Delhi

World Buddhist Center Hotel, July the 6th, H.H. the Dalai Lama's Birthday

I guess I should write a note sort of off the cuff because it seems right. Sometimes what I come up with on my journal or on my laptop doesn't seem so direct or personal once I move it to whatever computer is hooked up to internet. I left Delhi I guess two days ago after being a little sick all day. This had to do with diarrhea let's say and involved (actually) going to a Tibetan doctor (amchi). All of us are a little fascinated with Tibetan medicine and so most of us have had check-ups at some point in our trip, but this seemed real because I actually had some sort of immediate symptoms, which actually, in the end, turned out for worse because I think I sort of got the short term treatment whereas other people got a general diagnoses of, say, a "wind" imbalance and then were given pills and instructions like, "don't eat rice and potatoes or drink tea," which is a fairly common instruction because EVERYONE in Ladakh and Tibet eats tons of rice, potatoes, and tea. Anyway, I took one set of pills one time and haven't had them since. It's sort of like chewing incense and anyway I can't really stomach it still. And I think I'm mostly just sick of the heat and Delhi now.

So now I look forward to Malaysia and Taiwan. Hopefully, Taiwan is really good. It was really hard saying goodbye to my mom today and the people who were leaving to go home. Ryan--boy--if you're reading this, and you probably aren't, even though you have nothing better to do, I wish I was there to look at Duncan with you, watch great/bad movies, or whatever it is that you occupy yourself with these days.

And Pennsylvania!--what I wouldn't do for some cool, cool creeks. I feel like those roaming Irishmen, always singing of the highlands and the valleys that they never again will know. Well, I think I will pack now. We leave tomorrow morning.

Lamayuru Dances

World Buddhist Center Hotel, Somewhere in Delhi, July 6th


Again, I’m in Delhi. It must have been nice weather when I stayed here for a day and a half a night when I arrived or perhaps the summer has just progressed two weeks further, but the weather, as they say, is unbearable. I sit here in my room, which is air-conditioned, typing on my computer to later take a file to a computer with internet to send. Last night my mother woke me up because the air-conditioning in her room had shut off, making it impossible to sleep. I had been in very deep sleep, dreaming I had been in some dark green ocean, talking to strange creatures. And so I wandered about dog-breath halls, searching for empty rooms with a/c, moving mattresses, and so on.


As it stands, our accommodations are very nice, and, yesterday, when we went to the main market and Tibetan refugee town, we were taken by a large air-conditioned bus that Peter, someone who is taking care of us, got for us. It is a luxury in this way to travel with a group that, collectively, can afford such a venture. And as we have two days here, it is possible to fight the natural state of Delhi that a longer stay would make inevitable. And so we flit from air-conditioned room, to American chain restaurants, or anywhere else that will provide momentary refuge of the hot and expending atmosphere. In this way, we are travelers passing through Delhi with no keen interest to know it better in its—what I said before—natural state. Every time you walk out of your room it’s really like stepping into a very hot bathroom where someone just took a shower. And every time you walk into a nicely air-conditioned room, it’s like stepping into a cool forest stream in the very heat of the day, where you could wander and float for hours.


We are no longer exhausted by walking up a set of stairs because of high altitude—yet sweat will come to your body simply by walking to the bathroom. One is fatigued sitting down to dinner.


Many Tibetan things you can find in Delhi for a lot cheaper than Tibet or Ladakh. There are also many Tibetan bookstores selling texts or religious works in Tibetan and so it seems directed more toward Tibetans and their practical religious needs. On the Indian streets, we went shopping as well, developing our bargaining skills slowly or quickly, as each is to his or her own. I bought some little things my self, some offering bowls, some incense, some Amar Chitra Katha comic books, and I also helped my mom bargain for some shawls and other odds and ends for meager prices. It was my first experience where some venders would beg to see to you for lower and lower prices. My mother was considering buying some fancy designed Indian pillowcases that the lady initially priced at 80 rupees (2 USD). The role of thumb is to re-offering something the third of that price and then come to the conclusion at half price. I offered 25 rupees (63? US cents), and then she counter-offered 50 rupees. I think maybe at that point I suggested 30, or perhaps we decided to look elsewhere. There is no polite way to do this except to simply leave the vender with all his or her attempt to entice you with pillowcases spread out before them. But we were followed with hysterical shouts, first with 40 rupees, then “30!,” then “25!” 25 rupees and I guess they are still making some kind of a deal, but to drop this low to a foreigner who could easily afford a good compromise at 30 or 40 felt pretty low, especially when you can walk several yards to the next vender who is selling the exact same thing (sometimes, three blocks is not far enough away to shake a persistent shop keeper as one of us experienced). I don’t know how different the economic situation has to be to make something so desperate here when at other places I’ve been, the local business has been secure enough to reliably get very consistent and reasonable prices from tourists.


