Till Zanskar Became Blue

Journeys begin in quests. As a city dweller my quests usually take me to wild still spaces, star-drenched skies, sounds of uninterrupted winds and songs of rivers. I seek out those rare haunts where man becomes firmly aware of his insignificance in the vastness of natural world.

The vast and wild areas of Ladakh that beckoned me, are now discovered. Leh, with a population of about twenty thousand, saw ten times more visitors during this season. The quiet and narrow lanes of my memories now teem with hotels, restaurants, bars, shops, and endless line of vendors selling cheap souvenirs along the sidewalks - even at the fag end of the tourist season - when I arrived. The profane overwhelmed the profound. In seeking a stillness and a connection with my insignificance, I hurried towards the vast and open heart of Ladakh - to Zanskar.

Here, the mountains echo waves, tossed by an young and tumultuous earth, mighty glaciers remain unebbed by the August heat, brooks and streams crisscross many grassy valleys, and an occasional herder in his wine colored goncho ambles after his goats and sheep. In this quiet and stillness, gongs sound from a distant gompa and fluttering prayer flags remind "Om Mani Padme Hum" [Oh the Jewel in the Lotus, resides Within].

I arrived to Zanskar with a muddy heart and a soiled spirit only to find the unbearably blue Zanskar river of my memories and dreams - also a muddy brown. I asked a Lama about it and he said that this was all the water of the rains; only when the river flows with water of the purest ice from the highest mountains would the river become blue. I realised then that a similar river, fed by many streams, and from many pounding rains coursed within me; I would have to wait in patience, stillness, and solitude to have my river be fed by crystals of purest ice from the highest reaches within me. I would have to wait out in Zanskar till the I that Am - became the I that Am Not - for it is only in this disappearance of I, that I could become one with the Universe - a clear, transparent, Zanskari turquoise Blue.