We leave in a few hours to go to SECMOL, where we'll spend a couple of days washing clothes and taking hot showers before leaving for the trek.

It's hard to believe the trip is coming to an end. Coming home's going to be crazy weird.

We spent our last day and a half in Hemis, a beautiful village about an hour outside of Leh. Hemis hosts one of the most famous Drukpa (a lineage of Tibetan Buddhism) monasteries. Early this morning, we hiked up to Gotsang retreat center. Many Buddhist monks come to this place of refuge for several years in order to focus solely on their practice.

,

This evening we are headed to SECMOL, the Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh , for the next three days before we begin our 9 day trek in Marka Valley. We will return from trek on May 13th. We are looking forward to the challenge that the days ahead of us hold.

Finally, we all are looking forward to celebrating Sarah’s 20th birthday tomorrow!

, ,
two jeeps took us to our guest house-- built in the traditional ladakhi
style, square, flat-roofed, with walls of stone and white plaster and
intricately carved window frames of wood. a string of prayer flags wound
around the edge of the roof, and bales of hay. there were soft warm beds
with thick blankets, and low painted tables in the common room. even at
11,000 feet, we were all well, though weak-- for the next two days we
wandered slowly through the capitol city (the roads silent and empty, many
shops vacant with the passes still closed by snow), sleeping and eating
tremendously under the gentle care of rigzin and kunzes.

my mother is beautiful, hair tied back in a green cloth, cheeks red in the
wind, brown skin wrinkled from weather and smiling. she wears a goncha
(thick and woolen, reaching from chin to wrists and falling in folds to the
ankles, tied at the waist with a bright-colored scarf), a white down vest,
and pink sneakers. she led me to the house, and i stooped low through the
gate. two cows, a three-day-old calf, and two dzomo (these, half cow, half
yak) walked lazily around the enclosed yard, nosing at the front door when
my mother opened it (it was not locked). she spoke little English and i,
less ladakhi, but we sat together in the kitchen smiling broadly at each
other and playing the butter tea game (take, take! no, no, i'm fine, thank
you. take, just a little! one cup! no, no, really! take!) until my father
and sister came home.

tashi-le is the headmaster of the domkhar school. he started teaching when
he was nineteen; this october he will reach the compulsory retirement age of
fifty-eight. in the mornings and evenings we talked together-- at length,
and depth, about everything-- jammu-kashmir politics and meditation and
chattel slavery and classical architecture and us geography and the ladakhi
government education system and the battle of wounded knee. after every
conversation i was left high and exhausted, as if i had just stood for an
examination that i was not quite sure i'd passed. he was kind and good and
welcoming, and this made me even more anxious to meet whatever expectations
he might have.

during the day, we volunteered at the school. at ten the bell rings for
morning assembly, and the children form by class into ranks in the
schoolyard. their maroon sweaters were bright in the sun, and dust from the
ground made clouds over their shoes and their trousers' faded blue. at
eleven we would break into groups for English conversation, and slowly
slowly over the week shy silence and giggles turned into increasingly
confident talk-- even genuine connection. we played volleyball together
after school, and the ninth class girls tried to teach me complicated songs
in ladakhi. we sang this land is your land for them, and they knew the
melody by the second chorus.

after school my family let me come to irrigate the fields. i walked with
ama-le through the afternoon, then fading into grey behind the clouds. the
wind was strong, catching her skirt around her ankles as we passed through
the empty market, the few stone buildings locked. i was grateful for the
shovel she had reluctantly let me carry, grateful to have a callous at the
base of my thumb. her hands were like stone.

the fields dropped off on one side in ledges, hundreds of feet down to the
indus gorge. somehow there were poplars growing. water ran in sheets over
the rock walls, flowing through cracks, back down to the river. on the other
side a brook followed the road, lined in slate. crossing ama-le stopped,
crouching low on the grass of the narrow bank. our fields. she worked the
stones free under the freezing water and then piled them again, sealed with
old burlap sacks, diverting the flow into the channels running neatly down
the length of her land. the fields were a complicated pattern of ridges and
flats, planted with vegetables, barley, and apricot trees. she broke one of
the small earth bunds, and now the water began slowly to flood the small
plot behind it. we used carved wooden spades on long handles to pull the
flow to the edges; when one square had finished she built and broke the wall
again, starting on the next. everyone passing on the roadway would greet
us-- ju-le, hand to forehead. each farmer would take the water once in a
week.

