North of the Himalayan Crest

Looking back on Mt. Nun-Kun (7135 m) and the Ladakh chain of the Himalayas from the road outside of Kargil. Because the embattled border between India and Pakistan for a while follows the Indus upstream of Kargil, this essentially military road to Leh continues inland over two high passes and finally to cross the Indus at Khalatse in the upper Ladakh.

Mulbekh Gompa - The Begin of Buddhist Ladakh

 The border between Islamic Kashmir and Buddhist Ladakh is marked by a 9^th century rock relief of Buddha Shakyamuni and Mulbekh Gompa.

The irrigated fields of the village of Mulbekh

East of Mulbekh the landscape turns Tibetan. Elephant-like Hills off the approach to Namika La. There is a green shimmer of yak-grass on the slopes after the snow melt.

Namika La - the Second and Highest Pass

 We are now at the altitude of over 3000-m of the Tibetan Plateau where vegetation becomes very sparse.

 Top of Namika La (4500 m) . Like most Tibetan passes Namika La is a broad eroded shoulder, which one could, were it not for a sign, pass unnoticed.

Fatu La - the Third Pass

A side valley east of the Fatu La Pass. The meeting of the Himalayan and Karakoram tectonic plates produces a wild broken up mountain scape which is cut by the canyon of the Indus. Besides the Indus all large rivers of Southeast Asia originate in Tibet, i. e., north of the Himalayans and broach the mountains in dramatic gorges. Among them the Indus, the Brahmaputra, the Sutlej, and a major contributor of the Ganges have their sources in an area surrounding Mt. Kailas which is for this reason sacred to Buddhists and Hindus alike.

Lamayuru Gompa

 In this dramatic landscape below Fatu La rises the first major Ladakhi Monastery above the village of Lamayuru.

The first view of the Upper Indus on the descent from Fatu La to Khalatse

Spitok Gompa

 The Gelugpa castle of Spitok Gompa overlooking the Leh airport - the planes take off and land dangerously close to Spitok Gompa struggling to gain enough altitude to clear the mountain tops across the Indus Valley.

Leh

  Leh and the deserted ruin of the Royal Palace seen from the windy cemetery, inhabited by dozens of stray dogs, south of town.

Mother Kiddar's "Palace View Guest House"

For some reason I had picked Palace View Guest House from the list in the Lonely Planet guide book on Ladakh and thus it happened that we met incomparable Mother Kiddar.

Mother Kiddar and her husband in their kitchen preparing breakfast for her guest. Behind her their magnificent wood-burning stove and her "silver"-ware in the wall-cupboard.

Mother Kiddar wearing the traditional tibi the Ladakhi Hat - and a Dalai Lama button(!). Because of the long animosity between Ladakh and Lhasa, the Dalai Lama has found popular support in Ladakh only in the eighties. Mother Kiddar, who was also a member of the Leh city council, was a vociferous supporter of "His Holiness."

Ladakhi hats at a mock-wedding staged for Indian TV in the Kiddar's kitchen

Chörten along the polo grounds behind the Kiddar's guest house. In the distance the palace hence the name of the guest house.

Hemis

For pictures from the Cham Dances at Hemis Gompa see Hemis Festival.

Guru Rinpoche Padmasambhava holds court at the Hemis Guru-Setchu 

Alchi

For a more detailed guide see Alchi, and for an explanation of Buddhist iconography and terms see Budhas.

The jewel of Ladakh is Alchi Gompa. A modest sanctuary on the left bank of the Indus half-way between Lamayuru and Leh. The interior walls of the place are covered from bottom to ceiling with murals, the most beautiful and oldest (1064 AD) in Ladakh and Tibet.

 Long Mani walls and chörten line the path from the Indus bridge to Alchi.

An especially pretty mani stone Cornelius found on the wall in the background..

 Cornelius was kind and carried most of our necessities for this four day excursion

An internet picture of the Indus Valley and Alchi Gompa

 The Sumtsek, the main sanctuary at Alchi, and the court-yard in the Winter of 1989 when Barbara and I visited Alchi again.

The Bodhisattva Akshyoba (his mandala-circle is barely 20-cm in diameter) sits in the center of close to hundred smaller Akshyobas covering a wall of maybe 3 by 4 meters.... Considering the painstaking detail in the field outside the circle, this is miniature painting on a grand scale. The painters came from Kashmir, where no comparable Buddhist art has survived Islam, except for the lacquer boxes which are still being painted by the Kashmiri artisans....

Except for one bare 25-Watt bulb the three-story interior of the Sumtsek is completely dark and a monk watches that one does not use a photo-flash. He was very amused when I took a picture from Cornelius' back, full aperture, 2-minute exposure, and Cornelius pointing a Mini-Mag-Light flash lamp at the wall (Kodak-Chrome 64). The results were four fuzzy slides showing a nebulous yellow spot in an otherwise black picture - before our flashlight batteries gave out.... Can you imagine my delight, when I recovered these images by restoring the white balance of the scans and sharpening them a little? The miracles digital photo restoration can produce!

