The Frozen River

There was also a small wind-driven mani wheel on the roof corner of the first house in Zhuldok, and later I saw small water-driven prayer wheels that went round and round, the Buddhist universe endlessly sending out good prayers and invocations. We would need many mantras to take us over the pass before the snow came down. It was still a very long way and the snowline crept ever lower on the mountainside.

When chanting Om mani padme hum, it was extraordinary to think that millions of people across the Tibetan Buddhist world were also chanting this simple ‘prayer’, invoking not only compassion but emptiness itself. It felt as if we were walking into the void. Form and emptiness, mountains and the feeling of infinite space. To hear the mantra chanted by a hundred monks in a monastery is extraordinary, the young boy monks very high, almost squeaky, and the old monks who have seen seventy winters or more, very deep, low and sonorous, their faces dark and gnarled like old walnuts. The internal rhythms take the mind into very calm regions, the repetition possessing a strange healing power that cannot easily be explained.

Then there were chortens dotted along the way, otherwise known as stupas, squat Buddhist structures in various phases of collapse, a bit like vast pawns from a chess set dotted about the landscape.22 Whitewashed once a year, they also embody teaching in a symbolic way, sometimes containing the remains of holy men or small moulded clay Buddhas (tsa tsa) made with ash from cremations.

As I left Zhuldok I passed a group of three chortens representing the three Buddhas, past, present and future. Plenty of philosophy to chew upon. Chortens are quite complex – the square base represents earth, the dome represents water, the spire on top represents fire, which transforms life into ashes. Then on top of that a parasol and crescent moon which represent air and a sun which represents outer space, i.e. aether. Five elements instead of four. Some chortens are small, others large.

We then cut across old marshes that in summer were a haven for wildfowl, but the water table had sunk and what was left of the water remained as ice, frozen into small waves, an undulating silvery sheen of ice crystals. Maybe a quarter of a mile of silver-coated sand, like a shoal of small, silvery fish. The ice crystals crunched underfoot. The surface was ruffled and ruckled into small waves blown by the wind and frozen almost instantaneously. Sastrugi.23 Windblown.

Cold and dry, with four valleys funnelling the winds towards us, Rangdom Gompa with its red and white walls sat sedately on top of its rock, commanding the whole valley. The morning light was not bad at all.

For some reason when I was walking behind the horses, a few jumbled lines from T. S. Eliot’s Waste Land came to me, about shadows and red rocks, shelter, fear and handfuls of dust, which seemed appropriate, though I thought it unlikely Eliot would have ventured so deep into the mountains at this particular time of year … in this particular weather, with these particular horses. It was indeed a wasteland in winter, yet it had great power. Emptiness beckoned. Heavy-duty dust storms lurked round the corner.

An hour later on the right-hand side of the monastery I saw a remarkable sight. It must have been a mile away at first, but in the high-altitude air the light plays tricks and what looks near is often far away. A small dust cloud moving quite fast and then, as the cloud got closer, I saw a lone monk wearing a yellow hat and a red cloak riding fast out across the valley. He came towards us and passed within several hundred yards, but was intent on his own journey. I could again hear the silver horse bell ringing, a clear, insistent tone that carried far. The monk was strong and his horse seemed to understand the urgency of his mission. No one undertook such journeys at this time of year unless they were absolutely necessary. Here was a messenger with an important message.

The silver horse bell in that clear air was hypnotic in its intensity and the bell kept pace with the horse’s hooves. This was no time to hang around. The horse moved at a fast trot, not a canter, a pace that the horse could keep up for hours on end. The monk cut across the valley with the wind behind him and rode up the steep cobbled path towards the monastery. As he did so the vast wooden gates of the monastery slowly opened and swallowed him whole. Here was a real live wind horse. The poetry was in the dust and the red rock from which he sought shelter.

I knew then that I had crossed a boundary, that the mind and the mountains were very closely linked. There was certainly no turning back now. The mountains were flexing their muscles. Snow beckoned.

