Ladakh - part 5 - Warmness of Ladakhi people

„Julley,“ the old woman welcomes us back to our house after we came back from the Markha valley trek.

„Julley,“ we answer with a smile.

Julley is the only word we share with locals. But it is incredibly powerful word. Word that can express almost everything. It is a greeting when you come, it is a greeting when you leave, it is a good wish, namaste, it is to ask for a help. It is a word that brings hearts of people together. It has grown from the Ladakhi culture and it is a manifestation of their values. It works because there is a respect between people in the country. When I think about the word „Julley“, I recall the smiling faces of Ladakhi people. Honestly smiling faces behind which there is only the good heart, good intention, and trust. Trust in the good in people.

As soon as we arrived from Srinagar to Leh, I felt the change. The streets of Leh are busy and very international, but you already feel that there is more calmness, less stress, less hunting of tourists, more space to breathe. I could not name any of those things properly during our first days we stayed there, it took some days until I realized how big change it was and how good it feels to the person like me. It took me almost all three weeks in Ladakh to realize the beauty of the people who build this exceptional society that offers privacy, but not a lonely privacy. We were a lot focused on ourselves, on our son, on our programme, so it took time. But when we came to Delhi, and especially when we arrived back to Europe, I could clearly see what all was there that we are missing here.

It is incredibly hard for me to describe it, to point on it. Also, it is only my feelings, my interpretations. The first relieve came with the fact that in Ladakh you get again your time and space to think. People don’t try to talk to you and hunt you all the time as they did in Srinagar. The worst was, that you never knew what is behind words. If people have honest interests or just want to steal your money or time. The privacy in Ladakh is also not the same one as in Europe, where you rather than getting offered privacy are left abandoned in your privacy and lost in your loneliness. In Europe people too often talk without being listened to. Maybe in Europe we feel that we already carry too much and cannot add problems of others, or we are scared that if we start caring, we will get hurt. That’s why we let most of the people rather lonely and basically erase them from our life, moving only to a shallow level of conversation that doesn’t touch us.

In Ladakh, the privacy feels totally different. It feels like offering. People offer you private space but when you start interacting with them, you get real honest attention. When they offer something, they offer it with their open heart and it is always an honest offer (or at least I didn’t encounter the opposite). They don’t smile at you immediately. But when they smile at you it is not because they want to sell you something or get you to like them. It is simply because they really are filled with good feelings.

“Can we pay you the accommodation?” I ask the old man in our villa.

“Yes, but later in the evening. Now I talk,” tells me the man. He talks to his wife. Old woman, grandma. They are seeing each other around the house the whole day, but now they have their time. Now they talk. And they don’t let the world disturb them. They give full attention to what matters to them.

In that simple reaction I felt such a strong manifestation of the truly Buddhistic life. They are there, there where maybe all of us would like to be. In the world, where someone gives you real honest attention. But how to get there? How to deal with our internal need to get distracted and excited? To seek something new and forget what matters to us? Our need to be listened to but not being able to listen to others.

What made those people so special and their interaction so fulfilling? When I think about it now, I could see one huge difference – consciousness. The same was how they deal with the influx of the money, technologies, foreigners - they don't avoid these, but they approached everything very consciously. Took the good left behind the bad. Will they withstand this huge opening to the world that happens in the recent years? Their world is build on good basis and is not fragile at all. They might withstand the temptation of money and addictions, but can they withstand betrayals? Is it strong enough to spread instead of diminishing? I hope so. For them and mainly for us. We need places where we can see how honest life is truly lived in whole societies.

When I think about it, I think they already care very well to have some basic protection of themselves.

They don’t waste their energy on random people. They let you for a while to prove that you are worth their attention. We walked for 3 days with ponies guides in Markha valley until they started to talk to us with a smile and some interest and we had to cross by ourselves several rivers until they offered to take Robert with them on the pony back. When they offered us on the last day after the pass their masala tea and an apple, it felt like a manifestation that we passed through their outer shell. That we are accepted as worth getting a gift. That is what tourists do to them. Building harder shells. But under it are still the same people with a huge heart that they protect.

Of course, we all have flaws, of course we all make mistakes, but are we all willing to trust in the good in people as a default option? Being among people where trust is the basic option is wonderful.

 

"Julley, Ladakh!"