The Meaning of Ladakh

* I would sincerely like to express my gratitude to Vinod Sreedhar who made the entire experience to Ladakh possible. It was only because of his efforts that I was able to come in touch with so many beautiful and warm people. Responsible and eco-friendly traveling was the message that he wants to put across and the message was rightly conveyed via this Journey.*

I was finally able to catch up on my sleep for the past four days in Mumbai; although my eyes still see the “Lamdon” school sign on the brown mountains of Leh every morning I wake up here. Ironically, as I am catching up on my sleep, I realize that I am distancing myself from the world of dreams that I was a part of for the past eighteen days. Thus, I have been assured that Ladakh is one of the most beautiful and serene places on this planet.
The four arduous days that it took to reach Leh from Mumbai were completely worth the time. Not only did these four days help to break the ice in the group of fifteen motley people, but they also made me observe things that would make for interesting story telling sessions back home in Mumbai.
Initially, I had thought that I would be getting lot of time for introspection in the fresh air of the Himalayas. But the concept of Journeys with Meaning had something else to offer apart from my personal time of introspection.
To begin with the imagery of Ladakh was spell-binding. The brown barren mountains in the foreground and the bright blue skies as the backdrop were therapeutic enough to purge my mind of thinking. After a long period, my mind was experiencing clarity in the form of nothingness. This emptiness of the mind was occasionally interrupted by random creative thoughts; although these too would just fade away just as the shadows on the mountains would.
The primary emotions that I came across in Ladakh were love and insignificance. It was love- love for everyone and everything. I guess that would be the only emotion anyone would experience in a place as divine and pure as Ladakh. The other emotion of insignificance is also something that one would one would feel in this region of vast diverse landscapes.
The one aspect of the landscape that I am still to get over is the blueness of the sky. “Feeling blue” is a phrase that is associated with sorrow or depression. However after taking in the magnificent blue sky of Ladakh, the phrase will be used as an expression of happiness and peace, at least in my dictionary. The sight of the blue skies with the floating white clouds casting their playful shadows over the rough and the rugged brown terrain will be etched in the memoirs of Ladakh forever.
The endless walking/trekking expeditions in Leh, Hemis national park, Yangthang, Hemishukapchen and Pan Gong not only brought me closer the Ladakhi landscapes, the Ladakhi culture, the Ladakhi history, her warm people but it also provided a better understanding of myself through the divinity and the sanctity of the surroundings.
The nights in Ladakh are the medium by which you can look at billions of stars and take a glimpse of the Milky Way as well. However brighter than the stars were the philosophical discourses and the conversations underneath them. People pour their hearts out and that would probably be the most honest conversations ever. Pauses in these conversations come by only when the people involved want to hear what the mountains, earth, wind and the skies have to speak as well.
The people in Ladakh personify trust, warmth, beauty and simplicity. The nature of the people is antagonist to the weather of the place. The weather was cold, barren and even heartless at times; but the nature of the Ladakhi people always managed to put a smile on such a milieu.
The following people will always be remembered fondly by me:
1. The entire group of Journeys with Meaning
2. Stanzin and his family, Rahul, Bobby, Lakpa, Tashi
3. Quinchuk- The guide on the trek for three days
4. Mr. Namgyal and his family at Hemishukapchen
5. People at Women’s Alliance of Ladakh (Ben, Debbie), Leh Nutrition Project (Mr. Norphel- Artificial Glacier’s Project), SECMOL (Becky and her team)
6. Strangers greeting you with Julley

The interactions with the innovative minds in Ladakh provided a completely different perspective to the way of living. I was surprised to notice that the best of the minds in the society would want to come to a place as inaccessible as Ladakh and showcase their intellectual strengths for the betterment of region. The causes and the issues were basic and localized to the region. However the solutions and the lessons to be learnt were universal and applicable to all beings on this planet. The lessons learnt were about sustainability. If we have to sustain our lives as human beings on this wonderful planet, we will have to strive to improvise our work and our culture. Our actions are directly related with the fate of our race and the destiny of this planet. Responsibility towards education, environment and sustainable lifestyle is the answer to majority of the issues that the world is currently facing. It is now time to implement some of these lessons in our daily lives.
Meaning of Ladakh- A land of peace and freedom where you are shackled by prayer flags carrying across the blessings, positive thoughts reverberating through the region, breathtaking beauty, warmth of the people, confluence of intellect and simplicity of life!
We all are one. We are one with each other, with the places that we reside in, with the places that we visit, with the flora and fauna, with the planet and obviously with the universe in whole. Our movements to any part of the planet result in leaving behind some evidences of our presence at these places. The evidences could be either the concrete evidences in the form of human activities or it could be a part of our soul that we leave behind. I believe that only certain places have the ability to make you leave behind a very large part of your soul behind. The part of the soul that is left behind continues its pursuit of the place in its own way. Physically one may be in any part of the universe, but there will always be a thread connecting your heart and the part of your soul that was left behind in that special place. I am still not sure whether I have left a part of my soul in Ladakh or I have just been able to re-connect with it once again; but Ladakh is a place where I can definitely say that I encountered truth, or was it God?