Lo dejo todo world tour

Tiksey Monastery

It seems like we keep taking irrational decisions in India...but then it is a bit of a irrational decision to come to India. We enrolled on a 10 day Vipassana meditation retreat. No talking, no communication, meditation for most of the day.

It is hard to talk about this experience as it is so personnal but what I can say for myself, it was a good teaching of life! After hearing his Holiness the Dalai Lama s teachings in Darahmsala, this was a good continuation although maybe a little extreem for us as beginners!

The fact of not talking wasn t too hard. Pau and I were acommodated in different buildings and seing eachother during the day was funny. We kept trying to avoid eachother not to end up bursting out laughing. I kept spying on him, looking t what he ate, or didn t eat, how he moved, how he kept forgetting to take cuttlery at dinner, etc...I kept wondering how he was dealing with all this.

yoga

The program was basically meditating (sitting, standing and walking), yoga and buddhist teachings. The talks were interesting eventhough the monk leading the retreat was a converted american, which made the teaching very much more theoritical than if a tibetan or indian monk would have given it. Born buddhist seem to have this inner light brightenning their faces. At the end of the 10 days, we met the mane monk of the center. Meeting gave me almost the same feeling as when I saw the Dalai Lama. They have this peace and simplicity in their heart.

meeting the main monk at the end of the retreat!

yoga

My first aim was to learn to meditate, to try and empty my mind from the thousands thoughts. It is hard and 10 days allowed me only to start maybe seing the path to this but I am convinced that Buddhism philosophy can help human beings in their so precious life. Many tips, many thoughts to take back to europe with me and try and lead a more peacefull and zenner life.

My favourite meditation spot

walking towards the bell of universal peace!

Tibetan bouddhism uses a lot of visual image and therefor the monasteries are amazing. Within their temples and meditation rooms, they enclose the most amazing paintings. The whole walls are covered with colourfull images of the Buddha and other dieties. The architecture of the monasteries is simple and sobre, white walls, little yellow curtains and usually built on the top of a hill. It is said that monks and yogis meditate better in the mountains because they are in contact with the earth element but also higher up in the sky...

Pau practising in a small monastry in Leh

We rented a royal enfield, one of the good things that England left in India, for 4 days and we rode through very high and bad roads to reach one of the most amazing lakes in the world, Pangong Lake. We met a few people interested in doing the same trip, so at the end it was Cat and I, another french couple from Paris and an english guy that come in the trip from Manali to Leh in the same bus than us, so it was three motorbikes.

The first 'funny' part was renting the motorbikes. Here in india you do not need any driving licence to rent a motorbike. There is no insurance and in case of any problem you need to bring the motorbike to the shop and see what happens. So after 1 hour we arranged the motorbikes for the day after, and the morning after with some expected delay we left Leh with our motorbikes without any papers, without insurance and without our driving licences that were left at the shop as a guarantie.

We had in front of us 150 kilometers and a pass of 5360 meters. The road at the beginning was good but as soon as we were reaching the top of the pass, the road become a path with stones and water. In some cases there was no concrete, not even a flat area, only stones as big as my fist or bigger. But these motorbikes are amazing, very hard and nothing stops them. We had to cross some rivers that got worse later in the day because of the melted snow. In some river crosses we got the water covering half of the wheels and the ground was again stones, so it was really difficult to control the direccion. In one of the water passes the other two motorbikes felt down and I had to turn around and find another way.

After 8 hours riding, and after the most amazing ride I have done in my life, we arrived to the lake and we found a tent were we could sleep for a reasonable price.

The day after we tried to get further down on the side of the lake. What a day, what a ride, what a road. We had to ride through sand, stones, everything but tarmac. But the amazing landscape forced us to keep going until the no mans land starts. This lake is shared between India and China, and we can say that it is not a land in peace. The chinese government a few years ago during the night moved forward the border a few meters. The day after, the India government decided to move thousands of soldiers to the area which made the chinese government move the border back to its previous point. Since then, Ladakh is full of indian soldiers and some border areas are very sensitive and tourists are not allowed after certain point.

We could not stop looking at the lake and its colors. The day after we came back to Leh. Again the road was very tough bug amazing. My back brake did not work which made the descend much funnier but still though we had an amazing ride through the valleys and the pass. Enjoy the pictures...