Thanks go out to Karen Thornburg and Fidel Hidalgo, two people making a positive difference in the world.
This page contains a brief outline of Karen and Fidel's trip to Ladakh India, to do volunteer work with the Farm Project. The following text is taken
from e-mails sent by Karen during the summer of 2006. Pictures can be found here.
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04/13/2006 10:51 PM
Dear family, friends and co-counselors,
Fidel and I have booked flights to India to volunteer in the Farm Project in Ladakh, in the North of India, in the Kashmir region. We will be staying with Tibetan families to learn, get to know each other, help out with
farming, gardening, and whatever is needed. But a major function of the volunteers is to educate Ladakhis about "development" and how there are pluses and minuses, so that they can make fully informed choices about which
pieces of technology they want to utilize, in what ways, and which ones they don't, so that they can preserve positive aspects of their traditions and culture. (For example, in many developed areas, people are very busy, and do
not have much time to spend with their families and friends.) The Farm Project is coordinated by the International Society for Ecology and Culture.
We leave June 27th and return Aug. 4th.
If you are interested, here are links to more information.
Here is ISEC's page on Ladakh
http://www.isec.org.uk/pages/ladakh.html
ISEC's page on the farm project:
http://www.isec.org.uk/pages/farmproject.html
A more general page about volunteering in Ladakh, with a nice photo:
http://www.transitionsabroad.com/publications/magazine/0403/volunteer_preserving_ladakh.shtml
News from Ladakh
http://www.ladakhtimes.com/
I am very excited!
love,
Karen
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07/01/2006 08:10 AM
Dear friends and family,
Fidel and I reached Leh, Ladakh, India after a long but safe and relatively uneventful journey. We left Northampton at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, and arrived in Leh at around 7:00 a.m. Thursday, with a + 10.5 hour time difference. We
have had some jet lag or maybe altitude effects but nothing serious.
Ladakh is very, very beautiful. The mountains are incredible. We are meeting a lot of interesting people and staying in a nice guest house, called Lakrook Garden Guesthouse, in Leh but not the market area, about a 10 minute
walk uphill from the restaurants, internet cafes and shops.
Tomorrow or the next day we leave for the village. In about half an hour, I will find out which village. There I will be volunteering through the cultural exchange program (The Ladakh Farm Project) and learning some more of
the Ladakhi language -- I learned a few words and phrases before coming here.) If you havent' checked out the web site yet probably the best way to find it is google some combination of Ladakh, Farm Project and ISEC.
The people in the farm project are very interesting and friendly. They are from Japan, India, England, Italy, Germany, New Zealand, US, and maybe more. The training sessions are taking place at a building ISEC shares with
the Women's Alliance. (also on the web via ISEC)
We will be back in Leh from July 15-17 and July 28-Aug 2 but most of that time in training, so you may or may not hear from me again.
It is very exciting to be part of a program of cultural exchange in this isolated region in the Himalayas. I feel like there is a lot to appreciate and learn from about the lifestyle, from the pace of life to the family and
community relationships. I also feel like we (project participants) have a lot to offer in terms of a more realistic picture of Western modern civilization, than is often portrayed by mass media and hollywood in particular. Not
that the goal of the program is to prevent development, just to provide information so that there is a better shot at planning and making thoughtful decisions about technology, products and lifestyle available via the global economy.
And yes, I am taking lots of pictures.
Warm wishes,
Karen
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07/15/2006 01:09 AM
Hello again! Jule! What a great trip. The village where we have been staying for the last 12 days is called Bazgo. It is just beautiful. Fidel and I now have Ladakhi names. I am Nilza Angmo and Fidel is
Namgyal. The family we are staying with is very, very sweet. The father (Abale Norbu) stays in Leh and works for the military and has a shop. The mother (Amale Dolkar) is very active in the local women's alliance and
left for Srinagar about two days ago. Incidentally, we are about a 2 day bus trip from Srinagar, even though it looks kind of close on the map. Then there are the children, Chorol, who is my age and visiting for the summer
with her son Stanzin Otsal. Let me go to list form
Dorjay, painter, age 30, not home much but his wife Tsering Yanskit works at a
vegetable stand in neighboring Nimu and she comes home every night
Ishey Lhamo, about 20, only home on Sundays and holidays because she studies in Leh
Jamyang, age 18, attends school I think near neighboring Likir.
