Heaven's Gate

Pico Iyer is one of the most revered and respected travel writers today. He was born in England in 1957, raised in California, and educated at Eton, Oxford, and Harvard, currently lives in Japan. His books include Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, Cuba and the Night, Falling off the Map, Tropical Classical, and The Global Soul.
1. How does the author consider Ladakh as Heaven’s Gate?

The author visited Leh, which is the capital of Ladakh on the longest day of the year(21 June). He was much fascinated with this place. He narrates this place very beautifully.
This place was named as ‘the highest motorable pass of the world’. When he crosses Nubra Valley, he finds marmots, wild asses and kiang. Behind them appeared the most pristine and surreal landscape. He says he has seen such fascinated place after his 25 years of travel. A huge flat plain extended toward snowscaps on everyside and dry riverbeds bisected the emptiness like tears. In a few places, fortress like, two story white buildings were clustered together in patches of green, apricot trees and willows Two-humped Bactrian camels looking for food in the heap of sand. The sky was so blue it almost hurt to look at it. The temple, Diskit Gompa rose high to reach to the heavens. The aromatic Buddhist city on hill was great with smell of centuries of melted yak butter. It was an endless stretch of noiceless valley.
The Ladakh is high, dry region and is often called ‘the world’s last Shangri-La’. It is one of the planets great centers of the Himalayan Buddhism. People have been living since centuries ago, in whitewashed houses. They irrigate barley and wheat by snowmelt, the life style was very simple. The ladakh is treated as ‘land of high passes. The land of blue-skied purity was also one of the most cosmopolitan trading posts in the Himalayas. Ladakh was found to be a mixture of otherworldly, highly magical place and secret treasure.
Ladakh is said to be a test case of what good as well as bad. Some people of Ladakh are trying to retain their Ladhaki culture, food, tradition etc.
At last Pico Iyer says that Ladakh is a way to retrieve something lost, sustaining within us that, which once experience, comes to seem as contemporary, as invigorating, as tomorrow.

2. Write about the Ladhaki people? And justify the statement – Both good and bad exist here?

When the author visits Ladakh, he finds the place is very paradoxical. Both good things and bad things happen here. It is both tradition and modern.
The author finds that almost half its population is Islamic. The main bazaar road was very crowded and noisy. Women were sitting quietly along the road selling vegetables. He finds people speaking languages like Lhasa, Heret and Smarkand. At the mosque he saw Muslim elders some of whom were Indo-Iranians having blue and green eyes. They hail from Alexander the great.
As the author visited the real settlement in the entire region there were a few dusty and mud-coloured buildings, an abandoned palace and a few temples on boulders and hillside. There were two trade routes. But workers in the best hotels boast of ’24 hrs, cold water’. There were no street lights. In every corner there were Internet café but they do not work promptly.
The other worldly and highly magical Ladakh has its secret treasures that are very paradoxical to modern civilization. The traditional temples built on steep hills, the small Buddhist stupas, and the tree-lined walks out of Leh are things of beauty. Apart from all these wonders, civilization has brought a new restlessness to the people of Ladakh. This civilization is now filling Leh’s narrow street, with construction cranes and revving suzukis. The native people of Ladakh may have to abandon their past as a result of civilization.
Choegyal Jigmed Wangchuk Namgyal is the king, he resides in his elegant apartment in Stock Palace. Inspite of the king there is no plan and development. It’s very chaotic and confusion.
The author attends Tse-Chu festival. It was one of the great events of the Ladakhi calendar. He finds the whole settlement set up around the temple with good looking men and girls selling necklaces and statues of the Buddha, mystical scrolls and CDs. This is how traditional culture flourished. These things are for tourists. Many of Ladakh’s festivals have been shifted to summer for the enjoyment of foreign tourists. Indeed, foreign tourists bring both good and evil to ladakh sometimes foreigners like Helena Norberg-Hodge make an effort to protect the traditional world of Ladakh.
The author considers Ladakh a beautiful and unfallen place. He welcomes Leh’s He and She shops, the prayer wheel, the sign outside a pizza shop that says, “thanks for the visit God bless you Take care, Bye-Bye” and the markers “Way 2 Palace”. A visit to the Desert Rain Coffee house reveals that Ladakh’s teenagers are fashion-conscious. A little away from here, the author finds people working in the fields or walking to the temples.
Thus, Ladakh’s capital, Leh, is a bundle of paradoxes consisting of good things as well as bad things.

