Our simple sailor caps saved our brains in the evening, as in all mountains, it becomes cooler, but not cold here. We slept under the stars, sometimes on monastery rooftops, with no shivers, on p of sleeping bags, not in them. I found it necessary to position my body so the wind did not blow sand into my nostrils all night long. The wind did not shift for anyone. The Ladakhis are poor but not living in abject poverty.
Life seems enough, simplified to a level of a basic awareness of existence.
Thoughts of the entire world dry like this region, due to ecological insanity, raced through the mind like the wild donkeys of the highlands, braying like mutants and awakening us in the night. One of the marvels of Ladakh are the carvings found on the rocks everywhere. Passing these MANI walls, keeping them to your right, is meant to give you the blessings of those prayers as if you had said them all. The stones also act as markers, pointing the way from desolation to the place of people, water, and life. A variation on this solidified prayer is a monument called a chorten, a large square mound topped by a stepped a large square mound topped by a stepped dome and point.