70 Clicks North of Nubra

So I’ve been exploring around Ladakh and holy goddamn shit is this place unreal…However, before we get into abstract expressions let me start from the beginning…

So His Holiness the 17th Karmapa, Ogyen Trinley Dorje (head of the Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism), who escaped from Tibet in his teens and sought refugee with the 14th Dalai Lama in Dharamsala in India decided to come to Ladakh to visit areas damaged by the floods that ripped through here last summer and to give a talk to the large Tibetan Buddhist community of the region….

If you recall (although you probably don’t) the Karmapa came to Bodh Gaya during my last ISP (independent study project) where I received a blessing from him and listened to him speak on emptiness about a week later….It would seem he is following me around now that he is in Ladakh…odd how these things work out

So Lalita (a friend and a fellow SIT student working in Ladakh for her ISP) and I went down to see the Karmapa talk in front of a crowd of what seemed like 10,000 people…The ground was covered in mud and there was audio equipment set up everywhere so you could hear the Karmapa from all the way in the back—Tibetan Buddhist Woodstock without the rain or bad acid…

We managed to get within thirty feet of the main pedestal where the Karmapa was talking and although we couldn’t understand a single word he said (actually I recognized one or two words since I did just study Tibetan…but you get the point) it was pretty awesome to be that close and in his presence. He is only 25 (I think) but is said to be the re-incarnation of a realized master from over 900 years ago. Simply put, he is recognized as a living Buddha—a fully enlightened being—whether or not that’s true depends on who you ask…I personally think he’s on another level—which level? I can’t say…Regardless, the fact that I got to see this guy on three separate occasions on this trip has been really cool.

After the talk, I bailed out on my own and hopped aboard the roof of a bus heading for Hemis, the largest monastery in Ladakh (about 47 km from Leh). The difference between riding on the roof of this bus and the number of buses I’ve roofed in Nepal was that this one was driving close to 50mph and I was sort of sitting on the ladder rather than in the safe confines of the luggage rack, changing the song on my ipod or taking a picture proved to be a dangerous maneuver and that feeling of “oh shit! I could actually die right now!” kicked in a few times, specifically when we blew over the foot deep potholes and speed bumps while dodging small children playing cricket and emaciated holy cows scrounging around the desert munching on anything from cardboard boxes to thorny tumble weeds—delicious

We were erratically cruising on a flat stripped burnout desert road nestled in between 20,000 foot snow-tipped mountains and a turquoise blue river. The scenery fluctuated from desert devoid of sentient life, crumbling 16th century palaces, bumbling white washed stupas made of mud the size of lounge chairs scattered throughout the rocky plains, and massive Buddhist temples set upon picturesque islands of pure rock in the empty sea of sand and dirt...During this extravaganza I’m blasting the likes of industrial-techno shit like the Crystal Method into my slowly rotting psyche, sitting with about fifteen Ladakhis on the roof of a Kashmiri bus while dodging power lines that seek to take my head clean off…A routine Tuesday morning….

I arrived at Hemis without realizing that the next Bus back to Leh is in the morning. However, you can spend the night there so whatever, no worries. Hemis is situated within the gorge of two snow capped mountains…I stepped inside a small temple that somehow has managed to fit in a 60ft statue of my good friend Guru Rinpoche…A monk slightly older than me with sleepy eyes, oddly protruding buck teeth, and a sly smile sat down and had two cups of tea with me. He didn’t speak much English and after a word or two he began mumbling scripture to himself then just fell asleep, head suspended in the damp air. The three of us, the sleeping monk, Guru Rinpoche, and myself sat in the dead silent temple deep in the Himalayan mountain range without a thing to say to one another…A vibration crept through my cranium and inquisitively asked me with a blunt sincerity, “eh what are you doing?” No one answered and the movie just flowed on…

