Letting Go in Ladakh

As 2020 winds down, Ranjani Rao reflects on her trip to Ladakh and what travel might be in the future.

WWhat does a travel writer write about in a year marked by a pandemic that forces people to stay home? When the simple act of heading to the local grocery store is filled with fear, would anyone want to get on a plane and to travel to a faraway city, knowing that no country is safe?

What We Bring

The best travel writing is not merely about the change of place but about the change that the place brings about in the person who has travelled. In a recent article in the BBC, acclaimed travel writer, Pico Iyer claims that “Destinations can only be as rich as what we bring to them.” As someone who brings his deeply introspective nature to all his travels, Iyer’s words ring true. Whether he writes about his neighbourhood in Nara or accompanies the Dalai Lama across Japan, Iyer manages to make us pause even as he describes a life filled with movement.

Deeply Absorbed

A twenty-day, twenty-city tour of Europe sounds like a good deal when listed on a tourist brochure. It’s only when you return from having spent three weeks on a bus, hauling your suitcase on and off each day, with the only change being a new hotel every night, punctuated by fractured views of verdant countryside that you realise what you have missed.the whole trip seems like a dream, a bad one. “We’re most transported when we’re least distracted. And we’re most at peace – ready to be transformed, in fact – when most deeply absorbed.” Pico Iyer understood the power of stillness at a Catholic hermitage in California almost 30 years ago. He knows that absorption takes time. Patience is a virtue.time is a luxury. Solitude is a blessing.

Searching for Solitude

I found the kind of stillness Iyer describes at a hidden lake in the Nubra Valley in Ladakh. Anu and I took a weeklong break in April 2019, hoping to miss the crowds by showing up at the very beginning of tourist season. After two days of acclimatisation in Leh, we set off through Chang La pass and stopped at Pangong Lake on the way to Sumur. Following in the detailed directions given by the owner of our lovely homestay, our driver found the heart-shaped water body, Lohan Tso, off the beaten track.the water was shallow, still and green, completely enclosed by a circle of hills. A manmade welcome path, meticulously laid with two parallel lines of smooth fist-sized rocks about a meter apart, led to the water’s edge.the deliberate design of the walkway which would be unremarkable in an urban manicured garden looked strangely out of place in this uninhabited location.

Perfectly Silent

Except for the fluttering of the prayer flags, the entire place was perfectly silent. No phones, no honking, no airplanes, not even a bird or wild animal in this desolate highaltitude landscape. Even speaking seemed harsh, an infringement, almost a crime. We spoke softly as we walked around the periphery. A flat, wide rock, half submerged in water, beckoned. We took off our shoes and dipped our feet in the not-too-cold water feeling the soft black clay cling to our toes. With the phone timer set for 15 minutes, we made an unspoken pact to fill ourselves up with the treasure freely offered by this secret lake. Serenity. Ripples skipped across from left to right in silent harmony.the stones on the rocks straight ahead seemed to have faces carved on them, like a collection of masks on a museum wall.two ducks paddling under a blue sky with wispy clouds quickly disappeared from view. I closed my eyes, safe in the knowledge that my reverie would be unbroken. No fear of interaction