Every 12 years there is a big Buddhist festival in Ladakh, a gathering of thousands of believers.
Hemis, a small village about 60 km from Leh, will be the center of an important Buddhist event during 15 days starting tomorrow. Pilgrims from all over the world will gather to celebrate a great festival. The Buddhist monastery in the small village is one of the oldest and largest Buddhist monasteries in the area. And this is where the Buddha's disciples meet.
The Tibetan Year of the Monkey
Every twelve years, in the Tibetan Year of the Monkey, a very special festival is celebrated, because it is believed that then fate takes a particularly happy turn. Then the two-storey "thangka" (a kind of scroll painting) representing Guru Padmasambhava is shown. This famous "thangka" is richly decorated with pearls and semi-precious stones. 2016 is such a special year. After that one will see the "Thangka" again at the Hemis-Festival 2028.
Empty stares from stony eyes
On the way to today's highlights, there indeed seems to be something going on. The traffic towards Hemis is dense and nervous, bumper to bumper. And for once, foreign faces can be seen.
Anyway, I'll leave the festival aside (I hate gatherings of this size anyway) and today I'd rather take care of the monasteries in Thiksey) and Shey.
But these will be the last monasteries i'm going to visit, because otherwise I must fear to come home with a visible halo around my head. But a little work on my karma can't be bad, so let's go to Thiksey and Shey.
In a Shared Taxi I meet, among other tourists with the same destination, Chantal, a French woman in her prime, she has the exact same plans, so we join forces. And as we soon find out, the hymns of praise about the two monasteries are indeed not exaggerated.
Buddhist monasteries are usually built where a) one has a good panoramic view, b) the monks, who have to go up and down, are given a slim waist, and c) a strong symbol makes clear where God really resides. On a hill above Thiksey, which can be seen from far away, a huge monastery complex is towering, having great similarities with the Potala Palace in Lhasa.
It is almost noon, a glaring hot sun burns from the azure blue sky, and we are panting like the monks up the countless steps.
Although one believes that the adaptation to the altitude of over 3000 meters has long since been accomplished, these endless stairs raise doubts. But if you want to get closer to the sanctuaries, you have to suffer, Chantal says, while she sweats and snorts, and in between, I hear a barely audible French curse.
The whitewashed walls do not make an inviting impression, rather those of defensive castles, of narrow windows and balconies from which any enemy could have been defeated. But what am I saying – one cannot imagine that the pious Buddhists had to fear any enemy. Or could they? Who knows the impenetrable souls of humans, full of contradictory energies?
In any case, the massiveness of the high walls is impressive, one feels small, even smaller than usual.
And then suddenly and unexpectedly – the stare from stony, dead eyes. You don't know what the expression is supposed to mean, but somehow it fits the hostile environment. One is immediately silent (if one hasn't given up speaking anyway because of all the panting) and continues on one' s path, but the impression that the empty look in the back is following remains until the next bend.
Before we enter the higher buildings through a dark portal, we let our gaze wander into the distance, over the fertile valley along the river, over the grey desert that can be seen at the foot of the mountains, the snow-covered peaks hidden in the clouds.
Entry into a dark world
The passage through the dark portal does not open up into a new world as expected, maybe even to the actual monastery, no, there are new steps, new walls, even higher and steeper than the previous ones, and so you take them panting and slowly start to tackle them a bit unnerved.
Occasionally one has the impression of being caught in a labyrinth. One loses one's orientation and lets oneself be led through steps and openings in the masonry to new steps, new gates that lead God knows where.
Only occasionally you can notice something like inhabited rooms with windows and blinds, but so far, with the exception of a few gasping tourists, we have not encountered a living soul. Where are the monks, where are the people who live here? Are they lost in the labyrinth? I wouldn't be surprised … But maybe they take siestas in the midday heat and let the tourists sweat while they dream of Buddhist things we have no idea about.
But then, we can hardly believe our eyes, we reach the top floor, and here the gate opens to our very paradise. Because now the eternally white walls are giving way, making room for colored roofs and red walls and orange-yellow awnings.