I began my ascent up the hill into the cliff-dangling temples that are hidden behind the towering grey mountains…I saw a cool lizard sun bathing upon some rocks with Tibetan scripture carved into them and since I love reptiles that was pretty kick ass, unfortunately he ran before I could take his picture…would have been a cool picture too….depressing

The temples weren’t enough to captivate my interest for more than two minutes and so I decided to climb to the top of the mountain, seeing as I had nothing better to do. The descent took me up a crumbling sand hill full of bushes that have porcupine quills solely to piss stupid people off who place their hands on them when looking for a hold—you know, people like me. Goddamnit. Climbing up the sand hill was messy work and I slipped more than a few times—once hard and fast enough where I had to catch myself from going way way down, maybe all the way back to Guru Rinpoche and the sleeping monk.

I wound up having to scale a near vertical rock face with Himalayan thorn bushes scattered throughout the rock split I had to climb. Dreadlocks came in handy here as they acted as a natural cushion against the plant’s desire to slice my scalp into shreds. I started to get high up, like really high up—there was more than two feet of snow in several of the shady patches of the mountain and the wind gusts sounded like engine blasts. I fell ten million more times, slid into dusty rock and sand, but finally made my way to the overlook after three hours of climbing and goddamn….I must have been around 16,000 feet up and holy shit…I could see for miles, pretty much back to Leh as well as the temples I had climbed up the other day, which, at the time I thought were tall, and man, they didn’t have shit on this. Unreal….I found a easy maneuverable footpath on the way down, which involved no climbing, just a simple hike….At this point, I didn’t care but this just seemed to be a good reflection of how I always have to learn things the hard way…

I randomly decided I didn’t want to sleep at Hemis for the night and sought out on foot in hopes of hitch-hiking a ride back to Leh (about 47 km away). Fortunately, some Indian guy told me he was headed to Leh with three monks the second I got down to the main monastery near where Guru Rinpoche was chilling. However, there wasn’t enough room but he said I should set off on foot and he would pick me up if he could fit me in. It was getting dark and I just figured “fuck it, he’s gotta pick me up, he can fit four people in that car no problem, we can squish, its India, these people are bred for this”….He wound up driving by me without even stopping after I had walked several kms away from Hemis and it was pitch black…angry…The sky exploded with stars like you can’t imagine and I was wandering through a Himalayan snow desert (not that cold though) with about 15kms more to go to the next town…Thoughts of collecting some wood and starting a fire for a camp until the next morning became more and more realistic….Thankfully, a few monks came by driving somewhat recklessly in an SUV and I was able to flag them down. They drove me into the nearest town where I then attempted to hitchhike back to Leh on a military truck and then a micro-bus, but neither vehicle was headed that way. I decided to ask one of the local shop keeps if I can crash at his place for the night. I landed a warm bed indoors thanks to this general store type attendant who let me sleep in his storage/mudroom for six bucks, sort of expensive but I didn’t feel like sleeping with the street dogs so I took it.

I landed a bus back to Leh in the morning and Lalita and I decided we should head to Nubra Valley the next day…Nubra Valley is North of Leh and was only opened to outsiders in 1994. We caught a cab and headed out onto the highest motorable road on planet Earth, the Leh-Manali Highway. The road took us through Khardung-La, the highest motor pass in the world. We stopped here for pictures and I was granted the opportunity to urinate at 18, 380 feet, which is basically the same height as Everest Base Camp. How many people have publicly urinated at a height of over three miles high? There isn’t a doubt in my mind I am now part of one of the most elite clubs in all of human history…Speaking of elite clubs/numbers, Lalita and I headed 70 km north of Nubra Valley into the village of Turtuk, which was only opened to outsiders in June of 2010…There is only one guesthouse in the village and the owner informed us that we are only the 88th and 89th outsiders to come here—ever. That was kind of cool, to be in the first hundred outsiders to ever visit the region…Driving through the Nubra Valley is like what driving through the center of the Grand Canyon must be like, except with 20,000 foot mountains cradling the road.

