Not France 2

                                          “It is better to travel well than to arrive.”
                                                                                           Buddha



We initiated Carol into our group, over kerosene-flavored vegetable fried rice and jasmine tea, at the Om restaurant. The three women met another, about the time my stomach made contact with the ingested hydrocarbons.
I excused myself to seek enteric enlightenment, under the impression that I could pace the distance back to the guesthouse in time. I hadn’t counted on the labyrinthine nature of the pattern of paths, all lined by ten-foot high whitewashed rock walls, and fast-moving parallel mountain runoff streams. But for the occasional pigtailed laundry activity, and dogs in various states of disrepair, I would have lost my bearings altogether. A train of women twice my age, carrying loads of grass twice my weight, ran by me, chanting.
My guts did a twist, and I realized why Leh had so many Moslem mosques, Tibetan temples and prayer wheels, Hindu shrines and red Shiva lingams, and an ancient Moravian Christian church. They weren’t here worshipping perfection. They were praying for continence.
Traditional Tibetan houses had their toilets up a long thin ladder, in a hut on the roof, near the Yak dung collection. When I asked the reason, I was told that it was for strategic defensive purposes.
There is no experience that brings one closer to earthly release, than climbing a vertiginous set of steps in the dark, dehydrated and dizzy and debilitated from dysentery, knowing that you’ll have to do it every fifteen minutes, all night long. Ladakh was high and dry, but I was higher and drier. I still believe that, if the Tibetans had built their bathrooms on the ground floor, they would have been the ones doing the invading.
As bad as my own digestion had been, at least I wasn’t passing plasma. Julie’s situation had seemed to improve the previous day but, like most of Dzogchen school of Buddhist beliefs pervasive in these parts, perceived reality is literally unreal. The return of her bloody diarrhea may have been illusory, but it needed attention. We went to the hospital lab for a diagnosis.
The technician took her freshly supplied sample, and placing a cover slip over the glass slide, fitted it onto the microscope stage.
“No, there is no wisable pathogen to be observed here.” He said, bobbing on the eyepiece. I asked to have a look. He moved aside. The amoebas were playing polo with the salmonella.
We got a tour of the ward on our way out. They showed me their old defibrillator, an obvious source of pride. I asked about their ECG machine.
“Not in Service, for now.” Was the answer. I asked how they knew when to use the defibrillator.
“No problem.” They said. “Patient not waking up, we will awaken him.” I made a mental note not to fall asleep near the hospital. Julie got her medicine from the dispensary, and we roamed the back streets, junk stores, and stupas of Leh. Soman had his own shop, inside which was a stunning eighty-five year old silver temple flute, embossed with a Tibetan ogre, inlaid with turquoise and coral, wrapped around a tough briar stem. Here also we met Smiling Steve, a Los Angeles photographer. He had been traveling in Asia for the better part of the last three years, and wore a dzi stone, turquoise, silver and red coral necklace. He joined us for dinner at the Dreamland that evening. We had the ‘acrid soup.’ It was real.
Carol was real too. Next morning she invited us to accompany her on a jeep tour of all the regional Buddhist monasteries, courtesy of the World Bank. She said it was the least she could do for our ordeal in its little cousin, the previous day. Our driver, Philip arrived during breakfast and, sliding back the last of our peanut buttered barley bread, we zoomed off in the back of his jeep.
Past the Choglamsar Tibetan refugee camp, we climbed the fifteen kilometers to Shey Gompa, inside the ancient summer palace of the kings of Ladakh. The complex was half a millennium old, and had the largest golden Buddha in Little Tibet. It was forty feet high, and took up three floors of the monastery. From his upward pointing soles on the bottom, to the butter lamp soot-blackened ceiling at the top, were over five kilograms of gold, covering hundreds of hammered copper plates. Gilt and carmine and cerulean and navy blue covered him, and filled the surrounding walls of paintings, and the space in between. A soft lichen quilt of irrigated barley patches fanned out down the Indus Valley far below.