on wednesday, the three separate parts of domkhar village came together to
clean the river. all day we walked with the school children up the valley,
jumping from rock to rock, pulling plastic bottles and metallic biscuit
wrappers from the water. at every house villagers would offer tea, calling
us to take rest with them in the sun. we reached the upper school in the
afternoon for a picnic feast and long speeches about the importance of
protecting the environment and building community-- talks that seemed
superfluous after the action of the day. children with glowing faces chanted
call-and- response slogans about clean water as ancient men and women
spinning mani wheels looked on, smiling.

and then, in too little time, we were gone. too few bowls of skew, of kolak
(barley flour and butter tea mixed together into soft dough, eaten every
morning for breakfast with fresh dzomo curd), connections made to firmly and
let go too soon.

Global LAB's contribution in the river cleaning project with the three schools from each part of the village was well-received and future projects are quite encouraged. In addition to the school students, the villagers from each section also participated in the river clean up. This was a special time for all the students, Ladakhi, U.S. American and the villagers to share experiences.

For the occasion, the three villages and schools organized a big gathering and a picnic lunch at Domkhar Barma. Six hundred people welcomed the Global LAB students and offered kataks - white scarves - for the group.

The final day of our time in Domkhar, we celebrated with a Ladakhi cultural show organized exclusively by the students of Domkhar High School. Many villagers also attended the celebration. The Global LAB students also offered two songs from U.S. American culture which were well-received by the audience of Ladakhis.

The Domkhar School project was outstanding and I feel happy to be working with and representing Global LAB to facilitate these activities. I see great mutual benefit for everyone involved: the Global LAB students, the students and villagers of Domkhar, and the land of Ladakh.

Jullay,

Rinchen Namgial
Local Coordinator in Ladakh

In comparison to Nepal, Ladakh has relatively few trekkers, and although you are still in the Greater Himalaya the scenery is so different you would hardly know that you were in the same range. It is often called 'Little Tibet' and lying north of the main chain it receives little rainfall.

The scenery of Ladakh is stark and dramatic - deep gorges, alluvial fans, contorted strata, large Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, flat-topped mud-bricked houses in oasis-like villages, snow-capped mountains and grand distances.

The Markha valley epitomizes the best of this scenery. It has giant rock pinnacles, beetling cliffs, narrow defiles, prayer-flagged passes and evidence of a much older civilization, the history of which has been lost in antiquity. As you trek up the valley, there are the ruins of many forts and castles, some built in some pretty unlikely places!

This is a fairly long trek, crossing a pass of over 17,000ft, and has the fine objective of visiting the base camp of the highest peak in the Zanskar range, Kang Yatse, 21,000ft.

DAY 1: TREK TO ZINGCHEN. (10,800ft) 4hrs. After breakfast at SECMOL, meet the guide Stanzin and head across the Indus river to meet support team and pack animals. The trek begins here and follows the Indus River for a short distance, before striking out for the mountains. You soon enter the narrow gorge that leads to the first camp at Zingchen.

DAY 3: TREK TO KANDALA BASE. (13,400 ft) 4-5 hours. Take the right fork of the river and continue to the very small village of Yurutse. The purple and green rock formations are quite impressive. Continue past the village to the base camp of Ganda La.

DAY 4: TREK TO SKIU. (9,900ft). 7hrs. The climb over the Ganda La is not as steep as that up to the Stok La, but it is a bit longer. From the top of the pass there is a fabulous view of snow-capped peaks. The descent into the Skiu valley is steady. The wide pastures at the top of the valley closes into a narrow 'waist' at Shingo, where there is a stream junction and a few houses and fields. From here the river swoops exuberantly down the tight narrow gorge choked with willow and wild rose, with the trail following, swapping from bank to bank as it goes. The village of Skiu is at only 9,900ft, and the Markha Valley here is narrow, so the temperatures can soar. We camp at Skiu, and at dusk it is worth climbing back up the valley to where the Skiu Nala meets the Markha river. Here there is a small monastery cared for by an old nun who comes every evening to light the candles at the altar of 'Chamba', the future Buddha.

DAY 5:: TREK TO MARKHA. (11,776ft). 6 hrs. A very pleasant walk up one of the loveliest sections of the Markha valley. Woody bushes grow thickly along the river which is spanned by several bridges over which the trail marches to Thinlespa. The camp is beyond this small village on the right bank of the river, just before the village of Markha.