The last thing in Ladakh that we did was go to Lamayuru to see the lama dances, a two day festival that happens every year, where many of the wrathful-enlightened deities on the temple walls are brought to life by dancers wearing particular masks and garments and holding characteristic implements in their hands. The accumulation of the affair is the very simple and stylized destruction of an effigy made out of barley flour and butter by a ring of dancers. The fight doesn’t seem quite fair, the effigy being prostrate on the ground, and the dancers with great faces in a large ring with weapons, each taking their turn to impel the effigy with a sword or an arrow. However—who said it needs to be fair? These are, after all, enlightened beings who easily clear the mundane obstructions of this world. For the local population, the dance is an exorcism of all the demons that haunt whatever turbulence is in their lives. For the monks, it is also a ritual enactment of what they do must of the rest of the year within their minds. These cross-purposes make an interesting spectacle. The locals don’t really feel like they need to see the spectacle (must of the time they are circumambulating the space or, if they are too old for this, sitting in a pack of peers and spinning prayer-wheels), and the dancers don’t necessarily need to know someone is watching, either. Oftentimes, they are dancing in a corner where nobody is sitting, and the temper of the dance is too slow to make very much dramatic sense to anyone very intent upon the entire affair.


The dances are haunted by two “clowns” (“goons” I would say, rather) who bother people asking for money. They get young monks to dress up and wear faces of old whispy-haired old men with long leather faces barely stitched together. They bring about a kata with them and throw it over unsuspecting spectators who for a moment are embarrassed as the two clowns beat a wooden penis against a hollow metal tube in your direction. One is only released by this embarrassment by the trifling embarrassment of having to pay them to make them leave, which is part of the whole game I guess. The Ladakhis seemed to authentically enjoy these antics but I think a lot of westerners were simply confused or displeased by it.


Lamayuru, the monastery, is not somewhere you would want to wander about on a late night drun, because with so many dead ends and drop offs, melting away into the night, it would be your last amble. The situation would not occur, fortunately, of wandering around drunk at Lamayuru because it is a monastery and respectfully kept so, but it is tragic situation that I kept on thinking about when I, one night, was trying to make my way back. Lamayuru is built upon many pre-existing monasteries that themselves are crumbling away just like the rock is that it is built on. The rock, a sort of layered sediment, flakes away with a brush of the hand. Walking about Lamayuru plainly tells and story of unforeseen conclusions. Buildings built with doors can now no longer be opened, half buried with sand and rubble, or perhaps the doors lead nowhere. A door I saw could no longer be opened for another building had been built too close to it. As you make your way up to the monastery, you either have to make your hunched way in passageways under buildings or ascend stairs with no sides. Birds live here and in abundance, securing their brood in the crevices of the tower-like rock structures that have been made by time and making continual gyre about the highest rooms of the monastery, where the head lama lives.

Here is a history of Ladakh related to us by some monks we had the good fortune to meet:


Directly after the time of the Buddha, an Arhat came to Lamayuru which was then nothing but a lake. He flew to one side of the lake to sat on a mountain, and he saw from that vantage in the middle of the lake a peak of sandstone, and he foresaw that a monastery would be built there one day. He gave offerings to the Nagas—elemental water spirits—which involved throwing barely seeds into the water because then with his staff he drained the entire lake. Now they call this place “the moon” because of the unearthly pale color of the sand that rings the valley, making a clear indication where the water used to stand. The peak of the sandstone that the Arhat saw now sits right below the highest building of the monastery where the head lama lives. The barely seeds that the Arhat threw grew into fields in the valleys about the destined spot for the monastery swirled in the shape of a swastika (an auspicious sign in this part of the world). Accordingly, the place was called “turquoise swastika.” Tuquoise, in Tibetan, because of the lake and pronounced “yuru” (“lama” being a later addition). In the eleventh century, the famous Indian scholar Naropa meditated in the caves at Lamayuru. His cave particularly can still be seen in one spot of the main shrine that is built just below the lama’s residence. Naropa and the also famous Lotsawa (translator) Rinchen Zangpo were probably in the Lamayuru caves at the same time and when Naropa moved on, Zangpo built five monasteries in the shape of a Mandala about Lamayuru, 5 of the 108 monasteries that he is said to have built in the Ladakh region. For those just a bit shaky on their Ladakh history, Zangpo was very important in the second diffusion of Buddhism into the Tibet and Ladakh region after the three hundred years or so of “darkness.” After the assassination of Long-dar-ma by a hermit, Tibet suffered a setback in its advance toward civilization and Buddhism, which had not quite taken hold, was lost for those years. Therefore at this time, when texts were not to be found, translators were highly revered, thus “lotsawa” is used as an honorific title and thus, Zanpo, who was highly influential at this time, held a very important position of spreading the Dharma in Tibet. The second diffusion, it is interesting to note, came from the prompting of one Ladakh king who sent Atisa to spread the esoteric teachings back into central Tibet, where the center has been ever since. Shortly after the second diffusion, the Buddhism that came from India, through Ladakh, mostly dried up as Buddhism was expiring in India. From that point on, Ladakh, the trading center, relied upon central Tibet for its revered colleges and monasteries to train their monks, never building any of their own. The tradition of sending monks to be educated in the higher practices to Tibet continued until the middle of this last century.