The Bodhisattva Manjushri in the yellow color of the Buddha family of Ratnasambhava

Shamefully these murals are crumbling (viz. the cracks in the Akshyoba above). On my return I tried to interest John Sanday at the Getty to stabilize Alchi. Getty was more than willing to fund such a project, and John has tried several times since to persuade the Indian government to accept funds from an international consortium. But the Indians cannot agree which ministry in its Byzantine bureaucracy should be responsible for Buddhist monuments in embattled Moslem Jammu and Kashmir. Nothing has been done for over 20 years and every winter water seeping through the roof claims another piece of its walls.

In preparation for restoration a German group has published a comprehensive photographic survey of the Sumtsek (available from Amazon.com for $150!) which Barbara gave me for my birthday.... It is a fabulous piece of work, digitally restored images, clear, uniformly lit, the color balance checked against the originals, not to mention the immaculate printing job - but these images are devoid of the mystical ambiance of this dark cave. I like my unsharp, poorly lit pictures better, they produce an impression of the place....

In May of 2004 a British Group from the University of Edinborough has started another iconometric survey in preparation for a stabilization program of the Sumtsek.

 Manjushri was a very popular incarnation of Ratnasambhava, he occupies two walls, here he appears in a slightly different form. (see Buddhas for an explanation of Buddhist terms)

The Indus below the Gompa (on the right) where Cornelius saw a fox and we rested for a while on that evening (a picture from the internet)

Alchi Gompa in the summer (an internet picture)

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Mangyu

West of Alchi an hour up into the mountains lies Mangyu Gompa, like Alchi a sanctuary of the 11^th or 12^th century.  From the path one can barely see its houses on a seemingly impenetrable mesa (click on the picture).

We wandered for several hours along the Indus to the entrance of Mangyu valley. The altitude and my intestines were harder on me than I remember....

 Along the path to Mangyu children returning from school. The children in Mangyu were unusually aggressive, singing ditties and throwing stones at us - like the children in another remote mountain valley: Iprari in Svaneti in the Caucasus.

The smoke-filled kitchen of a house below Mangyu. Cornelius found this unique shelter for the night. The friendly host threw a futon into one room as bedding - kicking up a dust cloud which took an hour to settle - while his wife cooked a supper of vegetables and rice for us.  

Lamayuru

After the Alchi-Mangyu excursion we took the lousy public bus to Lamayuru.... Quite literally, every time we took the local bus, I came back plagued by flees and bedbugs.... Cornelius was luckier, they didn't like him. Mrs. Kidder laughed at me: "You having sweet blood. Closing room one hour. I giving you 'fefft-fefft.' Bedbugs going!'" she made a pumping movement in the air. "In summer tourists coming, bedbugs coming. In winter we having no bedbugs." She very effectively used the participle as a unified conjugation of the verb.

 Lamayuru Gompa. The head monk is distributing cod-liver oil to the young Lama pupils. (a slightly over-processed scan of my slide)

 Thereafter they are given butter tea which has been prepared in the cylindrical churning barrel at right.

Playing games with the young monks.

 The Karakoram, descending from Lamayuru into the Indus Gorge. We hitch-hiked back to Leh half-sitting, half-lying in a wooden cargo box on top of the cab of the truck. It was the nearest thing to a flying-carpet and much more comfortable than having one beggar sit on one's knee another standing on one's foot in the bus....

 Another photo taken from our flying carpet on that spectacular afternoon.

My giardia finally struck me down. In those days we carried no medicine for that affliction. I stayed in bed and Cornelius went on several trips alone.

Tikse Gompa

With a few other young people Cornelius took off for Tikse Gompa, where he took these spectacular pictures.

The Monks on the roof of Tikse Gompa blowing conches for the evening service.

Sunset from the roof of Tikse Gompa.  

Chemre Valley

 As a farewell to Ladakh we went by bus to Traktok Gompa, the only Nyingma-monastery in Ladakh, stayed in a local guest house there, and next morning walked down to the Indus near Hemis. This is the Gate to the old caravan route to Kailas and Lhasa. It would take 4-1/2 months to walk from here to Lhasa.... the route Anagarita Govinda, the German Lama, took to Tsaparang and Kailas, which he describes in his "The Way of the White Clouds."

 Early Sunday morning, Chemre Gompa along our way. I don't know what the occasion was, but the monks were singing the Mahakala Mass on this morning with full orchestral accompaniment. Their chanting and the crashes of cymbals and long horns filled the valley. We sat at the road side for a long time listening.

Traktok

 Traktok Gompa is an ominous place in the upper Chemre Valley hanging off a rock above a walled-in orchard. Govinda in the "The Way of the White Clouds" describes in vivid details the visions of his first initiation which he experienced during the night in this monastery.  

Traktok is partly built into a cave in which Padmasambhava is supposed to have stayed on his way to Tibet. Above the dark entrance to the cave an inscription remembers that event  

 An exhausted Cornelius on Palace Hill in Leh watching the planes come and go at Leh airport. As the air warmed up some flights made it and others turned around or aborted the take-off - We had tickets for the flight to Delhi on the following morning and though white-knuckled actually we did get out on that flight