Drukpa Publications. THE PAD YATRA

This article, authored by Scott MacMillan, was released in Hospodářské noviny (English: "Economic News"), a daily newspaper in the Czech Republic. It is the most widely circulated paper in the country among those that concentrate on economics. Click to view original article (in Czech) in PDF format.

Translated by Lida Vcek, a Czech student of His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa, and edited by Angela Vargas, editor of Drukpa Publications.

In Ladakh, a province in the far north of India, neighbouring Tibet, the people live in Utopia. Neither enemies armed to their teeth nor hordes of tourists manage to disturb their customs and values that have been kept for centuries. Here they know that everything will pass.

Considering that Rigzin Namgyal has just walked 230 km (correction: 400km) across one of the most demanding terrains in the world, he looks relaxed. A native of Ladakh, Rigzin manages a local firm that has been in charge of the 34 day (correction: 42 day) walking pilgrimage led by one of the highest Lamas of Tibetan Buddhism, His Holiness the 12th Gyalwang Drukpa and his 600 followers. Namgyal points with pride to a pile of rubbish placed near a gate of the biggest and most famous monastery in this region, Hemis Monastery. “These are the last ones”, he indicates. “There was three times as much as this and 20 horses hardly managed to carry the load.” The unsightly pile is made up of remains of the 60,000 bags full of rubbish collected by His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa's pilgrims, as they walked along the mountain paths. Monks, nuns and some lay helpers from 20 countries often waded through icy cold mountain streams to pick up the rubbish, some of it having been there for 20 years.

The Return of The Snow Leopard

While Namgyal waxes lyrical about this pile of rubbish, His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa is watching a performance of dancers in devil’s costumes. Early European travellers called this ritual “The Dance of the Devils”, but in fact these awe inspiring symbols of Vajrayana Buddhism are supposed to protect and remove obstacles on the path to enlightenment – in the same way as Drukpa's followers cleared the mountain paths of rubbish.

Buddhist tradition in Ladakh is not just a tourist attraction. Religious faith is present everywhere - in ancient monasteries, which litter the mountainsides like herds of yaks - as well as in villages. Local people and monks still live in the same symbiotic relationship as they have had for centuries, in times when Ladakh was an independent kingdom and an isolated paradise.

In the same way as the Dalai Lama is seen by millions to be a living Buddha, the Ladakhis consider His Holiness the Gyalwang Drukpa to be their holy being. This man, wearing glasses and looking like a professor, was born to Tibetan parents in India in 1963 and is a reincarnation of a great yogi from the 12th century. His influence and the work of other citizen groups in Leh, the Ladakhi capital, are credited with the growing emphasis on the protection of the environment in the last few years.

Mountain streams, until quite recently blocked by rubbish and plastic bags, now have clear water running through them. While the population of the Tibetan wolf and the endangered snow leopard had been falling in the last few years, their numbers are now growing.

The director of the Department for the Protection of the Environment, Jigmet Takpa says that this is to do with a change in attitude of the local population. In his opinion, the people of Ladakh now have protection of the environment “under their skin” and that this is now deeply rooted in the people. They no longer consider wild animals as a disaster endangering their livestock, but as a national and natural treasure. Takpa promises that within a week he will find the right mountain guide who will definitely find a snow leopard for us. These are courageous words from him, because this animal has not been seen for generations. In his famous book ‘The Snow Leopard’, the author Peter Matthiessen writes about a spiritual journey across the Himalayas, which ends on an ironic note – “Even though I called my book after this creature, the only trace I ever saw of it were droppings on a mountainside.”

The gravitas of Vajrayana Buddhism is also possible to perceive in Thiksey Monastery. A 29 year-old monk, Jampo Norphel begins blowing a horn called a dung chen, a long trumpet similar to a Swiss Alpine horn, and longer than Norphel's height. From the dung chen, he produces loud sounds which carry from the monastery roof above the huddle of houses of Norphel's native village and across the Indus valley all the way to the top of the Himalayas. He is calling the monks to the second day of an annual celebration of Guhjasamaja Mandala. In the darkness of the monastery, the monks begin their deep chant, the bass vibrations shaking dust from the beams of this sacred 15th century building. The Guhjasamaja Ritual usually lasts eight days, and the monks carefully create, grain by grain, a sand mandala. When they finish it, they destroy the image as a symbol of impermanence of all phenomena: everything that is created will one day cease to be. The Himalayan mountains could talk about impermanence in Ladakh, as they silently witnessed defeats of occupying armies, either as a result of the deadly grip of winter, or by local defending tribes.

These days though, Ladakh is the most peaceful part of the most northerly states of Jammu and Kashmir. The region was not open to tourists until 1974 and local guides then gave the area names such as ‘The Last Shangri-La’ after the fabled Himalayan Utopia, and “Little Tibet.” Indeed, there is some truth in both of these clichés.

From the middle of the 9th century until 1834, when Ladakh capitulated to the ruler of Jammu, the Kingdom kept its independence both from Mughal emperors and the Dalai Lamas in the east.

Ladakhi and Tibetan languages are very similar, and they also share religion, dress and cuisine. Despite their obvious and undisputed similarities the Ladakhis like to point out their differences. For example, the informal and universal greeting “julai” - meaning hello, good-bye, thank you and please, is used by the Ladakhis far more often than by their eastern neighbours. The Tibetans, many of whom emigrated to Ladakh after the Chinese invasion, are seen by the locals as less relaxed and more concerned with social hierarchy. Though the Ladakhis differ from Tibetans, they have for a long time drawn their spiritual inspiration from their eastern neighbours. Their country belongs to one of the few places on earth where visitors can experience Tibetan Buddhism in its natural setting.

And the two nations share something else - a strange weakness for butter tea, the taste of which takes some time for foreigners to get used to, if indeed they ever manage it. Thanks to this very fatty beverage one acquires a thick layer of fat which protects one from the cold, but it also blocks the arteries. It is easier to drink if you see it as a delicious soup rather than a tea. “It is very heavy and delicious, but not healthy” says Norphel, aware of cholesterol levels. “I usually mix some tsampa in it, but the older monks love it and drink it very often”.