However, the monasteries that Zangpo built at this spot never did so well so that in the seventeenth century the Ladakh king Jamyang Namgyal was building a type water system there and inadvertently offended the Nagas. As an immediate consequence, the king became ill with leprosy and no doctor could cure him. Finally, he went to an oracle who told him to send for a certain monk in the Mt. Kailash region from the Drigung Kagyu sect. The monk was sent for and he healed the king’s sickness in gratitude for this service. He told the monk that he would be the royal family’s guru from then on.


The monk said no, that their connection was not of this kind, that the kind would have a son Sengge, who in his life, would meet the family’s guru. So the king gave the monk Phiyang and Lamayuru, both of which are now Drigung-kagyu monasteries.

Lhamos in Ladakh

Computer Room in Leh, Ladakh, June 28th, 5:00PM

Well, we are back from Nubra Valley where we were camping. This is our second day in Leh and then tomorrow we head out to Lamayuru for five nights to participate in watching the festival of the lama dances and, I suppose, just hanging out.

The most exciting thing that happened recently I suppose was going to a local oracle. I don't really know where to start with this. Basically, lay women who are otherwise ordinary perform a ritual to allow themselves to be possessed every so often (sometimes every day) by local spirits who are then able to access powers of divination and healing that is otherwise not possible. The various range of problems and difficulties that a Ladakhi may face is met with a just as various means to fix these problems. There is the Ladakhi Amchi (Tibetan trained physician) excellent for chronic ailments and basic health. For accidents and serious issues, a western doctor may be consulted. And for "other," there are the lhamos (lha, meaning "spirit," and mo, indicating the sex--a lhapa is a male oracle). Sometimes the choice of consulting a Lhamo is based upon finances. While it costs a western doctor much to remove a bit of barbed wire that a small child has swallowed, for the few rupees that it costs to buy a kata one can go an oracle and have the piece of metal sucked out of the child by the lhamo.

Of course, the lhamo is met with some skepticism, being seen as "superstituion" by westerners and locals alike. Some believe that only some lhamos are authentic. Some will "neither confirm nor deny." Nonetheless, the large crowds that attend these possessions about Leh daily show their fascination and draw, if not the efficacy that they have in the mind of the public.

So we got there early, the sixteen of us cramming into a shed smaller than the landscaping shed at Warren Wilson College. We got there, apparently, "on time," but we waited all by ourselves there for a while and I think someone looked out the window and said, "she's milking her cow," and so we had to wait until she was done milking. The life of a Lhamo is very schitzophrenic in this sense. They don't remember anything from the possession; they only know what people tell them afterwards that the Lhamo, through them, had told them to do this and so on. Neither do these lhamos seem to be in it for the money. Not much money is made and the money that is isn't the cleanest money you would want. After all the money is an offering to the spirit. Not knowing exactly what to do with it, the lhamos often give large portions of it to the monasteries.

The lady was done milking and proceeded to clean her ritual table; other ladakhis arrived, wandered at us and the pictures of the blue ridge parkway that we showed them ("they're the oldest mountains in the world," we told them, "and the himalayas the youngest!") but weren't bothered. The possession begins (as it did this day) outside in the hallway when the lhamo washes her hands. In fact, there was another woman, an apprentice, who was learning to control her diety who also was being possessed that day. Dieties, as well as the possession itself, have various degrees of wrathfulness. As is sometimes common, the training process is somewhat difficult and as is not unnheard of the apprentice had difficultly controling her diety. While the elder woman's possession was somewhat smooth (both begin the possession by throwing themselves in front of the shrine and beginn reciting prayers in high, unearthly voices). The younger woman was hiccoping violently, on her knees, hands clasped together in front of the shrine.