Ice quartet

Sometimes we had to cross icy rivers barefoot, taking off boots, socks and trousers, wading in up to our thighs. No easy matter, but essential. Sharp stones cut my feet and after a while they went numb. I carried a towel in the top of my rucksack so that feet could be dried off and rubbed back into some form of circulation. Frostbite was never far away. Not all rivers freeze over, and if you do have to cross, choose a place where the water is shallow, take a strong stick and lean into the current.

The horses took the rivers in their stride but they often had problems getting out because of the ice on the far side. The freezing water drained off their coats and the tousled horsehair of their underbellies immediately formed as icicles. After a few minutes they jangled in the wind. With four horses like this it was not far off a syncopated rhythm, a strange eerie winter music – ice on ice – packhorse music, walking into the head of the valley. Equine gamelan, an ice quartet.

For half an hour the icicles made their strange, slow, melancholic music, an icy xylophone that chipped and chimed. It suited the cold isolation. Then the wind got up. In the distance I could see more dust storms and whirling dervishes sweeping along the valley, picking up dry dust, sand tamarisk scrub from dried-up river beds and marshes. Whirling dervishes reached upwards for hundreds of feet, then just as suddenly disappeared or danced off in a different direction.

As we turned a corner it was our turn to face into the wind. Sand tattooed my face. I drew the headscarf tight around my eyes, put my shoulder into the wind and looked down just enough to see the path. Horses’ heads were also bowed as they knuckled under and sagged when the full force of the wind hit them. This was where they needed their thick coats and eyelashes to keep dust and grit out. We left them to their own devices following what path they could between the glacial deposits, rounded tumps known as drumlins. We drew our scarves even tighter but still the wind burrowed in. There was no respite.

The wind must have been at least 30 or 40 mph, a katabatic wind that dropped suddenly from the peaks.24 Stopping was out of the question, so we plodded on, hunched up, bent double.

This was the beginning of the Pense La, where we rejoined the road. Long stretches had been cleared and boulders moved, but bridges still had to be built. There were many bends ahead and the altitude began to tell. The horses took it at their own pace, as did we.

Every so often we could see evidence of road engineers – yellow paint daubed on rocks telling us how far we were from Kargil. Here were culverts in the making, footings for bridges, piles of stones waiting to be used as hardcore, oil stains where compressors and drills had worked. It all seemed somehow alien. By Himalayan standards this pass was tame – the section leading up to its highest point had taken five years to construct because there were so many bends, but the far side was far steeper. Mountains do not give way easily.

The more height we gained, the slower our progress and the more time there was to look at the peaks and glaciers. When the clouds cleared the whole run of mountains was visible in a chain, massif after massif. But I was still very wary of the weather. I knew from Andrew Wilson’s report of 1875 that six feet of snow fell overnight on the Pense La in September and that packhorses were left struggling up to their girth straps in snow. It was now mid-November and reaching Zangskar would be a close-run thing.

Pense La and Opus 133

You get used to sleeping on hard ground. No mat, no tent, no shelter, nothing. How I missed the foam-rubber mats that I had inadvertently left in a taxi down in Amritsar in the dark. So it was just a sleeping bag under the stars, but there weren’t any stars. Only just before dawn could you spot them, like navigation beacons. The smell of yak dung burning was welcome, as was the salt tea.25

Was it the third or the fourth night since Panikar? In these mountains time loses all meaning. The gradient of the road was not too steep as it wound backwards and forwards. Sometimes we took short cuts, always climbing up.

We slept out on the track halfway up the pass. By chance I had with me a new Sony radio/cassette recorder that was destined for the tehsildar of Padum26 – and I twiddled the knobs and was able to tune in to what turned out to be a rather clear signal. Radio Moscow – a late Beethoven string quartet eerily dancing its way through the mountain air. Opus 133, I think it was. Grosse Fuge. Great Fugue. Quiet then vibrant, almost demonic, like the whirling dervishes, the radio signal weaving in and out of the peaks. Trust the Russians. But then again radio reception would be pretty good. Central Asia was a stone’s throw away and we were very high up. Opus 133 kept the wolves at bay that night. Later on during the winter, wolves followed me much more closely.