DAY 6: TREK TO THACHUGTSE. (13,078ft). 6-7 hrs. The trail continues eastwards climbing steadily up the valley through the picturesque village of Markha, which has a fascinating monastery well worth a visit. Coming in from the south is the trail from Rubering La, one of the routes from Zangla. From Markha the country changes and the warm, relatively heavily wooded section of the lower Markha is left behind. Between the twin villages of Lower and Upper Hankar is a ruined fort, the walls of which climb sharply up a crag to an aerie of a lookout tower - worth visiting for those with a good head for heights. Follow the Nimiling river up the narrow valley to the camp at Thachugtse. It will be considerably cooler here.

DAY 7: REK TO NIMALING. (16,097ft). 3 hrs. The trail continues to climb up the valley to a picturesque lake with a reflection of snow-capped Kang Yatse, the highest peak in the Zanskar range. From here the Nimaling plain is a broad undulating meadow which slopes upwards to the base of the ice-clad Kang Yatse which dominates the area. Nimaling with tiny ponds and rivulets flowing all over its meadows provides pasturage in the summer for an astonishing number of animals; yaks, sheep, goats, dzos and horses, not only from the Markha but also from villages all around. Himalayan marmots and white-tailed hares are seen in plenty and it is not unusual to spot the occasional blue sheep or wolf. You should reach camp in the early afternoon and have the rest of the day to relax and explore.

DAY 8: TREK TO SUMDO. (13,230ft). 7-8 hrs. After crossing the Nimaling river, climb to the top of the highest pass on the trek, the 17,409ft Kangmaru La with its wonderful views from the top. Snow peaks in every direction, and on a clear day the giants of the Karakorams, including K2 can be seen on the north-western horizon. The trail descends steeply to the head of the Martselang valley past the sulfur springs of Chyushkarmo, and follows the Martselang stream to the village of Sumdo or Shang-Sumdo, at the confluence of the Shang Nala and the Martselang.

DAY 9: TREK TO HEMIS. 4-5 hrs trek. An easy descent mainly along the left bank of the Martselang river to where it broadens into the valley of the Indus river at the village of Martselang. The trail ends at the Hemis Monastery, the largest and richest in Ladakh. We visit the monastery and then meet our transportation for the 2 hr drive to Leh.

DAY 10: Visit with Global LAB's Fort Lewis College group and program director Galen Murton. Enjoy evening Ladakhi cultural performance.

Julay
Namgial

Yesterday we finished our 9 day trek in the Markha Valley. We celebrated by eating chocolate cake, gulab jamin, samosas and peanut cookies – quite a nutritious meal! The trek was a wonderful experience – challenging at times, but definitely rewarding when we all made it through a snow storm and up the 17,300 ft. pass. The scenery – deep gorges, barren mountains, snow and ice covered paths, and fresh clear rivers and streams – was quite diverse and beautiful. Tracy’s knowledge of soil science and geology helped us better understand the impressive environment around us. Along the way, we experienced a few blisters, sore muscles, popped Therm-A-Rests and one near fridge dip, but we also enjoyed many great meals, valuable time to reflect, cozy nights in the tents, epic card games, and some silliness.

We will listen to our last lecture tomorrow morning. The students have requested a talk on the experience of a military officer in Ladakh, which will be presented from the perspective of a retired Ladakhi scout. We will spend the next two days in Leh visiting sites yet unseen, finishing up last minute shopping, and relaxing. Then we will head back to Delhi for our final two days of the program.

By the third day of trek I began to start worrying that I had thought all my thoughts before. Already I had planned my college future, firmly decided to finish different loose projects from home, planned new ventures for this summer and even tried to figure out exactly what I would say to my family if I fell down a mountain and lay bleeding to death on some lucky group members lap. I would say, “My family, oh my family; you did love me, didn’t you. And yet here, right now in Marka Valley, I lie disheartened for I know now as the shadows grow long and scary with the setting sun, that I will see neither your smiling faces nor your majestic kitchen again. And how you will weep, but please, save your water and your salt, you need it more than I. Did you know that I finally was going to be an academic star next year, just like you always told me I could be if I finally tried? And that I was going to start a club to get Kalamazoo Colleges FCC license back and triumphantly lead the first live broadcast from a stage in the middle of the quad with the whole campus cheering me on? I was going somewhere huge, dear flesh and blood, but oh well. It might give you slightly higher spirits to realize that I had already lived it all in gloriously easy fantasy and I knew all the details. Please sell my dog to a better home. Oh yeah, that’s right, you never got me one.” But no such drama occurred as I stumbled into camp that night, my head buzzing from its nervous small circles. That night in my tent, I did realize that I was sunburned.

