Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Day 9: Quartz and a Cool Ladakhi Man


9/14/2011 Day 9 (Guidebook Day 12 – led by Jacob)



Today’s highlight was definitely the hike we took at Hemis National Park. Our goal was to hike 2 km up the side of a mountain to a temple. We never did find the temple but instead we stumbled upon a cottage where an older Ladakh man invited us in for chai. They only spoke Ladakhi, so our communication was limited to pointing and gesturing.

First he brought all twelve of us cups of chai and passed around a platter of cookie biscuits and crackers. Later he brought out a handkerchief full of quartz pieces. Some were pure quartz while others had impurities that made them green. At first we were unsure if he was just showing us his collection, or if was selling them. Finally, I just held up a piece I thought was cool and he said “one fifty”. The majority of us bought quartz pieces from him ranging from 70 to 150 rupees.  At one point, Marianne showed him how to use a hand lens to look at the minerals.

We decided that we wanted to give this man (and his wife) a gift for his hospitality, so we gave him the hand lens. What else would have a group of geologists give him? Haha.

The whole thing was kind of surreal.

Here is their house.


A bunch of us crammed in the room.



Chai drinkin’! (He insisted that Fraser take a second cup.)


Out comes the quartz.


I asked (through gestures) if I could take a picture of him with us. He obliged. He was so cool.


Here Adam is giving him the hand lens.






As we were leaving, his wife knocked some apples down from a tree for us to take with us.


Epic.

Here you can get an idea of the trail we took


The other thing we did today was check out the confluence of the Zanskar and Indus Rivers.


And I ended my day by getting my super hair stuck in the zipper of my bag. Me being me, my first reaction wasn’t to try to wrestle it out, but instead to yell for someone to get my camera to take a picture of my stupidity.


Today we went from Leh to Chilling.

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