Charged the Pakistan Border

Mountains of rock covered with boulders, coated in dust and topped with ice; this is the Ladakh that has confronted me. Knife slits of streams thread their way through valleys yet these streams only give birth to vegetation reluctantly and sporadically. Tiny hamlets cling to these sporadic green patches surrounded by stark brown cliffs, making a vast vertical desert that ends only when it reached a featureless blue sky. Ladakh is a dry grandeur that has defied my expectations not only for its obvious lack of water but also for the life that thrives here. Herds of blue sheep range on these slopes nibbling at vegetation only they seem able to find. As the sheep migrate up and down these slopes with the seasons wolves and leopards follow them known only from their nightly songs and tracks in the mud. Add to all this the windblown and sun wrinkled old women quietly herding their yaks from one place to another. Each time a trail crosses a pass, mounts a ridge or rounds a corner to a noteworthy view tattered prayer flags sway in the wind and walls of intricately carved mani stones part the path displaying their prayers to all who care to learn the Tibetan script.

Ladakh is not what I had imagined. Nepal, Sikim, and Tibet all felt like places that invited life. Ladakh by contrast feels like a place where life has arrived without preparation but has managed to find a bewildered and happy reception anyway much like the dinner guest who arrives without an invitation but who also brings the groceries, cooks the food and fills the house with laughter.

Five days ago we piled into a jeep with three other tourists and a driver to travel from Leh to the Nubra Valley. Leaving Leh the road begins an impossible climb through this land of rock and dust to Khardung La pass at 5602m (18,379 feet). It seems to me that high mountains detest roads and this road and these mountains are no exception. Though the Indian army and sprawling camps of dark skinned laborers crush rocks, pour concrete, and divert streams the road is still little more than a muddy stream bed filled with struggling vehicles, fighting to form three lanes on a one lane track. Ladakh is in India after all and no mountain road here has less then three lanes no matter how narrow, and no matter how precipitous the surrounding cliffs there is always one lane going up, one going down and one for the cars going both up and down. Yet despite the inevitable motorized chaos the system somehow works and the top of Khardung pass is festooned with crisp new prayer flags, impossibly colorful cargo trucks, overflowing toilets and turbaned Sikh families enjoying their first snowball fight. However, this would not be India if the impossible were not also at perched atop this pass and so to complete the picture a group of exhausted Italian cyclists festooned with helmets and spandex completes the picture.

The journey down Khardung pass is profoundly different only in the fact that you are now staring into Pakistan and that modern warriors sit unseen furiously guarding the disputed boarder.  Meanwhile on the road uniformed soldiers and massive green transport trucks mix freely with the chartered Toyota taxis and Royal Enfield motorcycles of the Indian and western tourists.

The flat bottom and meandering river here do nothing to alter the fact that Ladakh is dry and brown. In this regard at least the one side of Khardung pass is much like the other though as we dropped further and further into the valley a pivotal difference emerged: the Nubra valley is hot. The town of Hunder offers tourist camel rides through the sand dunes along the river’s edge and my left arm turned red where I hung it out the passenger side window of our Toyota mini-van. In the valley floor the road is paved and though our diver could have picked up speed he choose instead to delicately manage the endless supply of blind corners and courteously let any trailing vehicles pass us at the nearest place he could pull over. I found this particular detail of our trip even more disorienting than the mad Italian cyclists at 18,000 feet.  Though as our day wore on I relaxed into the idea that our driver was more blind than courteous.

Nothing is free however; our driver’s understandable sense of both propriety and self preservation brought us to a final stream crossing a mere three miles from our final destination of Turtuk. All day the sun had pounded the high altitude snowfields feeding this stream. In the morning what had been a mere trickle now flowed with an intimidating force far beyond our driver’s courage. Putting the mini van in park he simply said, ‘no’ and for the moment the discussion ended. We all watched the stream and contemplated the inevitable question, ‘Well what the hell do we do now?’

In a half-baked answer to our question a small man in a Muslim knit hat and holding a hoe leapt from behind a boulder where he had been enjoying an afternoon nap. Immediately he began swinging his hoe at the road/stream bed in a comical attempt to clear a path. (Apparently the army pays him to keep this little section of road passable.) His efforts were fantastically energetic, utterly futile and tragically comical all at the same time.  It was with the arrival of a high clearance, and fully loaded local bus that our question ‘Well what the hell do we do now?’ answered itself. Our driver agreed to meet us at the stream crossing the next morning and we charged onto the buss.

Or at least we tried to charge onto the bus. Suzanne, perhaps utilizing her super powers honed in the New York subway, managed to push her way onboard. I however, bounced off a solid wall of human flesh. Fortunately, I am not without my own skills. I have learned the art of bus roof riding in Nepal and without missing a beat I leapt to the roof, situated myself on the luggage (fortunately there were no chickens this time) and braced for the journey.

This then is how I found myself ducking tree branches and power lines as I charged the Pakistan border mounted to the roof of a bus with the sun setting in my eyes.