made no difference. Russell gave exact instructions as to where he had put it but it had obviously been taken.

Thank you very much for sending those things and I'm sorry that they never showed up. There was nothing that I could do to get them. Never mind!