The competing tunes and fugues were exhilarating, wild and uncompromising. It was exhausting to listen to. Even at sea level. And yet up here in the Himalaya it felt very appropriate. It had its own magic. It mirrored the strength of the mountains. The string quartet cut insistently through the cold air, on edge, manically tugging my mind this way and that. An urgency that matched my own – and the weather’s, which was hovering, as if the whole winter were condensed into those fifteen or sixteen hectic minutes. The Great Fugue, gyrating and pulling, plucking notes from the mountain air. A high-altitude concert. A brief respite – a final farewell – an invocation and offering to the spirits of the mountains as powerful as any that Buddhist monks could muster to keep the snow at bay. And then it was gone … Sadly I would have to sell the radio when I got into the valley to help pay the balance that I owed the horsemen.

We slept on the road because there was nowhere else to sleep, and just when we thought we were alone we met two men from Tungri, whose horses were carrying timber for building. Timber is very scarce in Zangskar and this looked like sawn timber from Kashmir, four by two, bought in Kargil. The timber was 15ft long and dragged on the ground, an ungainly load for horses, particularly when swinging around bends.

It was comforting to meet other travellers going in the same direction. We had a small fire and they joined us. So five of us camped out on the Pense La. The Zangskaris started singing low, slightly mournful songs, no doubt about their village … they sang well into the night. We slept by the embers of the fire. The stars shone very brightly between the clouds, a good sign because it meant that it would not snow.

The hour before dawn was always the coldest. The horsemen got up and went, bridles in hand, searching for the horses and put nosebags on them. They had not strayed far. No sooner had the horses chomped their way through the barley than the men sorted the loads. Four separate piles of luggage, odd-shaped hessian sacks that we knew by heart. With all three of us helping it only took about five minutes per horse to get them laden, the horses sensing the urgency as much as we did.

Loading in the half-light has its problems, and fingers were again very stubborn and clumsy. We soon left the men from Tungri behind. Their load kept slipping, and anyway they hadn’t got to make a return journey. Once over the pass they were home and dry.

The further we got up the pass, the lower the cloud came down. The small lake was completely frozen and a lopsided sign read ‘Pense La 14,500ft’. There was a chorten. The lhato was another pile of rocks, mani stones and quartz crystals with prayer flags and curved ibex horns.27 Ibex, sure-footed wild goat of the mountains and inner spirit of every Zangskari. Here resided the spirit of the pass, and Buddhists would light incense as offerings, sometimes branches of juniper they had brought with them, recite mantras that would give thanks to the gods and pray for a safe journey. Every house in Zangskar has its own small lhato. Offerings of incense are made every morning.

The marmots had gone underground. I marvelled at the marmot’s ability to hibernate for six or seven months.28 They could stay in their burrows from October to May, more than half the year. Their alarm call is a whistle, almost a sharp shriek like a bird of prey that at first has you looking up in the skies. Then you look down and see three or four chubby marmots standing up on their hind legs looking intently at you. Then diving down into their burrows as you get closer. But the pass was silent. Marmots all asleep, fathoms down.

It was so cold on the Pense La that not even a lammergeier circled. Only prayer flags fluttered, torn ragged in the stiff breeze. I placed a stone on the cairn and offered up a Buddhist prayer for the safe return of myself, the two horsemen and their horses.

It was on the other side of the pass that I got my first view of Zangskar in winter on the scarp, a steep 1,000ft drop. The road zig-zagged as it descended. To the south, amid long lines of ragged peaks, was the Durung Drung glacier, over a mile wide and snaking off eight or ten miles into the distance – a magnificent sight. An elegant glacier, its meltwater powered the upper reaches of Zangskar. Despite the cold winds I was happy. I knew deep down that the gamble to get into the valley before the snows came down had paid off. But I also knew that I would have to cross this pass again on my own on skis in deep snow in late spring when conditions would be very different and much more forbidding. My life in Zangskar was only just beginning. Winter was well on its way.