It is a new wonderfully colorful world, we are suddenly surrounded by awesome architecture, by an artistry that takes our breath away.
And then we enter the interior with a feeling of being gifted and immediately find ourselves in other spheres of beauty.
Timeless beauty
One might think that after all the great monasteries in Lamayuru and Alchi and those in the Nubra Valley there is no improvement possible, but Thiksey proves the opposite. Once again, the unreal beauty of the rooms brings one to an awesome silence.
There are moments when one believes that these glories were not created for us transient creatures, but for superior beings. Perhaps for the next Buddha Maitreya himself? Or other deities descending from heaven?
But these works of art are made by people for people, and so you suddenly feel a bit proud that humans are not only capable of war and destruction, but also of eternal beauty.
Overwhelming! I won't say much more about it, let the images speak for themselves. But the other impressions around us are less divine. Even the holiest sanctuaries are used by tourists as staffage for their selfies, apparently without the slightest idea where they are and what the treasures mean. But let's leave it at that ...
The Amchi doctors
On the way down we pass a so-called Amchi. Amchis are Tibetan doctors who can be found in every village, no matter how remote it is.
A rather fat monk seems to have learned the art of public relation from scratch, and so we soon are waiting in front of his table full of glass containers, while he listens to an elderly woman and nods and then brews something from his potions. And then – he seems very curious and eager – it's our turn, and we tell him about our bigger and smaller ailments.
No Problem, he exclaims ecstatically, and after a thoughtful look at his magic medicine, he opens a container, counts off a few black, brown or other colored balls and stuffs them into a small paper bag. "Three now with Hot Water, three in the Evening! No more troubles," he writes with careful handwriting on it. I'm a bit sceptical about maltreating my stomach with something so unknown so shortly before the big trip to Manali, but we'll see.
In any case, he issues a receipt with a cunning smile around his mouth and says goodbye gracefully. Of course, we cannot resist the temptation in the nearby restaurant to chew the three pellets provided before rinsing them down with hot water. Finding: the taste is truly horrible (that's probably the reason for the hot water), I have an ominous rumbling in my bowels in the evening, and nothing more happens. Maybe a long term cure, which only starts to work after taking all the globules?
The Hollywood monk
One of the two monks, also quite corpulent, but apparently quite un-monkishly vain, follows us and asks us to take a picture and send it to him. Sure, of course, but we have to laugh in view of his pose, which almost corresponds to Hollywood standards …
Walk to Shey
There is a beautiful footpath through the adjacent fields between Thiksey and Shey, and so we set off on a leisurely walk.
School children are on their way home, Julee, Julee, cows grazing on the sparsely vegetated meadows, the murmur of traffic far away, but Chantal has problems with her digestion and has to disappear behind some bushes every few minutes.
A crash course of Amchi Medicine? That would be a light-speed cure of sorts. Whether or not the results will live up to expectations I leave open.
Amon Sul, the Weather Top
Even from a distance one has the impression of knowing the castle-like building on the mountain. It takes some time to find the solution. The Lord of the Rings. Amon Sûl, the Weather Top. It is visited by Aragorn and the Hobbits as a camp for the night. The Nazgul are lured by a fire lit by Sam, Merry and Pippin. In battle against them, Frodo is wounded by the Morgul Blade of the Witch King.
After Thiksey and its unearthly beauties Shey has a hard time. But the defiant complex in the middle of the landscape, a kind of stone monument surrounded by brown rocks, seems in its own way like from another world. For the umpteenth time in my life I realize that there are things in the world that you would never think possible. And yet they are there, proof of Steinbeck's claim in East of Eden that man is more precious than any star in the sky.
More precious than a star in the sky
Now all that is missing at the end of the day is a bus, a taxi, something on wheels to take us back to Leh. This is more problematic than we thought, given the advanced time. Eventually – we have almost given up hope – a minibus stops next to us, crammed with tourists, but there is always room for two additional passengers.
What did I just say? More precious than a star in the sky ...
P.S. Matching Song: David Bowie - Blackstar (from his last album)
And here the journey continues ... Winter is coming.
