A day in Leh monasteries

As I woke up looking for tea as usual Ria was ready and having tea. It was 5.45 am. One could set his watch with her timetable, I thought. I told her to give me fifteen minutes to get ready. I got my tea only in another fifteen minutes as services in the hotel were for Tourists who were slow, and on pleasure trip, so there was no such urgency of service so early. I got ready finally by 6.15am and we started off from the hotel as remaining group was sleeping. As we went slightly further from the hotel, we held each others hand and set out on the trail towards the highway. Now she was in a mood to talk about her a bit.

Her father is a strict disciplinarian as he has retired from a Indian army as a engineer, she said. That was the reason she had developed the habit of waking so early. I suddenly remembered my dad who wakes up at 4 am and thinks anybody in bed till 6 am is a bit too lazy. 

I always find it so crazy.If I have to wake up at 6 am than I can hardly have a nice night’s sleep. My dad sleeps at 8 pm also which is a very strange proposal for anybody now-a-days especially for me as I only sleep by midnight, that too after reading some novel or doing some neumerological study.

After walking for almost a km Ria decided we should sit for a while. We had in front of us a lonely piece of land where big rocks were scattered. I sat on one rock and Ria came and sat near me with the rock’s base barely keeping both our bases just about on the rock. I had no reason to move for some time. She told me how lucky she felt for choosing this trip, especially because she had never ventured out from her city even for a couple of days with her friends. Her father always thought she was dad's little girl.

She narrated a failed relationship she had with a guy. The boy never showed love, instead he was only interested in lust.She kept the affair for some time but after realizing that it was only about lust, she broke up with him. I immediately told her it was a right decision. Though for all I know love and lust have a thin line in between but no relationship can last long only on lust. I told her that in mine as well as Jerry's life, we had seen a lot of ups and downs. We also craved for true love,  all the while, struggling with our destiny. Her eyes became moist as she spoke. 

I told her about my strong relationship with Neeru and how we had spent years together. I had never been so close to anybody as I have been to Neeru in my life. I have always let her know all my secrets, successes, failures, all good and bad experiences. My emotions were also giving way as we sat and talked. Perhaps as things turned out I had also become weaker in emotions which were started by her. We lost track of time.

Suddenly as we looked at our watches it was 8.45am. We as a group had decided to go for sightseeing at 9 am sharp.We started back hurriedly for the hotel and reached there only to find Sally having just woken up and brushing her teeth. Neeru was in the bed still,sound asleep.Sally came up with her expert commentary by speculating that a fresh morning air and a walk must have been very enriching for both me and Ria. As she said all this a smile full of mischief played on her face and I really did not know how much more was playing in her mind.

We hurried towards our room to avoid some more saucy remarks from Sally.Reaching the room, I literally dragged out Neeru from the bed and carefully opened her eyes to show her the watch and reminded her of the schedule.She felt it was too early to wake up as we had slept after 2 am. She thought, after all, these monasteries where we are to go are in the town only and hence we could start late. Her definition of late was only known to her. Maybe another blissful 15 minutes in the bed with eyes closed, is what she wanted. I let her have that and went back to the hotel lobby, looking around the place.

The passage from main gate of the hotel to the lobby was full of colourful flowers on both sides. Here I had a new learning, the manager of the hotel told me that every year, as the snow cleared, all these beautiful flowers were gone and they had to replant them every year when the snow cleared. A really daunting task, I thought.

As we came out finally for the Leh local seeing, we met our main guide, Amit, who flew into Leh from Srinagar to be with us in our journey to various places around Leh. Finally we started at 11 am after breakfast with Amit. man of 30, with sound knowledge of Leh, its history, he was waiting in a track suit since early morning. He expected the group to be ready by 9 am to leave, but he smilingly told us that it was alright even at 11am. What else could he say.

The only thing he added was that as you climb the monastery the sun will come down heavily on you and that is the reason for starting early. He had an athletic body the reason for which we discovered later in the day while climbing the first monastery which was a mixture of old rubble and recently renovated interiors. He was a cheerful man with a good knowledge of these areas.After all he had done studies in tourism and had gone to all these places around Ladakh and J & K many times. Only thing, I thought, was, that he may not have come across a group like us. He may soon find that, I smiled inside, as we moved on

We did make a round of monasteries but the best pick was the Sheh palace monastery.The paintings and objects that we saw at sheh monastery were priceless and timeless in nature.The verandah in the middle was so large that it could accommodate almost twenty thousand people on the day when dancing festivals happened in Leh. There were priceless thanka paintings all over the sheh monastery.In fact thanka painting were features of all monastery but sheh monastery had more of them. In Hemis monastery,another large monastery in Leh, we came across a thanka painting, 120 mtrs in height. Any thanks painting which is 1 ft by 1 ft in size, costs around 5 crores. We could not calculate the price of this one which was rolled up, and was only opened once in 12 years, we were told. When this painting is opened, Tourist from all over the world throng Leh, and in Sheh monastery, nobody gets to sit, when the painting is unveiled, such is the rush.

After completing our visit at Sheh monastery, me, preeti and Ria were waiting outside eagerly as we were getting late for seeing the sunset point.

We had to travel ten kms to reach the sunset point. Preeti was grumbling something to herself which I could not clearly make out. It was already 5.45 pm and by 6.30 pm it will all be over. Neeru and sally came out of the monastery a good fifteen minutes behind schedule as they were on a photo shoot somewhere inside. Preeti started talking as the vehicle started for sunset point. She was a bit upset about delay caused everywhere in reaching the next point. The reference was towards Neeru and Sally, which I could sense but to keep things under control, I pretended to have listened nothing, though from rear view mirror I could sense that she was a bit pissed off about what was going on.

We reached the sunset point by 6.25 pm and literally ran towards the tower, just in time the sun had started setting. The mountains on the opposite side showed sunshine and shadow turn by turn and whole scene was awesome. We were sitting on the opposite side only so we could see the whole transformation though for very less time. The girls were very keen to do a lot of shopping for everybody and more so for themselves. We decided to assemble back after a good two and half hours of shopping at 9 pm near the vehicle.

I was just wandering around aimlessly, took a few T-shirts for myself and two tops for my daughter. I could not find anything which was meaningful and reasonable in rates. I was back at 8.30pm and Ria and Preeti came at 9 pm. We were waiting for Neeru and Sally in the vehicle, and were a bit worried as the hotel had suggested that we would get dinner upto 10 pm only.

That was also late by their standards, as the waiters had to travel on foot to their homes in nearby villages, after dinner. Preeti started getting upset again and this time a bit more than what she was near sheh monastery.I was sensing something to happen.I tried to pacify her but to no avail. Neeru and Sally came back at 9.30 pm and we were already waiting inside the car.

As Neeru and sally entered the car, they started talking about what they had bought but suddenly Preeti cut it short by telling Neeru that she was squarely responsible for the delay and that one must be reasonably disciplined as otherwise the other people have to wait endlessly without any meaning. Sally wanted to respond but Preeti cut her out by saying that it was between her and Neeru and Sally wasn’t anybody to butt in.

All hell went loose with Neeru telling it very depressingly that because of such a rude comment by preeti her shopping experience got all screwed up. Too much went on as we made our journey back for the hotel. A quiet dinner with no one talking much and we started for our rooms and got ready to sleep as next morning we had to start at 7 am sharp for a journey to Pyongyang Lake which was the single biggest attraction in the whole journey.