Home straight

That evening I watched the horsemen make the fire with dried dung. They blew carefully, mouths close to the earth, till the flame came and with it fragrant smoke that filled the valley like incense. We gathered firewood to see us through, for in Zangskar there is little. Here they do not so much as waste a twig. Life is very precious when in the balance.

In summer these open spaces were mountain pastures where herds of yak roamed. Villagers lived in low, black yak-hair tents like nomads, moving every few weeks to even higher pastures just below the snowline, then back down again – the ceaseless round of milking, making yogurt, butter churning, cheese making, dung collection, spinning and a little weaving, unchanged for thousands of years. And in autumn, after harvest, the animals returned to their villages carrying their own butter. Butter was currency and life itself, possessing high value and conferring status. Rents were paid in butter. Butter lamps burnt in monasteries, even though it left the paintings covered in a fine film of soot. Butter was used in every ceremony and had a high symbolic value. Offering butter was a gift from the gods. Butter was drunk in Tibetan salt tea and used for softening skins. It also warded off evil and disease. It was this butter that was traded down the chadar, the frozen river, in the depths of winter.

It was on the morning of the fifth day that I saw the first Zangskari village, Hagshu, on the other side of the river, a bleak spot in winter. Not even a dog barked. Up the side valley lay the Hagshu glacier and the Hagshu La, one of the highest routes over the Himalayan range, gaining you access to an array of fine peaks, all as yet unclimbed. It is from Hagshu La that the bears come over from Kishtwar. Himalayan brown bears. They are quite a nuisance and will even break into houses to find butter.

It was not till Abring that I saw houses on this side of the river. Three hamlets scattered amid the alluvial fan of a stream, where it was just possible to clear enough rocks to give the fields a chance. Borderline agriculture.

The fields looked bare. At 13,000ft they can only just grow barley and peas, while lower down they grow wheat at 12,000ft, some of the highest wheat in the world. These are remarkable agricultural settlements. Barley grows at 14,000ft. Crop genetics must play a part. Seed grain is exchanged between villages every few years. The lower villages have more fields and less livestock, the higher villages more livestock. Then there are nomads from the east who exchange salt and wool for grain. A complex and delicate trading system that has evolved over hundreds, possibly thousands of years. And there are still traces of the old hunting community as well, in the villagers’ social life, carvings and diet.

It is remarkable that anything grows at all in such a short season from May to September, but it does. At these altitudes there is increased ultraviolet light, which may help. As we pass, people raise the odd hand but our passage is not remarked upon. They see horsemen all the year round.

It was near Phe that we spent the last night. We had made good progress. On the map I noticed all the glaciers that we had passed but were often unseen deep within the main Himalayan range. Most were named on the map: Haskira, Kange, then Hagshu, Sumche, Lechan and Mulung, the valley that led up to Dzongkhul monastery and the famous Umasi La. Then the Haftal glacier. All unseen yet crucial.

Dzongkhul monastery produced many fine scholars, including Nawang Tsering.29 It is believed to have been the site of a cave used by the Indian mystic Naropa for meditation. Meditation is such a key part of Tibetan Buddhism that monks are often very reluctant to talk about it. To many monks, meditation is such a commonplace activity that they see no need to mention it; plus, they are often given special teachings and cannot divulge these teachings to the uninitiated. Talking about silence is immediately a contradiction.

For a thousand years or more Zangskar has been an ideal spot for such meditators and they will often find their own remote places in which to practise. That is until the arrival of the road. I was afraid that the valley would soon be filled with the noise of diesel engines. But trade was trade.

These monks will secrete themselves away in remote caves. Some will be walled up for three years, three months, three weeks and three days. Such advanced meditators are fed by local villagers and left to their own devices. Some are Tibetans who have been forced to flee their own country.

