My first two nights accommodation on the journey were in Srinagar, in a house boat on a lake. It was a lovely place and I did want to see more, but there was a strike in the town, and then the owners of the houseboat I was staying in turned out to be greedy and made my stay kinda horrible. They lied about the room, they then at breakfast got some friends over to show me jewelery and crystals that I might want to buy, then they went on about taking a tour in a jeep with them, and a tour of the lake on their boat. Then when I asked to be taken to a dhaba (cheap restaurant) they refused and served me food there which I new they would charge silly prices for (since we were on a lake I needed them to take me places on their boat). So I decided not to play their game and I stayed in my room and watched movies. I really couldn’t be bothered with all their pressure, they never talked about anything other than offering me something, its quite tiring. Then when I left they charged me 100rs for an omelet and they wanted 150 for a thali (should be 50ish) and then they wanted to charge me to leave because the would have to take me to the shore! I got them to throw that charge after some arguing. So yeah, It wasn’t so nice there. I did get told that there are a lot of greedy people and cheaters in Srinagar, and I came across them right away! You can see from the photos though that its a beautiful place, just not that many tourists go there! Not a surprise considering the way you get treated.

Then I caught the bus to Leh, the life affirming bus journey. These are my compadres on the journey.

Now, I’m not going to talk much about the journey, other than some comments under the photographs, more so I’m going to talk about what I thought about on the journey, whilst inter-dispersing it with pictures from the journey. I hope you can bear with me, and please, if you can’t follow it, or can’t relate to it then I would love it if you talked to me about this. Since I would see it as a failing on my behalf if I fail to communicate these thoughts to you. I feel like they are a part of everyone.

It was such an amazing experience, and it came at an interesting moment in my life. Lately I have been practicing a type of meditation where I watch my mind. I think it might help if I explain a common held view of the mind, in many practices (I think this is a very hard to disagree with view of how the mind works). For the most part, what we have inside our heads tends to be an inner dialog. A voice that drifts from the past to the future, dipping into the present briefly to check whats going on, then it relates it to the past, looks for some correlation, some incident that was similar, and then tries to predict the future, moment to moment, to, in essence survive from moment to moment. Its what makes humans so much different to animals, our capacity to compute in such an abstract way, our lives. Its very good at doing this, very very good, we don’t even realize that this is what its doing most of the time, but this is what it is doing. We feel like this inner dialog is us, but how can it be when it just carries on doing it especially in times when we would rather it didn’t. What is more us is this passenger that watches the dialog, and gets involved. We think its completely who we are, we let moments in our lives define how we will be in the future, and as happens a lot, it impedes us, we inevitably learn unhelpful responses. Going back to my bus journey, I’m sure that if I had to take that same bus journey again I would feel apprehensive, but because I am aware of this I feel like I have the upper hand. So back to “watching my mind” which I mentioned at the start of this paragraph. Its a kind of meditation, many times during my day I take a step back from my thoughts (its easier when I’m not feeling strong emotions, however the practice more and more helps with emotional swells), and I watch them without getting involved. If I’m worrying about something I step back and watch, its amazing how under a still gaze the worry seems to squirm, I can often loose what I was originally worrying about only to see it get replaced by something else, seeing this is very curious. I have noticed that my mind will go to negative when my body is tired, so to deal with this stress of the body, the mind quickly looks for a reason. Imagine a time when we were hunters and we were hunted. If our body was under stress our minds would quickly search its memory and try and think about what could go wrong with a stressed body, maybe we wouldn’t be able to avoid some serious danger, a sudden attack from a tiger! Or perhaps we wouldn’t have the strength to hunt and provide more energy for the body, so it makes sense that our mind would leap about trying to solve the current problem. In our lives though, there isn’t much real danger, we have social worries mainly, yet we apply all importance to these events, as if these events were a tiger going to jump out and eat us. Schizophrenia is a disease where the mind simply fails to not get involved completely with the past and future it dwells on. A sufferer will feel as though he or she is actually taking part in the events in their heads, in some cases so strongly that they see people. These people they see are merely extensions of what you and I see in our heads, for instance when we are thinking about going to see a friend, we muse over what we might say, for a schizophrenic sufferer they feel like they actually do have this conversation and their relationship with that person changes due to the content of the conversation. I think we are all schizophrenic at one time or another in our lives. So I have been watching my mind. During my traveling I have picked up a few moves from yoga, and learned the essence of what it is. Its primarily stretching while focusing on the feelings from the body, stretching to exercise muscles, which in turn improves blood flow to that area, also it moves around the organs and massages them if you like. In the past I have never much enjoyed it, it pained my body to do it, caused my blood to flow, my heart to beat faster and I felt quite perturbed by it all, if you like I got involved in my mind and decided that the extra stress on my body is no good, so I gave up. However, now doing yoga, or simple stretching, I close my eyes and watch my mind. The increased blood flow can make my head feel light, and then full or pressure and then light again. I can feel the heat rise in my body, I don’t get involved, I simply watch. If I feel pain when I try and touch my feet I focus on the pain, adjusting the part of the body where the most pain is, flexing it in various directions to see how it feels, watching watching all the time. I don’t hold any reason to doing it, other than to experiment with my mind and body, to see what they do when I watch my mind and manipulate my body. I tell you this yoga example as a way of showing how useful it can be to watch the mind when you carry out tasks. Don’t get involved, just watch.

