living – Mick Canning

Just a short post, today. I’ve posted about Ladakh in the Northern India Himalaya several times before, and was reading a couple of these posts back this morning when it struck me I’d written, but never posted, reviews of a couple of books that did much to inspire me to travel there. These are really brief reviews, put up mainly to encourage anyone who might have any interest in Ladakh to read them and then perhaps visit this most remarkable and beautiful place for themselves.

Ancient Futures by Helena Norberg-Hodge. This book is what amounts to a long essay on the culture, history, peoples and development of Ladakh. Helena Norberg-Hodge was one of the first people to travel to Ladakh when it opened up in the 1970’s, where she learned to speak the language and got to know the people as few outsiders have ever done before or since. Returning regularly each year for six months at a time, she watched as Ladakh began to ‘develop’ a Westernised society at the expense of its own centuries-old sophisticated rural culture. And watched in what amounts to horror. This book charts the so-called progress made by Western ideas there, and how much is being done to halt the worst excesses by careful encouragement of traditional means of farming and living by the Ladakhis themselves. Both depressing and inspiring, this is by any measure an outstanding book.

There is also an absolutely beautiful video, available on YouTube, which was based on this book and which I would strongly encourage anyone who has any interest in this area and its history, ecology, and development to watch.

A Journey in Ladakh by Andrew Harvey. In 1981 Andrew Harvey travelled to Ladakh in order to study the Tibetan Buddhist society there. He found a fascinating community of gentle people beginning to collide with Western values but retaining a deep, sincere belief in their Buddhist culture. Part spiritual journey, part guide to Ladakh, this book has been a favourite of mine for over thirty years and the dog-eared, tatty copy on my bookshelf was a major reason for my travelling there myself.

And if you’d like to read my previous posts on Ladakh, you can find the main ones here and here.

SR265athumb

Monday water buffaloes – naturally.

While I was doing a wee bit of de-cluttering in our house yesterday, A train of thought started off that was prompted by our recent sojourn in Shropshire:

The idea of minimalism is all very well, but faced with the thought of throwing out possessions it suddenly becomes really difficult to put into practice. After all, when surrounded by things you have acquired, it seems suddenly very difficult to justify getting rid of them.

But you can get a very different perspective by staying in a holiday let, preferably one that is furnished with the bare minimum needed and with no personal possessions other than those you have taken. Suddenly, all those fripperies seem far less important…

We had a similar experience when we first moved into our present house. For various logistical reasons, nearly all of our furniture and possessions were in storage for the first ten days or so, which meant we were living in our new house with a couple of folding chairs to sit on, sleeping on a couple of camping mats, and our possessions consisted chiefly of a few bags of clothes and a large pile of books.

Oh, and the cats.

And we said to each other then, surely it would be possible to live like this? But of course we didn’t.

If someone were to break into our house and steal a few items, items of no great importance, that is, then creep out again leaving no signs they had ever been there, I wonder how long it would be before we discovered our loss? And when we did, once they had actually gone, whether we would really miss them or bother seeking to replace them?