Going Deep and Going Quiet

A quick note: today, a day ahead of schedule, I’m heading off on a long trek, the longest I have ever been a part of here in Ladakh. I’ll be out for 18 days, traversing the Zanskar region, to the Southwest of the Indus River valley, along the Northernmost edge of the Himalayan range. I’ll be walking clear across Ladakh on this trip, from nearly its Westernmost point all the way back to the lakes on the Eastern edge of the region, from which I just came. The group will be small—me, Jigmet the guide, Ravi our camp manager, and a horseman. Fast and light is how we hope to go. There will be many passes—the first and highest over 17,000 feet—and innumerable river crossings. And these are only the known challenges.

My desire to walk through Zanskar has in part to do with all the monasteries and practice places that exist there. As I did in 2018 with my friend Laurence, I look forward to walking but also to stopping in at these practice places to pay my respects, to attend prayers when possible, and to feel fully into the continuous practice of these mountain monks. I feel a deep and very old familiarity when I’m in these places. Rather than try to give an account of why that is, I’ll just say that it is so. Something about this way of life feels like home to me. Monks have been practicing in these mountains for nearly a thousand years. It seems there is a lot to learn from them about how to endure the ebbs and flows of human time and human foolishness.

At the same time, as every person I know and care for here has said to me without exception, “things are changing” in Ladakh. Motorable roads are popping up everywhere, in part to ease the lives of the people here, in part to promote domestic tourism, and in part as a means of national defense or the theater of national defense—it’s sometimes hard to tell which. The trekking routes are disappearing fast, and we had to get very creative to find a route that would take us all the way across Zanskar with only one brief ride in a truck in the middle to get through a stretch of highway. At the same time, climate change is making itself felt everywhere here. Mudslides are increasing, the great lakes of the Changtang are receding, and the weather is almost monsoon-like much of the time here now—unheard of in this high altitude desert.

I asked my main support here, Namgyal, last night, whether he thought trekking was “over” in Ladakh, and he didn’t pause long before saying, as the Ladakhis so often do, “I think so.” Not absolute assurance, but a strong indication of the ways the world is moving. It made my heart clench. Most tourists here don’t want to trek, and the pony men have sold their horses and are working on the new roads. All the guides and camp leaders are working freelance now, because there is so little demand. That we managed to put this little expedition together is nothing short of a miracle.

And so off we go, full of gratitude, and also with a sense of not knowing when and whether such a thing will ever happen again. “Just this one time in the whole history of the world” is a phrase I often return to to remind myself of the preciousness of each moment, each experience, each encounter, each being. I will walk into this great space and great silence with that as my mantra, fully supported by the great earth and all living beings.