And the second part of the journey started, going past gawping people (as usual), then it went into the mountains!

The bus went past some amazing scenery, like this glacier with a tunnel in it from the flowing water. And the glacier tunnel from higher up, this shows the flow of the road, looping back and going up up up.

In Bagsu I met an amazing guy from Italy. A guy called Sam (hi Sam if your reading this). We talked a lot about the mind, and all the things that it does. He has been a great inspiration to me, mainly he helped me see that I have been doing many different things in my mind for many years and that they can all be tied together within the world of “watching” it. One day whilst talking with Sam on the roof of our guesthouse, Viky the owner came to us with two necklaces that someone had left behind, and she gave them too us. They turned out to be meditation beads. A necklace of 108 beads that you count whilst repeating some phrase or mantra for each bead. In McLeod Ganj you can see Tibetan people carrying them all the time, they use them as a tool, and they are a very valuable and useful tool! The Tibetans repeat a Tibetan prayer, Sam however told me to just try and repeat the word “Om” on each bead. Breath in slowly as I take the first bead, and let out a low “Ommmmm” until all the air is expelled, and then repeat for the next bead. I decided to experiment with the sound, I have been trying a very low “Om” as deep in my throat as I can get it, I do this because the vibration that is caused by doing this sound is more the deeper I get it, and its this vibration which I have heard increases blood flow and can cause some interesting effects. The first time I did it, around the tenth bead I suddenly felt light headed, like I had stood up too fast. By simply repeating a sound I got an effect similar to what can be achieved through moving. By paying close attention to the mind in various situations you can get a real feel for what does what to the body. Anyway, I’m drifting from the point a bit so I’ll try and swing back to the bus journey.

Then things started to slow down, which made me slightly concerned, what was impeding the flow of traffic up ahead! Stopping and starting we slowly creeped forward.

This was the view, combined with the cautiously moving traffic that got me quite scared. I think that rock in the first picture is supposed to stop you if you fall off. The second picture was almost as close as we got, the closest we got caused me to get too scared to think about taking a picture.

And then I found out why we were going so slow. We had to drive through a glacier, and there was only enough room for single file traffic! This was both beautiful and relieving.