I regarded these meditating monks like glaciers, hidden away above the villages, often unseen, but their influence was vital. Great reservoirs of knowledge, powerful and solid. Without them, Zangskar would be infinitely poorer. Hopefully they would not melt away. Here time and space are held in mind. Each frozen waterfall is now silent, each cave a retreat, with its own echo and texture.

Explosives and chang

Day six. After Phe came the village of Rantaksha, where I met a group of men working on the road led by a young, energetic monk from Karsha monastery. He wore his yellow hat askew and was the local explosives expert. The introduction of explosives into the valley posed its own problems, which I discovered had quite a bit to do with certain people fishing … getting the length of fuse right was crucial and knowing where to run to always helped.

They signalled to us to get down and we all ducked just in time behind a mani wall as a loud explosion sent fragments of rock sailing over our heads. The monk ran out to see the effects of his handiwork. They had no drill and no compressor, so there was no depth to the explosion. An obstinate boulder that took several days to remove.

Here the road was being constructed by the villagers themselves. The headman was the foreman, and his responsibility was to make up that section of road. Both men and women were employed with picks and shovels, the men paid 15 rupees a day and the women 12 rupees. The men were often old and worked more slowly, but the women often had young babies and stopped to breastfeed them. They joked and laughed. It was a family affair. Sometimes in the summer you could hear the air filled with wonderful lilting songs as a gang of young women shovelled away. They knew how to enjoy life and worked faster than the men.

Truth of the matter was that it was often difficult to get the men to work on the roads because they regarded working in the fields at harvest time as more important, or else they were off trading or on the high pastures. So it was often only the old men who were at home and able to work. Why did they need a road? Were horses and yaks not good enough? Also, they had no real notion of what money was or understood its true value. Everything was exchanged in what was essentially a barter economy. Fair exchange is no robbery. Stocks and shares. Yaks and butter.

Bridges were major jobs, and government engineers were employed on their construction in summer. The road had to be finished up to that point to enable lorries to bring steel girders and joists. Traditional Zangskari bridges were constructed from birch twigs plaited together to make cables that were then strung across the roaring torrents to make suspension bridges, some as long as 200ft. There was one at Padum, another longer one at Zangla, and many others. Ancient technology, but it worked well and was sustainable.

The roadmen, pleased with their morning’s work, sat down in a circle on old rugs and produced chang, the local homemade barley beer made without hops or malt, which they then proceeded to drink. This beer, always a bit murky, appeared from a large brass cauldron they had concealed behind a large rock. There was a brass ladle, and they filled up small wooden cups that they had secreted in their cloaks.

With all the earth moving and demolition of rocks, the natural order of things had been upset and the earth spirits had to be appeased. Even when ploughing took place the earth spirits had to be placated, but with the road building some older people felt that unseen forces were being disturbed that would later engulf the valley. Yet here no one seemed to mind very much. They had a job of work to do. The lords of the soil might very well be offended, but they bided their time.

The men chatted away and then offered me some more chang. I declined politely, saying I had to get to Padum. The horsemen had been careful not to engage anyone in conversation and were now almost out of sight. The road was one of the more exciting things to happen to Zangskar, another invasion of sorts. As one wise old man later said to me, ‘Yes, the road will come. We cannot stop it. But when it comes we will lose our peace of mind.’ The roadmen slipped into quiet, almost contemplative silence, and then ten minutes later went back to work refreshed. On the other side of the river lay the village of Ating, which was en route for Dzongkhul monastery.

Tungri, which means ‘conch shell mountain’, was where the two men carrying the long lengths of timber were from. The road crossed the river on a narrow bridge that was just large enough for horses. The river was completely frozen over. From this point we entered the great triangular plain of Padum, which extended for about ten miles. It was here that the two powerful rivers joined to make up the Zangskar river.

From Tungri to the next village of Sani was about two miles. I could already see the trees in the distance. Sani is a holy village with many old carvings and an ancient monastery. As I passed by I saw the holy lake – frozen over. It is the holiest village in Zangskar, dating back to the time of the great Kushana king Kanishka, and the spiritual nerve centre of Zangskar.