Unlike regular shrines, there are no buddhist images here. Perhaps an indication of how old the ritual is, dating back before buddhism arrived. Nevertheless, they use the buddhist implements and the older lhamo wore a typical five-edged crown, and wore a specific robe. As I mentioned earlier, the younger Lhamo was having a more difficult time, pounding her back with her fist and shaking all over, producing sounds that did not sound human. They begin chanting quickly, shaking a bell and flipping a damaru, a small two sided drum. When the possession was over, the oracles resume a more relaxed nature. Some oracles are mean and will hit people but our Lhamo was fairly gentle (yet nonetheless intense). Many in our group used the Lhamo as a type of fortune teller (should I take this job? are there obstacles for me if I chose to do this) which is within the power of a Lhamo. When this is done, however, the healing begins. She took off her ritual clothing and produced a small tube--an "arrow". Many oracles do this. They place the tube to the skin of the patient (where it hurts so to say) and they suck out globs of mucus from their skin and spit it out into a special bowl. Sometimes they spit it into their hands and show it to the audience. Some oracles draw forth a black globby stuff, some blood, others something purple. Ours sucked out a mucus from the skin (see photo). Sometimes, when the pain was located in the stomach or the back, the wand was not sufficient, and the oracle would lean over and suck out the stuff with her mouth.

There is a certain logic to the format of the ritual. Questions can no longer be answered once she has dirtied her mouth and so once the ritual clothing comes off and the lhamo begins sucking upon the patients, no more questions will be answered.

Last note: I just finished Treasure Island, which was a treat and also a completely original work, I thought. There is nothing better than when Long John Silver Shouts, "Them that die'll be the lucky ones!" It's really good. I've begun now The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, one of the first novels to initiate the Gothic movement in eighteenth century England. In fact, in the British Museum, just several weeks ago, I saw an Aztec obsidian mirror that he owed at one point, keeping it as a curiosity as it was a ritual object of that people.

Precious Baby

Also lifted from my journal:

Nubra Valley, June 24th

After visiting a monastery on the other side of the Shayok River in Nubra Valley, we went to see the child reincarnation of Bakula Rinpoche. Bakula Rinpoche is a reincarnation from the time of the Buddha, depicted in many of the monasteries that we’ve visited as one of the sixteen arhats. He holds a mongoose in his lap and from its mouth it spits precious jewels when it is squeezed. The symbology in this depiction is based off of the mongoose’s natural ability to kill and eat snakes. The mongoose then is seen to transform the poison of these snakes into precious jewels which it will spit out when squeezed. Otherwise, I’m not sure why this arhat holds the mongoose in particular. I only know that this depiction is common among many of the images found in the monasteries of Ladakh.

Rinpoche’s previous incarnation was a very important lama. He was “Ladakh’s lama.” He was chosen as the Indian Ambassador to Mongolia. The airport in Leh, actually, is named after him. These honors, I think, should be seen in the light not so much as his skill as a public servant. More importantly, they should reflect how much Ladakh respected him as their representation.

We went to a general store in town to buy kata (silk scarves) to present to the young Rinpoche (we were told he was about five or six, but, really, he must have been three or younger). On our way we actually passed the child on a monk’s shoulders marching swiftly into town, but I didn’t make much of this because he looked so much smaller than I had expected. Though he did not wear the robes yet, he was dressed in the monastic colors. He wore a gold vest and a red beach hat to keep off the sun.

At the one room general store, a monk brought in Rinpoche, cleared a space on the counter, and sat him there. He was so small, and he looked bewildered on that counter and legs barely hung over the edge. So, not having expected this at all, we presented him kata one by one and he in turn placed it over our heads with difficulty for his reach and enthusiasm was somewhat limited. Sometimes he placed it over the head very snugly and assuredly, already possessing that distinction so common in Tulkus. He was silent and scowled through much of the procedure, a bit annoyed or sleepy as a small child gets. His wavy hair, once his hat was taken off, we saw was pulled back and tied into a small tuft. I presented him with a Jacob’s ladder along with the kata and I placed the toy by his side. He was patient and polite enough to let it sit there. Eventually, he began to play with it, folding it in different ways on his lap but not quite able to perform the toy’s trick. All the while, he had to give his attention back to placing the scarves over our heads.