The funeral procession that arrived as we left, seated a recent departure in his sedan chair, for a last ride up the mountain to be cremated. His ashes would follow the same trail down, to stop at the riverbed floor, but we continued on, beside fields of whitewashed chortens, scattered across the desert landscape, each containing a relic of the Buddha, or one of his disciples. Every one of these stupas was a hierarchical model of the five purified elements. The square base represented earth, and the pregnant vase resting on it carried water. The conical gold coil armature above that was fire, the parasol and crescent moon symbolized air, and the sun and disappearing point at the top, was the element of space.
We rode up to the dizzy heights of Tikse Monastery, almost twelve thousand feet. Here were twelve red, ochre and white levels of stupas, thangkas, wall paintings, swords, and sixty Yellow Hat lama statues. It had been built on this opposite side of the river, because two crows had supposedly snatched a ceremonial plate of chickpea flour cakes, and transported them here, in perfect undisturbed order.
I sat crosslegged and transfixed in a lotus position, under the Tantric stoop of this mini-Potala, gazing out at the breathtaking panorama across the Indus flood plain, to where we had been west at Shey, ahead to Matho in the east, and Stok Palace to the south. Inside was a fifty foot high Maitreya Future Buddha, which took four years of clay, copper, gold paint and effort, constructed for the visit of the Dalai Lama, thirteen years earlier.
We had arrived in time for morning prayers and, as the chanting of the buddhist sūtras began to fill the frescoed room, one of the younger monks tried to sneak in late. Om mani padme hum...Om mani padme hum. The sound of the strap thwack he received was tantric, elaborating reality and providing salvation. It seemed a bit heavy on the reality, but Yellow Hat monks are celibate monks.
We traveled on back across the Indus, through a sensitive military zone, up to Hemis Gompa. A cavalcade of Indian army officers accompanied us. Their shiny new gray Hindustani Ambassador and Jeep were almost as decorated as they were. The vehicles had hood-mounted flags and roof mounted red lights, with rectangular red grill plates embossed with a row of large gold stars.
The officers were similarly colored in olive field dress, with jodhpurs and white spats, and bright red coxcombs standing erect off their turbans. They looked like roosters. The senior rooster asked for my lighter. I thought it was a security precaution. It was for his Dunhill. As he bobbled his appreciation, I almost expected him to start pecking the ground.
Hemis was over three hundred years old, as was the butter tea we were served inside the courtyard, during the chanting. Cymbals and drums added joy. One ancient ruby-robed monk showed me his vampiric ogre tattoo. It would have struck fear in the heart of any biker on the planet. Mischief, pure and boyish, leapt off the golden gleam of his smile.
Philip piled us back into the jeep, and on to Stakna Monastery, perched high on a tiger nosed hill. It appeared deserted at first but, finally, a solitary monk gave us a tour of what could have been a lonely existence, expect for his joking and singing and marveling magnificence.
We diverted off down the valley to the Matho Gompa. I threw stones with the young local boys on the long climb, before the girls caught up. Breathless at the top, we spun the prayer wheels, and crawled into a spectacular view of the highest room, to be greeted by rug-making monks. One of them showed us the collection of 16th century thangkas, before dematerializing. Robyn and Julie and Carol danced a can-can descent. It is better to travel well than to arrive.
Our last stop was Stok Palace, for its exquisite conch shells, butter room king’s crown, semiprecious stone-inlaid paintings, and a library containing all the volumes of the Kangyur, illuminated by a 12 volt battery, and the Buddha, himself.
It was late in the day when Philip drove us back to the Dreamland. The sun disappeared fast behind the mountains. We bought Carol a vegetable foo yung dinner. Following the sounds of the running streams back to our guesthouse, Robyn and I bid her and Julie goodnight.
A man often meets his Destiny on the road he took to avoid it. On that night, on that road, mine told me she loved me. Despite the usual irrefutable nature of the Buddha’s wise insights about life’s illusions, there are still rare but real occasions when it’s better to arrive than to travel well.