So I'm guessing by my lack of email that the news about Ladakh didn't really spread to America. Either that or my "friends" don't actually care about me ;)
Here are a couple links to news stories:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hbxycoePbsWRicJVprMmKclkmvSQ
http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2010/08/06/lehs-flash-floods-how-much-did-it-rain/
And heres a link where posts of our well-being are updated:
http://www.isec.org.uk/pages/urgent-leh-flood.html
phew! what a crazy few weeks. I cant believe Ive only been gone for 25 days. It feels like a lifetime and a half. I dont even know where to start to describe the last 12 days.
Ok to start, Takmachik is just absurdly breath-taking. Here's the view from the village.
The journey to Takmachik was a fun bus ride (the other participants in the programme are hilarious, brilliant, and mostly British, which means I get lots of shit for "butchering their language"). Helen and I stayed with the mayor of the town, where there are about 71 households and around 500 villagers. The mayor, Nurbu, has a deep burly raspy voice and knows some English (but translating Nurbu-ese is a whole other art) . His wife, Diskit, is an amazing woman. She doesnt speak English and my Ladakhi is for shit, but by the end we were having a jolly ol time. They have 5 kids, the youngest, Rigzin (18-19), lives at home and is really shy. One son lives in Khaltse (JCB worker), one daughter is a cop (who they said I look like), another is married in a nearby village, and the last works in Leh. My first day is spent wondering what I got myself into with the compost toilet, struggle to communicate, electricity only at night from 730-11, and butter tea (yep, thats tea with butter in it).
The first full day we get at chuli-ing (apricots). Chuli mangpo mangpo!
Worry of the day: can my legs manage squatting for 20+ days...
The second night is when the torrential downpours started. It rained buckets for a few nights and some during the day. Our house just had a new room built onto the second floor that was still missing glass in the windows and a roof was being put on over the 2nd floor hallway. Oh, did I mention that ITS NOT SUPPOSE TO RAIN IN LADAKH! Apparently its only started raining in the summers over the last 4 years. The houses are all built out of mud. The roofs have a layer of willow wood then a layer of mud. So the rain = not good news. My ama-le (mom) and aba-le (father) were up all night tending to the storm.
Worry of these days: People who say global warming isnt real are completely full of horse shit. I feel guilty for being such a mass consumer and not doing anything about mass consumption in the US. But, I will admit, the statistician in me wanted to see the numbers and see if these rains are really an anomaly and whether or not it really was that much more water. I mean, really, its not **that** much water.
Well, thats when I was up for a rude awakening. Our group of 17 were up on the top of the town playing with the local kids -- frisbee, catch, baseball. Lamo (local 20 yr old who is wonderfully friendly and loud) comes over with a worried look and just keeps saying chu mangpo mangpo, many many more water coming. Me: oh yeah, it looks like its going to rain. and I continue playing and talking with others. Then I look up to see only foreigners in the parking lot. EEEP! WTF?!?! not a good sign. I go to investigate. There are a load of kids on top of the mountain screaming down at the village. No idea what they were saying, but I assumed they were just playing. THats when I started to see the shear terror on everyones face. What I ascertained was that there had been something holding up a bunch of water and that it was breaking. The water would be coming towards town any minute and no one had any idea which way it was going to go. You could hear trees start to snap and fall out of the way. Then I heard this deafening sound of water crushing. I looked around again and saw all the locals running for the top of the hill/mountain. I ran for my life and made it up the mountain in 5 seconds flat. I didnt see the actual wave of water, but my friend , Felipe, has footage of the entire scary event. Up on the mountain top, all I could see was a giant path being cleared from the water. It kept coming in waves and the sound made me sick to my stomach. People were crying and with each wave of water, we fled higher and higher. Luckily the water didnt hit and houses. It did take out the bridge into town and created a GIANT gorge, ruining a lot of fields. All of that brown in the picture to the right use to be greenery.
The story of how word of the water flood goes like this. Sonam was up at the drok, a meadow about an hours walk from town where people take their cows etc. He saw a giant pool of water, which had formed from all the rain, break a bunch of trees and cascade to form a bigger pool of water that was also about to give way. Thats when he took off running and made the trip back to Takmachik in 15 minutes. He saw lots of kids playing on the bridge into town, which was ultimately destroyed, and thankfully screamed loud enough for them to hear. He said that if he had waited 10 more minutes, he wouldnt have made it back before the water.
That night was full of fear and terror. Most of the village slept up in a community hall called Panchayat Gar. The villagers are amazing and saved one of the three rooms just for us foreigners and brought us lots of food. No one had any idea if there was going to be more flooding. There was definitely a lot more rain, which meant the really strong potential for landslides.
The next few days were full of worry about our safety, about being stranded in Takmachik, and the fear of running out of supplies. With the catastrophies that hit Leh, we had no idea what was going to happen. More on the rest of my stay in another post. Right now I'm off to dinner!
Oh wait, before that. Anyone know how I can set up a fundraising website where we can raise money for this little village 20 miles from the border of Pakistan that Ive completely fallen in love? Their irrigation canals were completely wiped out by the flash flood and they could also use some flashlights (battery-free of course because they have no waste management, more on this later).
Much love!
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