Ancient Futures 2008

• Robdy2k's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Leh

Trip Start May 31, 2008 Previous
Entry Trip End Jul 31, 2009 Next
Entry

  Leh, India
Saturday, July 5, 2008

Jule! (pronounced Joo-lay) from Ladakh...!
 
You hear Jule everywhere in Ladakh, it has a lot of meanings and is very useful if you only learn one word here. 'Hello', 'Goodbye', 'Please', 'Thank You' - Jule. Beautiful... much like Leh and the Ladakhi environment I have immersed myself in for the past four days. The beauty one experiences here is pretty simple and in your face, being on top of the world in the mountains, relative to other places it is clean and warm, the sky is deep blue and the people are usually always smiling... it is a grand old part of the world and no denying.
 
However, there is more to Ladakh than just Leh, it's capital and this is to be explored starting by myself tomorrow with a bike ride from the highest road on planet earth (at 6000 meters) back down to Leh. For less than a tenner Dr Dan and I are being driven to the top of the Mountain by a support vehicle which will follow our decent on Mountan Bikes down to the lowly 3500 meters from which we came. Sweet. The next day we start a five day, four night trek from a place called 'Chilling' to 'Stok'. A bunch of us from the drive from Manali are doing this and have arranged to do homestays with Ladakhi families in the countryside.
 
I have had to wait until this time to undertake anything of this sort because it has taken me this long to get close to acclimatizing to this place - serious altitude. This has given me an opportunity to take it easy - I mean who needs an excuse? Well - it can be harder than you think to force yourself to unwind sometimes but the altitude really helps screw you down. So - with a challenge that was presented to me by my Mum in her comments on my previous blog entries to discover what we can learn from Ladakh - I determined to educate myself to a bit of different culture. This is what travelling is all about - right?
 
It wasn't long before I found my path. Open Ladakh (www.openladakh.com) is a company which was established to provide both a spiritual, cultural and tourist one stop shop for visitors to Ladakh. Run by a lovely warm local Ladakhi man called Vivek, the adverts for the programmes run by his company are all over Changspa, the quieter part of Leh in which I am staying. After spotting the adverts on Tuesday I found myself attending first the 2 Day Workshop on Buddhism and Meditation for Beginners and then, today, attending the 'Understanding Ladakh' session.
 
Each of these sessions taught me a great deal and was very useful, the Buddhism and Meditation was really useful for my own personal development, but I am not about to use my blog for a sermon on a belief system. Suffice to say the teachings sat with me very well and I would encourage anyone with an open mind to listen and challenge them to find argument with most of the basic principles. In my opinion having been given an introduction the Buddhist teachings are all generally sound and watertight.
 
What I will share however was how these teachings are reflected through the social fabric of Leh and Ladakh and how one womens vision of Ladakh has changed since she wrote a book 'Ancient Futures' about this place about 25 years ago.
 
Imagine my surprise when I saw Vivek today and he introduced the film we were to discuss only to realize it was based on the very book my Mum Julie (Jule!) picked up when she found out I was visiting Ladakh. Given to her by her late friend Vernon, a member of the local clergy, the basic challenge presented by my Mum was that the book bestowed on her suggested that there was a great deal the western world could learn from the Ladakhi culture due to it's near perfect (according to the book) example of a self sufficient, sustainable and on the face of it perfectly happy social and environmental structure.
 
That was until the West arrived. And Rob. ;)
 
So what did I learn?
 
The film was introduced to me by Vivek as being a misrepresentation of how things were. It painted a utopian vision of a society which was not accurate. According to Vivek Ladakh had a number of fundamental problems and was not perfect. It was strange to hear him dissing the movie he had brought us all there to see, but instead of explaining himself to begin with he let us watch the film and then gave us his version of events.
 
Although the Ladakhi people were survivors prior to Western intrusion they were not necessarily happy. Vivek's father was one of many who did not have enough to get by on in Ladakh. Resources were not spread evenly and those who had more would often rent out what they had, charging interest to others which they could never pay back. Some of the people in the villages felt like slaves, living in fear that their children would continue as slaves also. At face value this was a self sustaining society but in reality many people were struggling to pay back their debts and did not have enough to eat. Many lost their lands because they couldn't pay back their debt.
 
Does this sound like the United Kingdom in 2008 and not Ladakh in the 1960's or what?
 