When he is enthroned, he will take the throne of the main Gelukpa monastery in Ladakh (Gelukpa is the sect of Tibetan Buddhism that H.H. the Dalai Lama is the head of), which is Spituk, near Phiyang. He is clearly the pride of the village; it isn’t necessarily often that such a small town produces such an important lama

A Long Walk

Similarly lifted from journal:

SITTING IN THE YELLOW DINING TENT IN NUBRA VALLEY AFTER A LONG WALK 6:30 PM MONDAY 22nd

I took a walk at 5:00 o’clock. The sun had already set on the valley and as I write this it is still not obvious as it is so light in the sky. There does not seem to be a “center of town” for Hundar or at least I haven’t found it. I went walking with Hun down the rocky paths where streams run alongside it, sometimes crossing the way and sometimes slipping under the stone walls that are covered with clippings of sea buckthorn, the bluish prickly shrub, to serve as a barbwire to keep animals out of the gardens that the small streams feed. Other times, the small channels would be dry where at one point it had healthily flowed but has been diverted to the other gardens. It was curious how silent the place was as if no one lived there at all except an occasional bird call, the freshly cut ends of willow (the branches are cultivated and cropped for fuel and construction), fresh sea buckthorn on the walls, or other various signs that indicate human presence.

Of course, everything speaks of the careful human endeavor—the streams, the houses and gardens, the mani walls (large extensive rock walls wherein each rock is carved with the mantra om mani padme hum), and so on. However, we saw no one but children as if a race of children owed the place. More than children—and more eerily—cows walked down the paths, obviously going some where. They were strikingly red, clean, and walked with a certain dignity that was only undercut by the flies that congregated upon their noses and eyes. Like once good subjects of the English Queen, most of this bovine race passed us on the right. Others, either obstinant or American, would pass upon my left. With this fanciful wandering, I suddenly felt what Jonathan Swift must have experienced when he first felt a horse’s face with his hands, understanding immediately its intelligence and dignity and, simultaneously, if indeed the horse was human, how inappropriate most of our actions directed to this beast become—and so birthed in his mind the Hwynym (sp?) of Gulliver’s Travels, horses with a fierce dignity and intellect in constant contradiction to their beast-like form. And so I was struck by these beautiful cows who wandered idly or purposefully by as if they owned the place. And indeed, when they mooed the sound was so thick with expression that it seemed one only needed to speed the noise up to hear them speaking perfect Queen's English.

In fact, I was vividly reminded of the country side of Greece. Both Tibet/Ladakh and Greece are sophisticated civilizations reaching apexes in understanding (one in art and philosophy and one in religion), yet they are mostly comprised of small, industrious but rugged farms. Ladakh does not have the fineness of cuisine that comes from associating with the Mediterranean climate, yet here they grow apricots, seemingly magically to me, in a four month growing season. Both cultures rely upon herding as much as agriculture, and the land is fairly barren, only coaxing forth only what the people work to produce. Hundar even looks like Greece. The twisted willows, cut back for their sturdy, fast growing branches, look something like the ubiquitous olive tree, and the tall white poplar trees here have something of the distinctive look of cyprus trees.

Approaching Nubra Valley

Leh, Ladakh June 28th


The following is lifted from my journal:


NUBRA VALLEY, OUTSIDE HUNDAR, CAMPING BESIDE A CHAPEL OF SORTS, 10,000 FEET ELEVATION, SOMETIME IN THE LATE AFTERNOON, JUNE 23rd 2008


Today we headed north from Leh to Nubra Valley. You can’t go much further as a tourist. In fact, we are forbidden to walk across the bridge higher up in the valley with prayer flags upon it. We aren’t even allowed to take a picture of it for that matter or even take a picture aimed in that direction (national security go figure). The reason that we are not allowed to go across is because of the military presence in Nubra, which is even greater than in Leh, for as one goes north, one gets closer to the land disputed with Pakistan.


Much of our six hour drive consisted of shear mountain passes and spectacular views, something like the Blue Ridge Parkway but thousands of feet higher. There is nothing to it but that you drive upon the side of a mountain so either to the left or to the right there is always a fantastic drop. And it doesn’t matter if you have six inches to spare or three feet, if you are passing someone on the outside or the inside--boulders to one side, space on the other--a twitch of the wheel is the only distinction between a pleasant scenic drive and oblivion. That is to say—it gets to you after a while. Maybe not while you are on the road, but afterwards, the implications fall upon you, like so many bad thoughts, and you think, sitting at camp, well, I guess we can make it out of here, right?

Our journey climbed higher and higher until we came to the pass at 18,000 feet making it the highest motor road in the world. Snow began to flank the mountains as we arrived, and at the pass itself, except for the muddy brown road, there was snow everywhere. For comparison, Mt. Everset scraps the sky at an enormous 26,000 feet. Where I live in Pennsylvania, that little hill I live on, is a humble 530-something feet above sea level.