I rented a motorcycle the other day and toasted my way through the epic moonscape of Ladakh…It was interesting because I have never driven a legit motorcycle before, one where you change gears manually and all that—I’ve only driven an automatic before…I was trying to get the guy who rented out the bikes to explain how the gear shifting and such works and his English was capable but man, it wasn’t exactly that reassuring when you are trying to figure out how a fucking motorcycle works, which you will be driving in India of all godforsaken places…To make the situation better, the dude explaining this to me in broken English was smoking a cigarette, wearing Chuck Taylor knock offs, a tattered leather jacket, had multiple piercings, and was wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt that said “Viva La Revolution”…Oh yeah, I should also mention that he had two massive gnarled scabs and soon to be scars going down the right side of his head from his hairline midway to his cheek. His hands also had some recently acquired brutal wounds, which I assume did not result from cautious driving…Good thing this guy is teaching me how to drive a motorcycle…Right before I was about to sign the paper to get the bike a nasty feeling went from my gut straight through my spine and I just thought, “fuck this shit.” I got up to walk away and told him thanks but no thanks but then he said to, “go ask those guys” about my confusion as he pointed to two European dudes about to rent some bikes…I figured, what the hell, so I consulted them and figured out what I needed to and off I went… 10 hours later of nearly straight riding I had made it back alive, completely healthy and fully in tact…There’s more to this story but I have to tell you in person for otherwise I fear you may have hit the panic button out of impulse…

I got food afterwards and met a poet from Delhi who had lived in Philly for several years…He spoke with an openness and coolness you can’t imitate…Like someone out of a movie, the whole situation really…He bought me a bottle of apple juice and for a moment, everything came full circle and the gap shrank just a little bit more…patience remains a virtue…


Coming back to the pasesenture and stepping before our trip out to Turktuk but also going forward to our return to Leh and then warping again through the past, everything has broken down. Something internally fractures around this point and the information is jaded, incoherent, and at times—emotionally volatile. There is no way to explain when it happened. A tortuous eradication of psychological time occurred that has left the victim with a blank memory, muttering satanic gibberish, and a perpetual drool hanging from the left side of her jaw, which is now limp, engulfed in a slowly invasive numbness that that threatens to paralyze his (her?) entire existence…

Back & Around Forward through Nubra Valley’s Lost Terrain…

A sweeping landscape void of humanity and the constraints of social dynamics spin the mental chamber through a whirlwind of confusion, loading a single hallowed shell directly in line with the barrel just as the steel pin sparks the primer, igniting a violent explosion of frenzied surrealistic colors incapable of staying within the boundaries of sanity. The rocks are graffiti splattered with a haze of purple, pink, blue, green and a screeching white that couldn’t be scraped off your pupils if you tried...The colors begin to melt where there isn’t the frozen preservation of snow and streaking ice. The flood of the lunar begins to swirl into an indecipherable puddle of madness, covering all tracks of banality. The ground comes alive with tremors and is ripped open with a piercing scream just as the volcanic ash turns into a sweltering ocean, devouring everything in sight. Mountains rise and fall while the heady yak with chewbacca fur continue to feast with a steadfast apathy. The skeletal remains of a hairy creature are being gnawed to the marrow by scraggly dogs with hungry bellies on a sheet of sand stained ice.

Locked inside myself and the needle nosed pliers of self-conscious thoughts twist the crucifixion of my mind while I fight the whole way through…I’m strung out and the trust in faith fails to recapitulate my gnarled contortions. I split apart my incoherence, focus on, focus on, focus on…I….Am….I….Am….I…Am….I… may as well be hallucinating again. I feel the emotional bends pull me through that cavern I thought I left behind...uuupppp tooowwnnn

