Living in Ladakh: 2014

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Well, we wanted a blog. And Jason already had one, about a land of high mountains and apricot trees...

So now it begins. In the beginning of September we began a journey together towards the Himalayan desert of Ladakh. Over the last months we have been making our way, sometimes slowly, sometimes very quickly, from the north woods of Maine across the US. (We hope to write more soon about all we've seen and learned through this journey; in the meantime, many, many thanks to all the ones who have taken us in and helped us along the way.) Now the time draws near that we will depart: on the twelfth of January we'll get onto an aeroplane and fly across the waters to Ladakh.

For the rest of this winter we plan to stay and volunteer with the Student Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) in Phey. When the roads clear and the planting begins, it's our hope to travel to a more remote village, where we can work with farmers, studying language and the traditional practices of Ladakhi agriculture.

Thanks for coming to read about this adventure! We'll be in touch.

With love,

Caitlin and Jason

Living in Ladakh

Ladakhis: village-rooted people of a portion of the vast Himalaya, who have raised families and built soil for thousands of years on glacial melt, in a land where each year only four inches of water fall from the sky. Most Ladakhis are Tibetan Buddhist or Muslim. Paved roads have been built only in the last fifty years, and the passes still close for about six months each winter. The sun is hot, and the nights are cold. Roasted barley flour, wheat bread, vegetables, noodle soup, butter tea, meat, and apricots are standard fare.

Caitlin & Jason: we are white middle class US citizens who recognize the disastrous folly of American economic imperialism and feel great joy in working with people of real resilient cultures still deeply rooted in land. We feel deep desire to know the plants and to learn how to draw food, shelter, and clothing directly from the land. Even while we seek nourishing ways of living, we participate in and benefit from systems of white supremacy in the United States and abroad, and we seek to challenge those unjust systems and dismantle them in every way we can. We come to Ladakh to live and work and learn language and song with a highly skillful community of farmers and a web of youth and educators centered around SECMOL. We feel like family here, and we find in our relationships with the people of Tar a great source of inspiration. We are always reexamining how our lives interweave between here and the lands and people where we were born and raised in occupied chkuwabonakik, "the land where the sun's rays first look our way," in Maine in northern New England.

We long for a lived understanding of humans as part of the natural world, reciprocal, responsible, and striving for justice while cognizant of past and present lived understandings of racism and injustice. We see practices of meditation and mindfulness as central tools for bringing about meaningful, long-lasting change in the world. We love simple good food, the exquisite beauty we find each day in observing other living beings, music, and making our own tools, clothes, and gear. We strive to live mindful of our ancestors, awake to the reality of what we do today, and mindful of the consequences of our actions on lives of many generations to come.

Living in Ladakh

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

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Living in Ladakh

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