There is a student on this trip who takes an exorbitant amount of photos. I am friends with this student and we have talked in some degrees of varying length and depth about the desire and urge to take photos. I believe that sometimes, a constant compulsion to take photos and to document is linked to fear. When I personally see something truly beautiful I become scared that I might no longer see it. Although for me, this fear is not paralyzing, it is present and nagging. I think the fear of missing something is a part of why I feel the urge to be present at all. The search for these beautiful things comes out in me selfishly and shifts cruelly and hypocritically. Although abstract, it is this same fear which I associate to gathering that I felt tearing me between my thoughts and my gorgeous surroundings, and this same feeling of urgency that was wearing at my reality, making me sad as it grew my expectations past the point of my confidence. For me, a photo captures a memory in the same plastic way a fantasy can capture happiness.

My friend and I walked together the final day of the trek. We talked about photos and about our futures. For a good time during the walk, my friend was looking down at his camera to free up memory and asking me to take pictures of him in front of many different beautiful things. He would put the camera in his pocket when he was no longer using it, but I noticed that he almost always left the string tied to the side of the sliver canon dangling outside. He walks quickly when he is trying to get somewhere and carried a large wooden walking stick with him. The camera itself was new and larger than most of the tiny cameras the rest of us carried. It had a black lens cover and a screen which folded out. This student could take it out, turn it on and shoot, which he would often do blindly, pointing it at some stream, flag or mountain, in quick moments. On this particular day, in this particular conversation, this student and I were talking about whether or not he needed a picture of this one mountain. He had told me he was struggling stopping taking pictures and that he felt obsessive.

He said, “That mountain is beautiful,” and I agreed.

“It’s just a mountain though, there are lots of others just like it,” I told him. He took out his camera. “You really don’t need this picture, honestly, you really don’t.”

“I’m taking them low resolution so I have the memory for it.”

“You don’t need it,” I said as he took the picture. “You know,” I said, trying to explain again what I felt picture taking was, continuing the conversation we were already having, “part of the beauty of trekking for me is seeing the mountains like these. They are beautiful and it is nice to be around them. But really that is not the whole thing. It’s really sweet that we can be here, but isn’t it amazing we can also keep on walking right by these huge wonderful mountains. Isn’t it great that we are here and they are there? I think that there is a sadness tied to leaving and that makes the happiness of being here real. Maybe a fear of this impermanence could lead to a overwhelming urge to take photos”

“Maybe,” he said, “but I want to remember it so why not just take the photos?”

I want to end this blog with a short little story about something that happened to me yesterday. The group went to see an oracle in Leh. The oracle was Tibetan and sat in a small dirty room packed with local people. After she entered into trance and the spirit which she was channeling had entered her she started performing healings and answering questions. I had asked her attendant and student, through Dorjay our translator, if she could perform a healing for the acne on my face. I was told she could, so I got in line and waited for my turn. The line moved until I was sitting directly in front of the oracle. She looked at me, and we made eye contact for a couple moments until she pushed my head down and moved my hair away from my face. She put her mouth on my neck and sucked, spitting a greenish black substance into a bowl and pulled back my shirt where she sucked again. She did this a number of times and each time she changed positions, I could feel her spit from where she just was. Then she held my arm and spoke a few words in Tibetan to Dorjay and I was done.

Later that night I found out that she had said that I had to much heat in my body, but that I was very strong inside. I hope that’s true, that I am strong. I am confident that I will do well, but I need to learn balance and humility. As I walk by all this shit, I hope that I will always be able to dream, while at the same time embrace not the sadness of expectation but the beauty of being able to be there.

I am back in NJ and about to head up to Vermont. I hope you are well and looking forward to sharing happy and peaceful times with your family and friends. I am thinking about you all and your adjustment back to the states, and the constant adjustments we make in every new/old place we go… the expectations we carry, the memories and fondness we feel for a place or a group of people that no longer exist in “real time”…

I’d like to pass on these internet resources to you just to read or digest in your own time if you feel the need. I’ve used the first two before with student groups and found them a while back just by searching “reverse culture shock” or “reentry shock” on any search engine. The third link I just found today, and the last link is from SIT. Enjoy them… I hope that you’re all happy and healthy these days. I miss you all very much.

