Day 13 - Mountains

The day we decide to scrap our previous plans and come to Ladakh (as, you know, it is not a war zone) happens to be the day the Chinese Army decides to wander into Ladakh and throw stones at their Indian friends. I guess we are just destined to end up in the middle of a minor territorial dispute between two nuclear powers but, as a wise lady once told me, what is life without a little adventure?

The flight into this place was probably one of the silliest I have ever been in. The view was breathtaking throughout and I swear we were only a couple thousand feet off the ground for the majority of the flight, without a flat strip of land in sight. There was definitely an awareness that crash landing was not an option, as it would very quickly just turn into a crash. We made it down fast but safely and very quickly realised we had made the right decision, as this place is simply stunning. The mountainous landscape surrounding the reasonably flat city of Leh is just incredible and we were immediately dying to get out and explore it. Unfortunately, there does not seem to be a lot of Oxygen around - carrying my backpack up a couple of flights of stairs was enough to leave me a bit flustered - so it looks like we need to take it easy for a day or so before venturing onto the mountains. We knew from the start that this was going to be a rushed trip but, even if we do not get to even scratch the surface of this place, it has already left us dying to come back.

So the seventieth anniversary of the independence of India from the British rule was celebrated yesterday, with speeches from the Prime Minister and from President Ram Nath Kovind. The latter talked about a “New India” where “every Indian is equipped to fulfil his or her potential” and where he appealed to a sense of interdependency and cooperation between the people and the Government. I know absolutely nothing about Indian politics and whether the President is a good or a bad guy, but his words struck me as wise and relevant well beyond his country’s borders. His appeal for families to “ensure that our daughters are not discriminated against and get the best education” received deserved praise and, although especially relevant in India, is something the rest of the World is still very much below par on. If you have a spare ten minutes, it is well worth a read.

The relationship between India and Britain is an interesting topic on this anniversary, and was the subject of an excellent BBC article I came across recently. The dynamics of a former colony’s relationship with its once-ruler are always incredibly complex, and can range between a “special relationship” and pure hatred, with in-between stages of mockery (the Portuguese are the prime subjects of old jokes in Brazil) or indifference. The relationship between the UK and India is, at least to my untrained eye, quite different from all of the above. Perhaps because the repression of the freedom movement did not escalate to the same levels as in other countries (South Africa comes to mind), there is a sense of mutual respect between the two nations that is clearly very deeply rooted. As the article above suggests, India’s ability to forgive (if not forget) the times where things got a bit silly is something that is pretty hard to understand for a westerner, and probably the single most important reason for the harmony between the two nations. As their respective place in the World evolves (all of a sudden, India has the clear upper hand in trade negotiations that will inevitably follow Britain’s departure from the EU) the exact nature of their relationship may change, but the sense of respect between the Indian people and their old ruler will likely prevail. Maybe the West should learn a thing or two from that.

Cheers,
João