3. What are the efforts made by Helena Norberg-Hodge?

Helena Norberg-Hodge is one of the first Europeans to settle in Leh. She arrived in Leh in 1975, set up ecology center, a women’s alliance and a number of other organizations. She is trying to protect what is unique in Ladakh. The women’s alliance started a restaurant where only the traditional local food was served although lock items were costlier than imported food item. As a result of the efforts of people like Helena Norberg-Hodge, the people understood what was good for them. Therefore everywhere one could see sign boards with the inscription, “Say No to Polythene” and pamphlets asking people to avoid buying products from multinational corporate since they would destroy local economies. Foreigners were asked to follow ‘mindful’ tourism. At the women’s alliance discussions were held everyday on development and profection of Ladakh’s indigenous culture. Thus Helena Norberg-Hodge and other foreign tourists rendered great services to profect the unique culture of Ladakh.

4. What animals and trees did the writer find in the Nubra Valley?

The author visits Leh, which is the capital of Ladakh on the longest day of the year where he experiences strange things around him. When he moves to the Nubra Valley, he finds marmots scramble across the path and there were wild asses, or kiang, in the distance. He finds very flourishing, unreal landscape, where he has never come across in his 25 years of travel. A huge flat palin extended towards snowcaps on everyside, and dry riverbeds bisected the emptiness like tears. In a few places, fortress like, two-story white buildings were clustered together in patches of green, silent amit apricot trees and willows. Two-humped Bactrian camels are looking for food in the heap of sand. The sky was so blue it almost hurt to look at it.
These are the things the author experienced when he visited leh.

5. How did the writer’s observations match descriptions he had read of the way people live in Ladakh?

The author had known before visiting Ladakh – it is the high, dry region in northern India that borders Tibet and is often called ‘the world’s last Shangri-la’ - that he feels that it is one of the planet’s great centers of Himalayan Buddhism Before naming it as Tibet Buddhism was prevailing.
He read from Andrew Harvey’s radiant ‘Journey in Ladakh that people have been living in the same condition since several centuries ago, in whitewashed houses amid fields of barley and wheat irrigated by snowmelt. Ladakh is called as “the land of high passes” where they see that traditional culture was still prevailing.

6. What do you think the writer means when he says, ‘I saw faces that spoke of Lhasa, heart, even Smarkant?

The author narrating his experience of visiting Ladakh, where his first day happens to visit main bazaar road, as the town’s crowded, noisy little central drag is called, and among the women sitting quietly along the sidewalk selling vegetables. He finds people speaking other languages like Lhasa, herat, even Samarkand. Author intends to say that a few other languages, cultures, heritage people reside in Ladakh. Some of the people not far from the large mosque down the street were skullcapped Muslims and some were Indo-Iranians, and a few of them relates to the kingdom of the Alexander the Great.

Some points to remember

1.       Who brought Tantric Buddhism to Tibet? Padmasambhava

2.       The Indian reformer Padmasambhava belonged to the eighteenth century.

3.       Ladakh capital is Leh.

4.       Animals in Nubra valley are Marmots, Kiang or wild asses and two humped Bactrian camels.

5.       Ladakh is called the highest motorable pass in the world.

6.       Ladakh borders both Tibet and Pakistan.

7.       Tibet is called ‘the world’s last Shangri-La’.

8.       The book, ‘Journey in Ladhakh’ is written by Andrew Harvey.

9.       Ladakh is known as ‘land of high passes’.

10.   Lhasa, Heart and Samarkand languages are used to converse in Ladakh.

11.   Choegyal Jigmed Wangchuk Namgyal is the son of the last King of Ladakh.

12.   Tse-Chu festival is one of the great events in Ladakhi calendar.

13.   Helena Norberg-Hodge, first European settled in Leh.

14.   Norberg set up an ecology center in 1975.

15.   Ladakh has been one of the most cosmopolitan posts in the Himalayas for centuries. And through which traders used to transport Silk, Indigo, Gold and Opium.

16.   Tsewang Dorje is a young, urbane travel agency manager, whom the author met in Ladakh.

17.   Lamp post of Leh says “say no to polythene “

18.   Ladakh’s fashion conscious teenagers are all fluent in every verse of ‘Hotel California’

19.   One day, the author found musicians sitting on the ground among the poplars.

20.   Pico Iyer said ‘Ladakh is a way to retrieve something lost, sustaining within us that, which once experienced, comes to seem as contemporary, as invigorating, as tomorrow’.

Synonyms

a.       Impromptu - done or said without earlier planning or preparation

b.      b. pristine - fresh, in a very good condition

c.       surreal - like a dream

d.       forage - to go from place to place searching for food

e.       dramatic - very sudden or full of excitement

f.         clamber  - to climb somewhere with difficulty, using hands and feet

g.        aromatic - having a pleasant smell

h.       romance -  a feeling of excitement or mystery

i.          paradox- a situation that seems impossible with two opposite facts

j.         abandoning - leaving someone or something forever

k.        flourish- to grow well

l.          juggernaut - a large powerful force that cannot be stopped

m.     chic - stylish and fashionable

n.       retrieve - to find and bring back something

o.       Contemporary - existing or happening now

p.       drag - the biggest or longest street that goes through a town