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| From Ladakh!!!! |
Waking up to beautiful views like this, we were all super excited to do some hiking. We decided instead of going with a tour-operator, to try a relatively new homestay-trekking program. Through this program, which arose interestingly through the work of a conservation NGO trying to save Snow Leopards, trekkers can stay in the homes of villages along a fairly set trekking route. The homeowners have received basic training in tourism hospitality, and have been certified. The money goes directly to the family and is not lost to the various middle-men in Leh. We picked a route through the Likir valley, which was going to be 4 or so days, and relatively gently, following dirt roads and not taking on too many high passes.
We headed to the bus station, which was quite an experience as none of the buses had signs we could read (my tibetan is not up to par), and people either said the bus had already left, or they knew nothing about it. That is until I found an "official" who was willing to leave his office to show us where the right bus was. Than it was fun time! Crawling up on the bus to secure our bags..
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
Following a few hour bus trip through spectacularly desolate country we "arrived". In the middle of nowhere.
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
Actually, it wasn't the middle of nowhere. It was somewhere. In the picture above you can see me looking down onto the green oasis of Likir. As you can probably tell from the pictures so far, Ladakh is a high altitude desert with very little in the way natural verdant splendor. EXCEPT, that is, where there are human settlements. You'll come around a turn, and where there is a creek coming down from the mountains, a verdant oasis greets you. We were to learn much more about the Ladakhi's agricultural practices and how these shaped the landscape in the coming weeks.
We started on our "trail", literally a desolate road, walking towards a distant monastery.
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
In this picture you can see another religious artifact of daily life in this predominantly Buddhist area: chortens, which are memorials.
We had set out fairly late on this first day, and the hike to the Likir monastery was quite tiring. But we finally reached it....
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
and were greeted by an absolutely amazing Buddha statue, towering above us and the monastery
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
Inside the monastery were more breathtaking frescoes, which given that they were about a 1000 years old were in pretty darn good condition
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
We saw wizened old women at the monastery with amazing turquoise jewelery for which Ladakh is famous.
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
After the monastery we hiked for a while longer until we decided that our first day's objective, which was still 6 hours away was just unreachable. And so, we decided to stay at a homestay in a nearby village.
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
Upon reaching the village of Narutse, we managed to find a house that said "Snow Leopard Conservancy Homestay" on a little sign. We knew we'd found our home for the night.
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
The hospitality in these Ladakhi homes was really wonderful.
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
And the whole experience I felt incredibly positive about. So frequently, with what are called community conservation projects like this, where some activity generates money for the community and helps acheive conservation goals there are "tradeoffs" and one or the other entity doesn't really "win". However, in this case, it did seem to be largely a "win-win" situation. We paid a very modest amount for 3 meals and lodging (about $10/person/day). The local family got what for them was a fair yet generous amount of money. 10% got put into a conservation pot for activities like setting up fences around livestock corrals to prevent snow-leopards from coming in and killing the livestock (which would ultimately result in the killing of the snow leopard). We got a window into daily Ladakhi life. A pretty good situation all-around (although I know there are always micro-politics involved and nothing is ever completely as it seems).
The homes themselves were beautiful in their simplicity, functionality, and design.
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
We always had our own room with beds on the floor. The rooms we stayed in always had two walls made up completely of windows, which was needless to say, AMAZING.
The traditional Ladakhi kitchen, which is known as a chansa, is really beautiful.
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
In it the family proudly displays the majority of their material possessions, namely numerous dinner services, which are used for special events,like weddings and New Years.
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
The chansa is where we would eat our meals (pictured here in another house a few days later)
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
However, I committed a major faux pax, thinking that one of the posts (the one I'm falling back against) was a support beam for the house (like the others next to it). Oh no, it was the stove exhaust pipe! Luckily it wasn't hot, however, after self-timing this photo, I ran into the photo and leaned against the exhaust pipe, at which point it dislodged itself from the roof! After the dust settled, we tried again, and took a better one...
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| From Ladakh!!!! |
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