Much Love to you,

Tracy

http://www.usc.edu/dept/LAS/overseas/faq/culture_shock/culture_shock.html

http://international.missouri.edu/studyabroad/after/cominghome.shtml

This is an interesting website I came across while searching… (Seems Jennifer has an interesting perspective on her travels in India. Makes me think about what you all would put on a list like this…)
http://members.tripod.com/~jennifer_polan/india/backtousa.html

Check out this resource, from the School for International Training, written to parents of students who study abroad. Sometimes reading material written for another audience gives you a different perspective on your own experience:
http://www.sit.edu/studyabroad/parents/docs/parent_reentry_handbook.pdf

I'm hoping this note finds you well and beginning the process of recovery from jet lag. Maybe the disco tired you out enough to have slept the entire flight back to the states? In any case, I'm wishing warm reunions with families and friends in the coming hours and days, as well as a few long days of rest and relaxation.

I've made it safely to Vermont and have completed my first day of capstone seminar... I'm scheduled to present my thesis on Wednesday afternoon at 2 pm here on campus.

During the drive this morning from NJ to VT (yes, I was wide awake at 3:30 am this morning!), singing along to James Taylor and America while remembering how to drive the volvo wagon, I thought back on this semester... how quickly it went by, yet how much we accomplished and experienced individually and together as a group. I'm encouraged and excited to think that you are all about to share impressions of our journeys together with your loved ones and start the process of reentry back here to the states. In some ways, the biggest challenges are yet to come.

This semester, I've witnessed six bright, creative, and compassionate young people create a journey for themselves that will potentially shape how they each view their world around them. Your connections with each other and the folks with whom we shared time this semester are a piece of your lives now that you will be able to process, shift, change, and mold to your needs and expectations. As you reconnect with the U.S., remember way back when we spoke about the nature of pilgrimage and the journeys that we all take in our lives. The learning doesn't stop here. I hope you'll take our struggles and challenges along with the laughter and excitement with you as you start your next journey this summer or in school in the fall.

I sincerely thank you for showing up with your whole hearts these past three months. Your candor and authentic communication shaped our time together be it climbing up a 17,000 ft. pass, navigating Ganga-ji, or sharing meals together. Know that, at any step of the way, if you are in need of an ear, a helping hand, or a back-up singer, all you have to do is call.

Congratulations, alumni of Global LAB. It's with love, appreciation, thanks, and a happy heart that I celebrate sending you off on your next journey.

Take care of yourselves, and be well.

Tracy

the lake was solid still with ice; a ring ten feet wide from the shore
melted every day and froze again into paper-thin glass at night. we
set up camp slowly, once tents were erected putting on everything we
owned-- from there, spending the rest of the darkening evening in the
luxury of the dining tent.

two days lived outside, sun and stars the most distinct features of
the landscape, and of time. coming home we stopped one night in hemis,
at the largest monastery in ladakh. early in the morning we climbed an
hour up the mountain to the retreat center there, caves where monks of
serious discipline have been meditating for years. we saw the stupas
and then returned down, much faster than we had ascended.

and then, trekking... we spent nine days walking the markha valley,
days that blend into each other, a little-- in beautiful land and
physical strength or exhaustion, delicious food, the river over tired
feet after making camp, gin rummy, freezing nights and mornings, hot
water, my favorite hat. we crossed two passes along the way, the
higher of them-- Kongmaru La-- at 7,400 ft.. seasons changed as a
function of altitude rather than time, and i went from walking
bare-armed in the sun to bending into driving wind and snow in less
than a day. the passes were crowned with prayer flags, and coming down
from them felt like flying. our last camp was only three hours walking
from leh, and i found the tea stall and buildings and telephone poles
there strangely painful.

then to the city, and the slide towards home. two days in leh and
another two in delhi, wrapping up loose ends, and waiting. my train
left for the south on thursday, and now i am in auroville again.
(sweating. and happy.)

I hope your summers are going well...
As I've been planning for the fall semester, finalizing our time in November at Tushita with Sabine, I clicked through their new website and found this image. Check it out!

Good luck in the next weeks with gearing up/starting up school and new job and travel opportunities. You're all in my thoughts these days as we get ready to welcome a new semester's crew.

Be Well,
Tracy