Back to that moment of fear, my mind stilled. It reached a point where thoughts were no longer needed, at least from its point of view. It was wonderful. Since I had been watching my mind a lot lately, It was like I had leaped off a metaphysical edge, and I went into free fall for a while, just watching the stillness. And then I didn’t hit the bottom, because there is no bottom, And I didn’t really jump off anything we are always falling, or flying, depending on which way you look at it. So then the bus trundled along, not falling off the edge, and more to my joy it moved away from the edge. Even though I did feel a sense of elation at what had just gone on I won’t lie, it was all born from intense fear. So of course there was relief when it moved from the edge. And from then on I mused a lot, I came up with some great ideas most of which focused around being a still point within the swirling mind, we watch where we will but it all exists in there, good times, bad times, we can look where we want to. If we focus on bad things though it gets easier to focus on them again and again, like we get a crick in our metaphysical neck and it hurts to move it. Or in the past I have used the analogy of our minds being like a canvas, and all our events are like colours being painted on it, yesterdays colours drive our colours for today, we should try and keep a blank canvas though, so when we want to paint something its easy to do so. Another analogy I came up with is concerning the shaping of who we are by the events around us and the decisions we make in these events. To compare what we do in our lives, the events we put ourselves in, to the tools an artist uses. The art that we are creating is who we are, and we chip away with metaphyisical hammer and chisel, creating something extremely complicated and abstract, full of meaning and colour, emotion, response, so much. How we craft IS up to us, be sure you know what your doing, be aware and watch every strike of the hammer. Don’t forget every aspect and thought in your mind is really just a tool to help get your body safely through life, its not who you are, you are the watcher.

And that was all my fear over with, I was elated with the beauty of the scenery from then on, even calmly watching sketchy bypasses like this (on the opposite side of our bus was a cliff).

After a nights sleep in a town called Kargil, we set off at 4.30am. The sun was just rising but was yet to touch us, being blocked by the constant panorama of mountains. The first thing of interest I saw was this red stream, whats going on! My guesses are iron or other mineral, blood, tomato ketchup or someone has been washing lots of red skittles just over the hill.

Here comes the sun! It was wonderful to see it break free from the mountains, casting many shadows as it skimmed the top of them all.

So, I think the main point I want to get across is that little voice that we call us, isn’t actually us. We are more than that. This voice is just the mind trying to help us, by predicting things while reflecting on the past. You don’t have to listen to it, or get involved with it. I find it amazing when I do focus my minds eye on the voice while not getting involved, what happens is the dialog quickly jumps, as your not getting involved in each train of thought, the mind presents another situation to see if that one is worth thinking about. As you remain still and don’t get involved another is presented. I can get into a state of mind where these thoughts speed up, as if my mind is quickly flicking through a file-o-fax, and then my mind starts to bring in pictures for my contemplation, to see if it can rouse interest. Its this state of mind that influences my drawings. I remember as a child I used to watch my mind while trying to get to sleep, it would often present me with patterns, and I enjoyed to watch and manipulate them. I think all children do this, they live inside their head and are constantly amazed and and at wonder at what the mind presents to them. We all have that capacity, to return to that amazement of the mind, just detach yourself from that voice and see what happens next.

So yeah, I thought along these lines on the first half of that journey. The next day was very peaceful and I felt very lucky to be there. Its a unique landscape and I was totally immersed in it, I imagined that over the top of each mountain there was more mountains, mountains and mysteries. It brought to mind the stories of H.P. Lovecraft who often wrote about the deep Himalayas, and ancient deserted cities buried deep within them. The mountains of madness he would call them.

Moments like this were great, the landscape is totally foreign, like Mars or the moon. It all felt rather special being there.

We sped past this temple so I had to race to get this picture. And some Muslim women waiting at one of the checkpoints. Since the road came very close to the Pakistan border there were many check points. At times in the past there have been disputes on this land. Crazy bastards.

Sand dunes and mountain peaks.

The bus made its merry way, it was so old, yet so strong, I felt very attached to its murmurings as it dragged itself up steep bits. We stopped a few times to toilet and eat. People would always stare in the places we stopped. There were a few more cliff edge bits of the journey, but they had to be done, so I just let them happen. The sun changed its position in the sky, altering shadows and the colours in my photographs.