So when Western people arrived Ladakhi people initially felt overwhelmed by Western culture, feeling inferior to these aliens from another world. Naturally they wanted in.
 
Agriculture and local village economies based upon it slowly began to become undermined. The culture of capitalism and competition was introduced subversively through an 'education' system to the younger generation.
 
The previous problems of the traditional way completely stopped when tourism started in Ladakh. People could work and pay off their debts. Suddenly they were FREE. Now people are beginning to enjoy independence away from their lands and what they can grow.
 
However, with this comes the stress and pitfalls of modern living. A social pressure to achieve came which was not there before and now prevails. Time that people once had for each other soon disappeared, eaten up by a requirement to work to a western framework and by western vices such as Television. Traditions carried from generation to generation are being lost, with nobody to pass these teachings on to.
 
Planning permission and the local politics of development have also brought a large amount of challenges. Increasing tourism brings a basic need for a real sewage system and proper water treatment which Ladakh has never had. There is not enough water to drink here in the mountains; the water only comes from the mountain melt water.
 
The allure of western culture has led the Ladakhis forward like the deaf leading the blind. Not the worst of combinations but also not the best.
 
However, Ladakh is in a lucky position. Compared to other parts of India Ladakh is fortunate because Ladakhis did not welcome all the traditional aspects of tourism. There are no licenses for local businesses to serve alcohol in Ladakh. There is no glamourisation of Drugs like in Manali where 'Special Lassis' are clearly on the menus in some restaurants (Marijuana Yoghurt drinks). Here the community has adopted a zero tolerance approach to drugs and so far it seems to be working.
 
Ladakh has also listened to it's eco tourists regarding modern sustainable environmental living and luckily it isn't in such an advanced state of pollution that it has the same challenges as most places touched by the industrial revolution. Ladakhis are now aware they are losing their heritage and there are a lot of programmes and projects to develop things sustainably.
 
Ladakh has not yet crossed the environmental threshold like many places in India and the rest of the world. Plastic bags were banned here before they impacted on the local eco systems. How did they achieve this? The woman's alliance! A very powerful grass roots local institution.
 
The flip side of this achievement is the example issue of Coca Cola for instance. A ban on plastic bottles here is not practical. Although the local community can legislate against plastic bags, the nature of the geographical location of this community means that the powers that be that ship in products will not send a truck full of glass bottles over the mountain. If, as has been known, the goods fall off the mountain en-route and the bottles are glass, the precious cargo will by and large be lost. If they are stored in plastic most of the will survive and it is this logic which sometimes is irrepressible!
 
The antidote to this dilemma is a business called Dzomsa, an environemental organization that provides refills of purified, pressure-boiled water for just 7 rupees.
 
It seems what people are trying to say here is that there has to be a balance and a middle way. The spiritual and traditional ways taught over the generations can be combined with capitalism and modern environmental practices, but this can only be taught by education which in turn can only be funded by tourism.
 
Cleverly the money which comes in to fund education from tourism has been managed by the locals in a way which avoids the pitfalls of the rest of India - corruption - by keeping only local people involved. Most of the people here are related to each other in some way and the tourist money which comes in mainly goes to the people who need it. Outsiders are not allowed to run Guesthouses, Resorts and Travel Agencies. Geographically you might think that Ladakh is unfortunate to border China and Kashmir but this has worked to their advantage. The Indian government brought in legistlation that says no Indians can buy land in Ladakh. Only Ladakhis can buy and own the land here. This is because they cause fewer problems than allowing Indians to flood in would cause, making the place less of a target. The more people who live here, the more potential casualties there are.
 
With its rich history of Buddhism Ladakh has a strong ethical framework with which to translate capitalism into a positive way. The Buddhist message of peace, respect and tolerance means that at a community level things are usually worked out through mutual agreement and compromise.
 
Educated Ladakhis are using forward thinking to make a change and make a difference. There are challenges here, that much is clear, but these new challenges have only replaced challenges of old and it is clear from the smiles on peoples faces and the way in which tourists are welcomed here by local businesses that there is hope and that Ladakh can move forward in the right direction if the middle way that is so much a part of the Buddhist doctrine is adhered to.

To surmise - Ladakh has it's challanges sure - but it is in one of the best positions of any place I have been to step up to said challanges in the right way... fingers crossed they achieve this without this place getting wrecked...

Print this entry Share Leh hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry