Indus River On the other bank of the Indus is the village and religious sanctuary of Alchi, the oldest of monasteries in Ladakh. Legend has it that the monk Rinchen-Zang-Po (the Great Translator) pressed a dry twig into the ground, promising to build a monastery if the stick sprouted. And it did. A huge tree grew. You can still see its stump in the ground. History books would have us believe that the monastery was founded in the 11th century by Kal-dan Shes-rab, a nobleman of Tibet who moved to this region to resist the tides of Hinduism and Islam. Its unique art forms have a distinctive Tibetan flavour. Paintings cover every available inch of space.

Alchi stands as a tribute to the cosmic vision of its nameless builders, those old followers of the faith who turned their backs on all else for no reason other than the pursuit of their own beliefs. Here they moved to live unmolested by the strident religious stances building up in the north and south. Alchi has survived the upheavals of history to serve as a constant reminder of the final triumph of the human spirit.

Among Western visitors who came here was the twenty-nine year old Italian Jesuit, Ippolito Desideri. He observed:

“It is mountains, sterile and altogether horrible. Barley is the chief product; a little wheat is grown and in some places apricots. Trees are scarce, so wood is hard to produce. There are many sheep, especially very large geldings; their flesh is most excellent and their wool extraordinarily fine. Musk deer also exist. In valleys at the foot of mountains and also near streams, the natives find a good deal of gold, not in large nuggets, but as gold dust. They eat meat and the flour of roasted barley, and drink Chang, a sort of beer made from barley.”

One need not emphasise the astuteness of Desideri's observations. Some of these are true even today: the mountains are barren; roasted barley is washed down with Chang. Desideri had an empathy for the Ladakhi - a quality which was to hold him in good stead as he went on to Tibet and lived there for five years. Ladakh beckons those who love the mountains and its incomparable sense of space, plus the inherent freedom of wide open spaces and the growth and learning processes that develop from sticking it out. As they say:

‘It is not true, it is not true that we come to live here.
We come only to sleep, only to dream.'