This isn't
exactly related to Leh. I've seen this all over India, and
finally got a picture of it. What keeps the cows from chewing
on this? Yes. It's ground level.
After my round of
pictures, I went back for dinner. At dinner was the couple that came
in from their 13 day trek and their guide Amber. The couple were
pretty cool, though I forgot their names. He was currently living in
London. He said he was in finance. I gathered his company was paying
for him to live there and he was doing pretty well. I never
really got what she did. Apparently her sister (a totall hippy
freak who's practically gone native) has been living in India for a
year now and they came to visit and do a trek.
Amber was also pretty
cool. He was to be my guide the next day. He's from Nepal and
guides a lot of the treks for the Himalayan High Treks company. We sat
around chatting for a while. It was refreshing to talk
with some peers after two weeks of near solitude. They also boosted
my confidence in recoverying from the altitude. Apparently she couldn't sleep
the night before her trek, because of breathing issues
(later I understood she has some anxiety issues from
time to
time -
I'm not the only one). When she got up the
next day, all was fine. Sure enough, besides the dryness, the
same was true for
me.
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The majority of the people in Leh are Buddhist
(Muslims are next in size, though considerably smaller), so there's
Buddhist influences and history all over the place. As you saw
earlier, there are prayer flags everywhere. In addition to prayer
flags there are prayer wheels, Stupas, Gompas (monasteries), prayer
walls, and prayer rocks. I'll expand on each of these as I come
across them. Prayer rocks are basically rocks with Buddhist prayers
carved into them. The rocks are usually piled on or into a wall to
create a prayer wall. Carving the prayer into the rock is sort of
like saying the prayer (mantra) forever or at least as long as the
carving is around - at least as I understood it. The most
common Buddhist prayer/mantra is the prayer of compassion - Om Mani Padme Hum, though I'm not
sure that's what's on this
rock.
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Up on top of that
hill (where we were headed) is the Japanese Stupa or Shanti Stupa built in 1983. The
Japanese (also Buddhist) built 50 or so Stupas (or Peace Pagodas
) around the world commemorating common Buddhist culture. A
stupa is basically a monument, sort of like the christian cross, and
they're everywhere. Some have more significance then others (it is
said Buddha's ashes were originally contained in 10 stupas) with
colors, deities and other symbols painted or built into them, but
most are
plain.
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The prayer wheel. These are cool. I like these a
lot and took pictures of nearly everyone I saw. Lucky for you, I
only put a few in here. The prayer wheel is a drum with the
compassion prayer (Om Mani Padme Hum) written on it. When you
spin the wheel (clockwise only), the prayer spins. It's the same as
orally repeating the prayer. There's a bell that dings with each
full revolution. Basically the wheel does the praying for you. The
earliest written record of the prayer wheel is from Ladakh.
People would just walk up, spin it, and keep walking. In
this picture there's a woman behind this one spinning it. She wasn't
too happy to see me taking pictures as she walked
away.
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Here
we are at the base of the climb to the Japanese Stupa. You can just
see the tip of it at the top of the platform next to the
building. At the bottom are some older stupas and what
appears to be Muslim graves, though I didn't notice when we were
there. Buddhists and Hindus are cremated, and the christian cemetary
was in town. So I'm pretty sure (from what I'd seen elsewhere), the
white sarcophaguses are Muslim. Buddhism and Muslim have been with
each other forever in Leh. The Sunni Mosque was built in 1661 nearly
in the center of town.
This would be my second test for elevation this
day. The first was just getting up and walking around. So far that
was going pretty well. Climbing this would put us over
12,000ft.
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Not sure how far up
this was in relation to the top, but you can see the beginning at
the bottom. We took a couple of breaks on the way up. I got
winded easily had to slow down significantly. Each time we
stopped, I'd take pictures. Normally I try not to take so
many scenory shots as they tend to lose their significance over
time, but these shots (even repeated at each stop and likely
displayed here) were beautiful. This shot was looking
south.
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This shot is southeast across the
Leh.
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This is from the top, on the stupa platform,
looking south again. The elevation turned out to be not so bad. I
actually recovered and powered over the top pretty
easily.
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Here's a shot back down to the
bottom.
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This is one of those repeated scenory shots.
It's displayed above, but this time taken from the top and zoomed in
on the snowy
peaks to the south. The couple that came
back from the 13 day Trek did their trek in the valley (Markha
Valley I believe) behind the snowy peaks. In the bottom right hand corner of
the picture you can see the green roofs of one of the Indian
military's many bases in the area. The snowy peak farthest to the
right is called Stok Kangri. It's 20,135ft tall. The tallest in its range.
Apparently quite easily climable
too.
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