A lot of the time we were driving alongside different rivers. And always you could see snow capped peaks in the distance.

You can’t help think about all the effort that’s gone into building the road, and its upkeeping. There is so much of it, I’m sure as well that you travel at least double the distance to your destination whilst driving through these mountains, always having to snake back on your self to get up the mountains.

The landscape changed quite a lot, cycling through variations that im sure all have names in many cultures.

This yak caught everyones attention on the bus, all alone in the middle of nowhere, whats it playing at? And I remember seeing many towers like the ones in the second picture my first time in the mountains. There is often a rock on top of each of these tower things, not so much here, but i’ve seen huge areas of these things, each with a big boulder on top. I think the rock helps create the tower, while all the surrounding land is being eroded the rock prevents the ground immediatly under it from errosion, and that starts the tower.

The guy in front was often looking out of the window, especially on the few times we had to wait for something up ahead. And there’s the guys hands as he kicks back for a while.

My whole journey consisted of a bus from Dharamsala to Jammu, which took about 6 hours. Then I immediatly got in a jeep that was going to Srinagar, this was for about 10 hours. Then I had two nights in Srinagar on the houseboat and I left in the morning to get a bus to Kargil which took about 11 hours. Then the next morning I got back on the same bus and it took me to Leh, which took another 11 hours or so. So as my journey came to the last day, with only a few hours to go I felt very elated. My ass was sore, so was one of my knees as it was always in contact with the seat in front. I had some mild sunburn on my face which was totally from reflection as I had been very careful about avoiding direct sunlight, its much stronger the higher you are. Despite the pains I felt great.

Even though it seems a long way still to go, considering the length of the whole journey it was nearly over.

Getting closer and closer to Leh the land flattened out, becoming much more desirable for city planners. Its amazing to see Leh when you get there, knowing how god damn remote the area is, and bang! There’s a town, and a decent sized one, with a dual carriageway, bank, internet and other such signs of modern habitation.

These workers were from Leh im guessing, out to improve the road, getting the orders for the evenings work. And the second picture is the start of the Indus valley according to the signs. Its calm river covers much flat ground and allows vegitation, which attracts animals and humans. Leh is here mainly because of this wonderful river.

And I arrived, I got a taxi to the top end (spatially speaking not affluently speaking) of the quite part of town, and walked a little to an area I remembered from last time. And took a lovely small room with a view of a vegetable patch and the sun in the evenings. I stayed in that room two nights before a large room on the other side of the house came free. That wast this morning. Two of my new rooms walls are almost completely windows. I’m very happy with this room with all its sunlight. I plan to stay here for 3 weeks, two of these weeks I think I will be alone and I will practise watching my mind, practice juggling, practise drawing and watch movies and relax, welcoming stillness into my mind.

I hope you have enjoyed this story and didn’t get put off by the drifting nature with which I told it. I guess if your reading this you made it through it all. I’m glad.

Well until next time, goodbye!

I recently met an Australian who spent a lot of time in the area helping the people of Palestine all he could, taking part in blockades, blocking Israeli bulldozers that are destroying Palestinians homes, in the end however his positive actions were put to an end as he is no longer allowed to go into Israel, and therefore no longer allowed into Gaza or West Bank, what hope do the people there have, none really, only the hope in the rest of the world coming to their aid eventually, just like all the prisoners of the Nazi’s in world war 2, the only hope they had was that the rest of the world would come to their rescue, which they eventually did, this time though its taking a little bit longer, i’d say we are 60 years late.”

On you tube there are many more video’s one posted by both sides, both sides claim they are innocent and are just doing what they have to, yet still there is war and death there, so someone, if not both sides are lying.

A short movie after the link


Reminds you of them videos of all the prisoners in striped clothes being marched to the Nazi death camps doesn’t it.