Padma, age 14, attends high school 6 days a week
Ano (nickname) is turning 13 today, also attends school 6 days a week.
Spaldon, age 18, is a servant who has lived with the family since she was 8.
There are 10 children, with 3 that are monks/nuns studying in Taiwan and one lives in
Leh, the city. The family is very, very sweet.
Adventures so far, let's see, hitchhiking to Likir with Jamyang to see the gompa (monastery) and many digestive adventures! Hiking up to the high "pasture." When I say pasture, you picture green, right, lots of grass like
Tennessee or Ireland or Switzerland or something, right? The pasture is a desert on top of the mountain with a green plant every 8 yards or so.... We have spent a lot of time with the German couple, Suzanne and Jorg. It
is very interesting to talk with them about politics and business and travelling. They saved up money to travel for a year and they have gone to Australia and New Zealand and after the Farm Project and some trekking they are going
to Chile.
I am not clear on what is going on with the internet here (others are having trouble) so I am going to send.
The situation with the electricity is much better than described. It goes off between 9pm and midnight, usually for the night.
We are in Leh until Monday, then return to Bazgo until July 28th, and leave Leh Aug 2nd, head to Taj Mahal and home again Aug. 5th.
love,
Karen
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07/29/2006 10:25 AM
Dear friends and family,
Fidel and I arrived back to Leh yesterday from Basgo. We had a really great time with the family. The highlight of the last two weeks was Susanne's birthday. She is the German woman who was staying with her husband in
the same village as us. She hadn't expected to celebrate her birthday, because traditionally Ladakhi's don't. So she told the family the night before, that they wanted to go hiking the next day and have a day off from work
because it was her birthday. The family was very excited and decided to throw a party. We went for the hike with Susanne and Joerg up the valley to the small village of Ney. Very few cars there, unlike Basgo which has
a main road going through it. We happened upon a kindergarten in the village and the teachers invited us in and the students sang songs to us in English, German and Ladakhi. After the hike, we had a bath in the river and
talked for a while about the Berlin wall coming down and relations between East and West Germans (Susanne and Joerg are from E. Germany). Then preparations for the party began! We made 150 mok mok. The guests arrived
around 9, and there was singing and dancing while we waited for the food to cook. Then some German party games. Between the dancing (including Fidel and I attempting to merengue) and the party games, I haven't laughed so
hard for so long in a long time! Everyone was having a great time. The party ended after midnight, and we stayed in the guest room which had no fleas!
Also I spent a day picking peas, and dressed up in traditional Ladakhi clothes, and spent a lot of time with the family. I really liked living in a big house with a lot of people. The sense of time and planning is very
different here, and I never knew what was going on in the house, like who was leaving for a few days or coming to visit for a few days. And when it was time for me to go somewhere or do something, someone would say "Nilza, come"
and I would go.
I have been thinking periodically about the Amish and their relationship to technology (they don't adopt any technology that they believe will disrupt or weaken community relationships) and how much doing things without machines involves
doing things together. In Ladakh, there is less technology, and people spend a lot of time together, although I think it is also cultural. For example I had been doing my laundry as much as possible on days when others didn't,
so there was enough room for it to dry on the line. On one of my last days there Chorol (older daughter, my age) was doing laundry and asked me to do mine with her. It was very nice to sit together and wash clothes (even if
there is not room for them all to dry!) So that seems more on the cultural end. More on the technical end, there is no regular running water at the house where we stayed. There is running water on the porch most mornings
for a few hours, run at least in part by a solar powered generator (I think.) When the water is running, we fill up a lot of buckets on the porch for washing (ourselves, dishes and laundry) for the rest of the day. When
washing, one person will wash and one person will rinse, and ideally a third person will pour the water to rinse while the one in charge of rinsing manuevers the dishes under the water.