At the pass, of course, we got out and ran around a bit deflated upon the scarcity of oxygen; we cranked opened our water bottles to hear them hiss and so on. We even dug up hunks of the icy snow and flung them at people--whether we knew them or not. I guess our judgement was slightly impaired. We lit a cleansing smoke fire with a lighter which took a long time (also because of the lack of oxygen) and we had to use pages of an article on Ladakhi oracles that I was half finished with, using the pages I had already read of course. We observed proper ritual and also fumigated some prayer flags which we hung and that flap now at 18,000-some feet.

Coming down on the other side of the pass, the landscape began transforming, first with riverlets from snowmelt. Then the mountains, bare mostly, were flushed the lightest green by the faint growth of various vegetation, adding color to the already colorful brown, pinks, and what-the-hell-is-that purple streaks that manifest on the open rock.


You follow the gyre of the road about one mountain and Nubra valley opens up directly below you like a peaceful kitchen floor at 10,000 feet. If one were to throw a rock, it simply disappears into the air, making one dizzy by the implications it has made of the space before oneself. Nothing so much illustrates the expanse of space as a rock thrown or, as I learned in St. Pauls, a bird flying about. Something that appeared flat and inconsequential suddenly reveals itself as profound and with depth beyond imagining.

The Shayok river, from the glacier of the same name (I think), melts into the flat valley, a chalky gray, indicative of its glacier source and also aesthetically pleasing to the colors of sand that compose the valley floor and the soft blue growth of sea buckthron (a prickly blue bush that gives a red berry Ladakhis make into a sourish juice that tastes something like apricot). What is cultivated is green, but as you follow the stream and valley down, it is sand and sand dunes that dominate. There is nothing growing here but the thorn bush and a high altitude sage that blooms purple. Camels live here, actually, once imported by traders, and patridge are always lingering about the roads. There is also some hoopoo birds and lots of marmots (which is actually an animal, a more attractive light tan cousin of the groundhog, slightly more like a weasel). The dark brown mountains loom up about you and disappear into the mist of the distance of the valley.


At this point, while sitting in the back of the car, I told our driver to turn the music up that was so softly being played on the radio. I had only half been listening but what I thought it was had been correct, the tinkling of piano, the shimmering of strings, and, of course, the lone trumpet filled the car and, for us, filled the landscape with the timeless sound of cowboy music. The voice on the recording spoke low—so low that we could not find out if it was English or Ladakhi. The melancholy, expressiveness of the sound betrayed the true sense of our surroundings, perfectly fitting this distant frontier.

Schooling His Eyes

Outside of Guest House Kidar Watching the Mountains and Avoiding the Sun, Friday June 20th

Last night the dogs again were barking begining at nine and going until one. The dogs one sees during the day are collapsed upon piles of dirt indiscriminately about the citiy, remarkably similar to the poorest of those people whose skin is so brown, mostly their feet but also entire babies, so completely blended with dirt that it is difficult to discern where one ends. The boy in our hotel is fourteen but he looks like an old ten year old and not any taller than someone who is eight. This is due to general diet, I suppose, even to children, like the one in our guest house, who are comparatively well off. The features of the Ladakhis are somewhat darker than the face of Tibetans. They have lost, for the most part, that remarkable red cheek. But in exchange, their features have come somewhat smoother and slightly more complex. Historically, Leh has been a trading center between India, China, the middle east, and the rest of Asia. Dispite the long winters and its comparative inexcessibility, Ladakh was able to acheive a distinctly affluence and rich culture. And so the ethnicity is complicated too, incorperating the identities of its economic neighbors.
The day is bright by four o'clock. I know that the dogs bark at one and the sky is bright at four because I could not sleep last night, dreaming dreams of incalculable sums and frustrations.

Today our group traveled to Hemis monastery of the Drupa Kagyus. The are famous for their lama dances in late June, early July, depending on when the tenth day of the fifth lunar month falls. Hemis lies crouched in the upmost corner of a valley, hidden by its distance from the Indus river and on the opposite side from the road to Leh. When Muslims came and raided the whole of Ladakh, they missed Hemis not considering it possible that such a large monastery could exist in that corner. Once out of the valley cut through by the Indus, one descends up tiny fields of barley fields, intricately built through a system of irrigation. There are large rose bushes with simple large flowers, and, as one climbs higher, one begins to see the large mani wall, three to four meters thick and chest height tall that climbs verticle up the valley to the monastery. Every stone that composes this wall has the prayer om mani padme hum carved into its surface, an endeavor acheived by the local Ladakhis. Large white stupas populate the slope now and then, at the very top of the valley where it looks as if one could go no further, Hemis stands. Yet even further, if one is to travel up the stone slops, there are meditation caves and retreat huts.

