TRAVEL ON YOU CRAZY DIAMOND: Darcha to Lamayuru Trek

By: satnam on 10:09 AM

DAY 9: DAY OF REST AT PADUM (VISIT TO KARSHA MONASTERY)

It did not turn out to be a day of rest in the real sense. An annual festival was being held in Karsha Monastery, around 12km from Padum and everyone was talking about it. After a lazy but sumptuous breakfast of paranthas and sabzi and what else not, we headed for Karsha, quite late. :)

The monastery was way up on the top

Upon reaching Karsha, I realized that I had been there before, during a Zanskar river expedition in 2011. I have wonderful memories of this place!

A lhama brooding over the larger mysteries of life

Karsha Monastery is one of the oldest and most prominent monasteries in Ladakh, the other being Lamayuru. So it was considered a huge thing to visit it. Many local people and foreigners had come to see the annual spectacle. A 300-year old portrait of a lady was on display. She was the mother of the lhama who had established Karsha monastery.

The festival started with two very young lhamas escorting a very old lhama, and helping him sit at a place from where he could watch the proceedings.

After that, the little lhamas went around hitting everyone with sticks and asking for money. Until you gave something, they would keep hitting the people softly with the sticks.

Various lamas came dressed in this way. They wore different kinds of masks, and there was a lot of drumming and dancing.

Curious Looks

Lamas dancing around

Lamas do have a dressing sense

The show was interesting initially, but soon started to drag a bit too much for us. The sun did not help either.

Hoonar enjoying the show under the shade

The sun looked different on that day, as we were lucky to see it surrounded by the full circle of a rainbow

More dancing

Finally around lunch time, we got bored and left for Padum. Hoonar decided that he would not continue further, but would take a cab to Kargil the next day. I took the decision to trek from Padum to Lamayuru alone. We segregated our luggage, and I borrowed the tent from Hoonar and gave him the useless stuff which I would not need on the trek.

The evening was spent chatting with an Israeli, a Slovakian and a local guide over beers. Early the next morning, with my eyes full of tears, I bid farewell to Hoonar. He left for Kargil along with the American couple (Leela and Edmond) and the Colombian professor.

P.S. - I met Carlos, the Colombian professor in Leh and Gill, the Israeli guy in Dharamshala, by coincidence. C’est la vie.

DAY 10: PADUM - PIDMO TO HANUMIL

Padum is the only town on this trek and has only one street where you get almost everything.

The street where Padum starts and ends (fairly quickly)

I had befriended a cobbler in Padum. He was a Punjabi from Jammu who came to Padum every season. He called out to me in Punjabi and caught me by surprise. That day I planned to go where the road ends, a town called Pidmo, and walk from there till Hanumil. I came to know that it is possible to take a shared taxi there, but we would have to wait till the end of the Karsha festival. So I waited till evening.

Spent a lot of time chilling with him

You never see this in the cities!

At around 4 p.m., I got a lift to Pidmo in the trunk of an open pickup truck. The weather turned cloudy midway, giving a few spectacular scenes.

Stormy Weather

Spectacular rainbow post the showers

There was a local Ladakhi girl on the truck, who struck up a conversation with me. It turned out that she was a former nun (called Chomu in Ladakhi). She told me how much she had enjoyed meditating while she was a nun, but she had to leave the nunnery to help her mother with household work. She also told me that kids who went to Leh for studies (like her) are more modernized as compared to village kids. This was evident from the jeans she wore, and her friend’s salwar suit.

Forgot to exchange email IDs with this damsel, damn!

I got off the truck at Pidmo at 6 p.m. and immediately started walking towards Hanumil. This was the second time that I had lost the trail. I was scared since the sun was setting, and I was trekking alone for the first time in an unknown land.