So yesterday we arrived back at Lakrook and there were no rooms but Wamgyal (in charge of the guesthouse) let us and the Germans sleep in the dining room and the chamomile drying room. Hopefully some rooms open up today or
tomorrow. (Rooms cost about 200 to 400 rupies per night, or about $4.25 to 8.50)
Today we met with all of the other farm project participants and heard about their experiences. Common themes of what struck people about the experience were community, family, sense of time, and scale of economy. Then we had
a "workshop" (lecture with brief discussions) about localization of food economies, and then Helena Norberg-Hodge (author of Ancient Futures and founder of ISEC and the Farm Project) spoke to us for an hour.
Tomorrow is our last day with the project, where we have some more workshops, plus a meeting with some of the family members and translators. Then we have the 31st free for hiking and maybe shopping, and on the 1st we will attend
part of this conference at the women's alliance, about globalization or something. We will probably attend a half a day of that, and then on the 2nd we leave early in the morning for Delhi, and will probably head straight for Agra.
I hope you are all well. Oh by the way I have been healthier. Good digestion on more than half of the days since mid month!
love,
Karen
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08/06/2006 09:36 AM
Dear family and friends,
We are home again! Some final comments on the trip:
I have been somewhere on the planet that has no McDonald's (Ladakh). India does have McDonald's -- we passed 2 on the road between New Delhi and Agra (about 200 to 300K, a 4 hour drive if you don't stop. Maybe 3 if there is no
traffic) We stopped at one of them. Fidel wanted to go in and I rolled my eyes at him and waited in the car, and told him to get me some fries, but it turned out it was interesting. They sold no hamburgers. (As I learned
in school, the cow is sacred in India. more on cows later.) Fidel ordered what was called, to the best of our recollection, the McBoogaloo Tiki Burger. I think it is really cool that India has their own kind of toilets, and if
they must have McDonald's, their own kind of McDonald's too.
Our brief stay in New Delhi and Agra was very intense. Very loud and people everywhere. The horn is used a lot while driving. The Indian drivers honk when passing a truck, at other vehicles, bicycles, dogs, water buffaloes,
drivers of carts pulled by horses or camels, and mothers with young infants. They do not (from what we observed) honk at cows. They will brake if they must and go around. Cows do what they want, and the diversity of cows is
very interesting. They come in white, grey, brown, and maybe more. They are very big and come in different shapes. I wanted to get more photos of them, but it was hard from the moving car, and we were about out of memory
after the trip to Ladakh and Taj Mahal.
The Taj Mahal was very cool. Beautiful and a very nice echo inside.
It was cool that I had no trouble travelling with my violin. Even on the flight from Leh to New Delhi where due to security NO HAND BAGGAGE IS ALLOWED EXCEPT CAMERAS AND LADIES' PURSES they let me carry my violin on board with no
argument. They also let a ton of people take hand baggage, but they gave them grief and searched things thoroughly and roughly.
Travelling from New Delhi to Agra, we (well not me really) fell for the "you can't buy train tickets at the train station, you have to buy they over here" routine where you end up at a travel agent who tells you that the first and second
class seats are all full, and you will have to go by car with a driver. ($240 for a 24 hour trip) I tried to refuse to leave the train station, but Fidel wanted to follow the guy, and I eventually conceded and we ended up doing the
trip with the driver, who stopped at all kinds of tourist traps and left us there for an hour each time, even though we begged him not to stop. At one place they wanted to charge me 40 rupies (about 85 to 90 cents) for a 5 stick pack
of gum that would cost 25 cents in the states. I bought them in Leh for 5 rupies per pack. They wouldn't sell it to me for the real price (so I didn't buy any.) The good thing about being in Ladakh for a month before
being traditional tourists was we knew something about prices. The bad thing was we knew nothing about being tourists in the tourist parts of India!
But anyway having the driver had some really good points. We got to go to the Taj Mahal first thing in the morning, when it opened at 6 am, and we didn't have to find our way to a hotel on our own from the train station, and we got
to know the guy a little, since we were with him for all of Wednesday night and all day Thursday.
Overall the trip was excellent and we hope to go back to India at some point. If you live nearby or come for a visit we will be showing the photos on the TV screen.
love,
Karen
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