I’m sitting frozen in the cold haven of where it once past through years ago…Attempting to still my mind to where nothing escapes anymore…The death of desire is welcomed but I fail to understand that I can’t visit my own funeral and the addictions to lust, hate, and ignorance persist on like I’m running the whole show but still I can’t control my very finger pushing the button. Pig, snake, and some other animal I can’t remember. I’m choking and the energy threatens to burst open my ribcage, ripping apart this life into the infinite shreds of a dusty self

It cuts through my dilated pupils, searing them to the edges, while my bony sockets pour fear forward into the suction that threatens to drag me into the dark abyss beyond your eyelids and that fake smirking smile. A horror twists my face while I enrage the currents of change, slitting my tongue with a metallic toothpick wedged in between my rotting gums. I bite my teeth together and grind them down to the chalky enamel, which flows out of my jaw like the insides of a coconut smeared with blood for a post-full moon pooja in Kali’s honor. The atmosphere is hooked into my gut and I feel my intestines being wedged out, just as the selfishness I’ve kept buried beneath regurgitates to the surface in black spasms of stifling disgust to what I’ve allowed myself to become. It comes alive and crawls across my paled flesh, stitching itself to the bare skin, scarring me until the end of days and allowing hollow figures to mock me with snarling grins and superficial purposes.

Spiraling up too far and my stomach ruptures, splitting open and contorting an already wacked perception into pure hostility, flowing right through my direction. A whisper cuts through the tension, “You mustn’t believe”.

You’re going to have to repeat that.

A crippled caricature stands in front of the sun and I, flooding over my vision like the pus from a cigarette burn. It tastes like drowning in your own shit and smells like the overcrowded cremation grounds with a river of trash running through the heart. Plastic has a half-life of 23 eternities. A foot stomping to the rhythm, knees shaking, head bobbing and a cage will slowly erode—or so we believe. A echoing shriek that will never be shared stills the world from end to end.

The track changes and a relapse back into what is occurs. Six hours straight of nightmares while floating through a surrealistic painting the naïve people of Ladakh (and tourists I might add) have mistaken for reality…Pearl, turquoise, and pastel colors morph the boundaries into a moldable clay to be toyed with by the vertical minds of horizontal detachment. Desolation crumbles the ground of 11,000 feet and canyons collapse into themselves, revealing meditation caverns inhabited by only the truly grungy derelicts…


The shell ruptures again but a vibrant atmosphere of subtle perception is evoked instead of madness and rage…Clarity floats through as eight tons of shoddy steel rumbles past abandoned sand dunes and an oasis of fur shedding double humped camels, who slumber between the translucent desert moon and vicious sun.

All dissolves into itself and the grainy sand turns into a foamy sponge that overtakes the horizon for good...Our bus takes off and soars up into the atmosphere where it will be forever lost…

Two true stories:

I saw this Indian guy walking down the street in Leh with a sweatshirt from Virginia Piedmont Commonwealth College, a community college 15 minutes from my home in Charlottesville…How the fuck did that happen? I told him I lived there and he just looked at me in bewildered confusion as to the incoherence that was pouring out of my throat hole. Better luck next time. The yeti probably gave it to him or something.

I was looking at Keith Richards biography in the airport before my plane to Kathmandu. I read a few pages. A white American man who became a Tibetan Buddhist monk was sitting behind me on the plane and discussing what led him to become a monk…saw an angel as a kid, listened to heavy metal, interested in “angelology”, drank a lot, , partied, was married joined the navy for two years, saw something about the Dalai :ama and compassion on TV and later joined the Sangha (monastic tradition), now he meditates on compassion and emptiness in the jungles in Nepal…The European guy next to him brought up the topic of Jung’s synchronicity and said “you can never predict when it is going to happen” when describing it. Thirty minutes later, I turn on my “on flight entertainment system” and see a new bit about the Mongolian President and how he’s apparently a hip guy, the news channel reveals this by showing how the he’s a fan of the Rolling Stones…The next frame has the President of Mongolia proudly holding up Keith Richards autobiography, which takes up the whole screen…Weird.

Who am I?

I am.

But who am I?