When man grows staid and wise,
Getting a house and home, where he may move
Within the circle of his breath,
Schooling his eyes’
That dumbe inclosure maketh love
Unto the coffin, that attends his death.

Lift Not the ...

Downtown Leh, Ladakh, June 19th

Upon that first morning (I arrived yesterday as the Ladakh sun was rising), around seven or eight at the hotel, sitting, tiredly, in front of the ubicquitous English tea and toast that is served in Guest Houses everywhere, and still acclimating to the altitude of Leh (some 12 or 13 thousand feet above sea level) I thought, "God, I've not come here for long enough! I already dread leaving it."

Leh is especially more picturesque than Lhasa, Tibet. It is quite a bit smaller and it sits upon a hillside (rather than on a plain). All the mountains are the color of sand or dirt except for the green swathes of vegetation in the valleys, irrigated and cultivated for barley, vegetables for local use, and apricots that they export. The juxtaposition is fantastic and dramatic like much else here. For example, outside is the sky, the sun, the mountains, bright. It is bright long before the sun rises which is later than I expect it would be, places of habitation being in the valleys (and shadows) of the mountains that surround them. Yet you walk into a monastery and it is close, dark, perfumgated. Almost every monastery has a protector shrine. They are usually a bit smaller than the main shrine. On our first day we visited a monastery outside of Leh called Phiyang where the throne holder of the Drigungpas keeps one of his seats. The throne holder uses the room that is at the top of the monastery, where the wind will whip about the prayer flags and knock at the windows. Below there is the main shrine where rituals are performed. Similarly contrasted with the outside landscape, the main shrine is hung all about with weighted fabric canopies and circular cloth chandeliers that obstruct any view of the whole place at once. In fact, one needs walk about the hall, behind the throne to see everything, including the wall paintings and large statues of the order.

Last, there is the protector shrine with, like the main shrine, images painted across the walls and statues, yet here the figures' faces are covered in cloth, a compassionate move to mediate the forceful energy of the protector dieties. It brings to mind Shelley's verse titled, "lift not the painted veil." Instead of cloth hangings, there are war implements, sheilds, masks, and furs of different animals.

And who transverses between these two worlds is harder to say. They are condifent and strong and happy, people who seem to really belong to this place in the world, who, indirectly, makes the traveler reflect upon his or her position as a traveler, what he or she is doing there, what he or she wishes to leave with. In this way, I think it is slightly overwhelming. These questions are big considerations. We'll see where it leads.

Most of the group has arrived by now (we are only missing now two who we expect to come several days later). Our company is good. Yesterday we went to see the monastery mentioned above. Today we have simply wandered through Leh and had lunch and now free time! I think I might wander to where I saw cricket being played.

Here is Shelley's verse by the way. The movie off the Somerset book The Painted Veil with Edward Norton lifts its title from here.

Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,—behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o’er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it—he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.

Roll of Honor

East Croydon, 13^th of June 2008

I’ve collected a number of artifacts from London that the curious reader may appreciate. I will apply myself in the manner of those men who founded what in this day we reverentially call “Science” who began by storing the world away in miniature in cabinets of curios, and who found an excitation in the appreciation of the addition of strangeness to beauty; they kept talismans from other cultures, flora and fauna collections from exotic countries, anthropological artifacts of interest, as well as fossils, scientific instruments, and anything that described to them in smallness the ways of God and man.

In a sense, travel writing should elicit something of the excitement that those cabinets draw. These early scientists were drawn to astrology and astronomy both. They saw the strangeness and inconsistencies of man and his workings, and at once they tried to justify, categorize, and explain what they saw. The position that some hold in their provincial day to day existence is that nothing is new or strange.

For instance, in the British Museum, in a special tribute to these men of the Enlightenment Age (the age in which the Museum was founded, 1753 I believe), they showed several of the objects that one finds in these collections. At one point I noticed a small pin knife with its tip a discolored gold sitting on a black rock; next to it was a small gold bullet. I read that it was an object connected to the great search of the philosopher’s stone and the mythical elixir it creates that produces immortality in the drinker and transforms ordinary metals into gold. Sloane wrote, “A penknife the end of which is dipped in gold pretended to be made so by dipping of it so far into the great elixir.” Strange though that such an obvious fake made it into his collection, but it held its place alongside a penis pouch, an obsidian mirror used in Aztec Mexico to call forth the dead, toadstones, and other talismans. The suggestion to me is that from the point I left this “cabinet of curios” where scientific categorization whole-heartedly embraced superstition and unfounded scientific mythology, the entire museum I went on to view was also like this. When I walked out of the British Museum—why, I walked into the greater cabinet of curiosities found down the streets, in and out of shops, the inconsistent and sometimes surprising marvels of this world we have created. The world is a curiosity; so what is it?

