THE ACCIDENTS OF THE INEVITABLE
too perfect a spot to pass straight by
The Accidents Of The Inevitable
a line which could read as oxymoronic
...
yet i mean the happy accidents
the serendipities
that stem from the inevitable
...
i mean, how one logical step after another
has slowly, jumpily
lead me
in a random walk
way up here into the increasingly remote
to a marvellous thing
the journey up the Suru Valley
...
...
where i had and have a growing sense of...
anticipation
...
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and here it is
a homestay over the river from Sankoo
after a country lane of pollarded poplars
before the colossal snow-capped rock-falling valley to the North
and just beyond the village sign for Brakoo
on the North-Eastern side of the grey, gushing, ice-melt Suru River
...
all too perfect to pass up
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...
first photo is Lankarche
where a river gorge winds into the valley
creating a broad sloping space for a village, Lankarchey
...
...
meanwhile
a bus windscreen reads
“subdued thoughts lead to sublime determinations”
...
a line which might read better in Purigi or Arabic
yet my clunky line “the serendipities of inevitability” might
you never know
read very well in some language somewhere
while maybe that line
could that be rephrased as “the chances of fate”?
i’m not sure
yet i don’t think so
that doesn’t quite express it
...
for what i mean is
its pretty accidental and random that i’m here
in the small village of Brakoo
yet every step that brought me here has been
the most obvious thing to do next
from where i then was
...
i got to each place and
after two or three days
i mulled out the best next step
until, after ten days
i’d gone from Leh to this remote river valley
...
...
for
after the altitude sickness fiasc
on my abortive Sham Valley Trek
led me, via a tricky desolate empty river gorge, back to Leh
where i’d already been too long
i had to go somewhere
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yet i needed to take a route that wouldn’t involve staying on high
and, anyhow, the obvious route was on the main highway
along the Indus River
past Nimmoo
then over the pass
to the Wakha River valley
for the Buddhist monastery villages of
first Lamayuru, 2 nights
and then, after the 4100 metre, Fotu La pass
Mulbekh, 3 nights
each perched on the North side of the vast snow-rimmed valley
...
after which it was only sensible to keep going
down the main road
to the unknown of Kargil
a Shia Muslim town
crammed and stretched
between the valley side and the Suru River
...
and after Kargil, the obvious step
is up the Suru Valley
with Sankoo and Rangdum along the way
towards the remote small towns of Padum and Zanskar
in the decidedly remote Zanskar Valley
where it seems there is a new road down the Zanskar River
back to Nimmoo,
though whether there’s any traffic to hitch-hike is a
errr
bridge i’ll cross when i come to it
...
yet, the further i go, the higher and colder it will get
so, looking at Kargil to Zanskar
it made good sense to find a beauty early, and low, and warm
rather than later, and high, and chilly
and here it is
a homestay in Brakoo
in the Suru Valley
with lush greenery
in an alluvial plain
ground out by glaciers
over the millions
all between the steep and harsh rocky sides
rising to snowy peaks
...
...
however
these might seem logical decisions to me
yet they clearly haven’t to anyone else
for there were no foreigners in Lamayuru or Mulbekh
i saw just one in Kargil
while i get the feeling none come to Sankoo very often
and i’m pretty damn certain no foreigner ever walks up that green lane through Brakoo
with its wide-eyed children and halloos and grinning old men
and women in the green wheat-fields unbending their backs to
watch the oddity go by
...
for this has to be one of the friendliest places ever
and feels very very safe
...
...
so i’m fresh out of Kargil
Ladakh’s second city
where i came down from the Buddhist Mountains
on the good road along the Wadha River
to where the Wadha meets the Suru
at Kargil,
a town squeezed long and thin between river and cliff
some of which is collapsing
so, actually in the town, there’s a stretch of the one main road where
no-one parks
or sets up stalls
in Kargil,
where the Suru, but not the Wadha
is greyly foaming in ice-melt torrent
where i came down
from mountain and Buddhism and Tibetan
into town and Islam and Indian
where it was no longer the bunting and stupas and prayer wheels
and gentle long prayers
it was minarets and green
and the call to prayer
for i came down from the mountains and stark bleak gorges
into something different
into city-town-ness
busyness
noisyness
...
...
and where, in Kargil
i soon guessed the spoken language was different to before
and not Hindi either
and yes, its Purigi
a Tibetic lanuage
spoken by 120,000 at the most
almost all near here, Kargil
yet the language, my hitch-hike rides have told me
is thriving
...
though everything written is in English
the shop signs, the public information posters
even the dull detail on the water bottles
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while further up the valley, soon
it will be another language
Zanskari
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...
Kargil
being Shia
has many folk very keen on Iran
and there are lots of posters featuring two Khameneis and a Khomeini
are head-scarved little girls carrying pictures of Khomeini
...
where one of my hitch-hikes rides said
there are a bunch of Khomeini fans in the town
and i got the distinct feeling he found them tedious to say the least
...
while, i guess, here in India
if you are going to show affinity for a Muslim country
you might be safe showing affinity for Iran
while you might not be with demonstrating for Pakistan
for the border is only 11k away [?]
and the Pakistanis did actually invade
stupidly and uselessly
back in 1999
...
...
and i say Brakoo is too perfect to pass up
yet there’s no dhabas or even chai-shops in the village
so i’m not sure where my meals are going to be coming from
...
but something always comes up
and i have a kettle, for Maggi
so maybe i’m gonna eat a lot of noodles
and bags of samosas and pakoda
...
and here i’ll be
in Brakoo
rustic, with large new middle-class houses
where super-smiley children follow me down lanes
Brakoo
lushly green with young wheat
which has to all happen fast, grow quick, with such a short summer
and an eight month winter
Brakoo
avenues of pollarded poplars
...
…
.
looking south down the Suru Valley
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in other news
a shop sign says
“proprietor Ali Aziz Hardass”
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…
in other news
no alcohol anywhere for well over 100k
if not 200
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in other news
many of the lanes here aren’t on the map
maps.me is pretty useless
and, while google maps is similarly bad
the satellite photos do do the job
and show me where there’s a road
and a bridge
...
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in other news
an easy 7k downhill saunter
on the thin road from Brakoo
to Thovina
[see photo below]
where as soon as i arrive i
thumb a lift straight back
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an afternoon’s rolling stroll from Brakoo to Thovina
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in other news
the random leap of the obvious steps,
the accidents of inevitability,
the serendipities of the
serially
logical,
take me from
step to
step,
stop to
stop to
next ...
