The following day, we left Leh to go west, to the land of monasteries lying through some rough mountain roads. So rough, in fact, that Misha had to get out and push the car with two other men in one spot. When traveling on these roads, you frequently pass crews of dust-covered people, usually Kashmiris who come here to earn some money and escape from the violence of their region.
Their heads wrapped in makeshift turbans to shield them from the brutal sun and heat of the midday, they dully knock on the rocks with a metal hoe--a Sisyphean labor if ever there was one, but you understand why it's needed (it is sadly clear why it's not mechanized), when you come across fallen rocks that don't allow the car to get through or also if there is a pothole so large that it needs to be filled with rocks for the car to go over it.
As you sit marveling at the stern beauty of these parts, you round a corner and suddenly see what looks like an abandoned fortress on a pile of rocks. In fact, it's a half-destroyed 16th-century royal palace, with the otherworldly name of Basgo, baking in the desert, with only one guardsman watching over his abandoned treasure.
And then there are the monasteries--so pretty, lacquered and colorful against their stark, forlorn landscape populated by few people, beasts, or plants.
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