I need to thaw out my pen to write this. I sleep with the apples in my sleeping bag to keep them from freezing. Last night I left out the cheese, and now it’s a solid block. This is morning in Leh, Ladakh, temperature approximately zero degrees. Not so impressive to folks from Montana, except our room – separate from the main house – has no heat. At all. It’s built to maximize passive solar – but the sun hasn’t been out in a week. |
There is no plumbing; water is delivered twice a week to the cistern in the yard by a government truck. The bathroom is a mud-brick outhouse atop a wooden ladder.
But winter is when the most authentic ritual dances occur. Like Matho Nagrang, when two oracles are blindfolded, eyes are drawn on their torsos, and they run along the edge of the three-story-high monastery wall.
The same people that told us we were nuts to brave winter in Ladakh, smiled when we told them we're attending Matho Nagrang. “Yes,” they say. “Matho Nagrang is the best!”
photos by Nathan Whitmont