There were the Lapiths and centaurs battling and frozen into stone that once faced the north side of the Parthenon from Greece stolen—or salvaged—from that damaged country and put into the British Museum. I had eagerly anticipated a trip to the British Museum for four years having been to Athens and the Parthenon and seen the many statues, but mostly the arms and legs, kept in their own museums with many excuses that the rest of the statuary was in London. So I was able to finally see the Lapiths and centaurs battling, the centaurs pulling off the Lapith maidens at some unfortunate god’s wedding. The statuary was great, but rarely did they have heads. And usually there was a sign affixed that said, to the effect, “heads are in Greece.” Ah, well!

In Chinatown, there is a window through which is a cake with a Barbie doll stuck in the middle and the icing curled so elegantly that it seamlessly assumes the place of her dress. I took this picture. My first picture of England!

I visited St. Paul’s today with my friend Tessa Currie who met Hun, Jo Ann, and me in Covent Gardens. St. Paul’s was quite impressive, and I wish I remember more from my literature classes what we discussed about its architectural interests (yes, we even talk about architecture in literature classes). I was surprised to hear a choir singing Down to the River to Pray, a good American old-time religion song, but we learned that the choir was from the United States so I guess that is okay. But boy I was jealous of those singers—putting their voice into that space, you must have felt like you had wings, flying to the top of that beautiful dome. It is possible to take stairs that one may walk around the inner rim of the dome. In this inner dome, you may do several things. If you whisper along the wall, you can send messages to people around the entire room! Your voice, secret, runs about the place like a stone skipped over water. But this is not enough; you want to fill the space with your voice, the only way to really fly through the space, which is what you wanted to do. A pigeon that was fluttering about landed in a windowsill high above everything and created a puff of dust where no one had ever cleaned. Then he flew down passed me, close enough that I was seized by a tinge of vertigo or the sensation one has driving at times, the powerful sensation that grips you when another car passes from the other direction—so close! You want to fill your space with your voice but one is not so brave in front of God I think. What has one to say anyway?

One surprising fact about St. Paul’s was that all the dedications and entombments in the church were for generals, war heroes, and civil servants. As a result, the only females were classical-style, bare-breasted women placing crowns of laurels upon the dead man’s carved face. The only female that our group saw represented was Florence Nightengale, that wonderfully intelligent and progressive woman; but alas, we found her not upstairs but in the basement.

Hun and I surmise that the reason for this outrage (it isn’t exactly an outrage) is because St. Peters in Rome similarly has such statues all over the place but not of generals of course; it’s catholic—they have saints (and probably more women to that effect, too, but only slightly more). St. Pauls, being the front piece of the Church of England, gave these positions to its civil servants.

The east chapel was dedicated to American soldiers who had fought in England. The east chapel could be said to be the most important part of the church architecturally. The church being in the shape of a cross, the east chapel is at the very head. It was the end that was partially destroyed in WWII. 23 August 1946 Eisenhower wrote for the Roll of Honor these words:

EACH name inscribed in this book is a story of personal tragedy and a grieving family, a story repeated endlessly in white crosses girdling the globe. The Americans whose names here appear, were part of the price that free men have been forced a second time to pay in this country to defend human liberty and rights. Fittingly, this ROLL OF HONOR has been enshrined by the Mother Country of all English-speaking democracies in this special chapel of St. Pauls, once a target of barbaric attack. Here, we and all who shall hereafter live in freedom will be reminded that to these men and their comrades of all the Allies we owe a debt to be paid with grateful remembrance of their sacrifice and with the high resolve that the cause for which they died shall live ETERNALLY.

The rhetoric of a particular patriotism, whether we find it in a Shakespearian play or in the mouth of a ruler, we must remember has the power to send armies willingly off to their deaths. What does the modern citizen of the world do with this particular attitude toward an appropriate militarism? How do we speak of honor and eternity in the context of war? How have we changed! Or have we not? How much awfulness British imperialism once produced; but now one looks around and it doesn’t look so bad. Are these men Saints or Devils? What is the role of history? What kind of legacy does America leave in its wake? For, like everything, America must pass, too—gracefully or tragically only time will tell.

I think that’s it for now. More later. I'm displeased I haven't been able to write sooner, but there is no convenient or reliable internet where I'm staying. In fact, right now, I am in an internet place. How odd!