Countdown to Leh

In a few days I'll take off for Leh in northernmost India. I have tried to prepare in a variety of ways for the great physical challenge of an arduous journey to a very high altitude. Originally, I was going to lose 15 pounds. I was going to do a lot of cardio strengthening. Just two weeks ago my daughter's boyfriend assured me that I could make a difference in just two weeks time if I worked hard. When my daughter entered a ten day meditation, I was going to quiet myself down too in solidarity with her, and most definitely I was going to eat a vegetarian diet. I was going to get rid of the pain in my jaw and the accompanying earache. I tried all of these things, some with great vigor. But in the end, I haven't really done any of these things successfully. I've only obsessed about not doing them.

I have spent most of my energy trying to resolve the pain in my jaw and trying to calm my fears about that. I've had a tooth pulled- that didn't help. I've had an MRI, an xray, and an emergency room visit for sudden deafness. The diagnosis stays the same: dislocation of the jaw, presumably from a fall I had in June in a cafeteria. I've done ear candling. I've taken two courses of antibiotics. Yesterday I was diagnosed with high blood pressure and started on blood pressure medication for the first time ever. Nothing has changed, so I'm not going to worry about it anymore. I can't. The flight is nonrefundable, I have to go. None of the doctors have told me not to.

I imagine my daughter and I browsing the little Ladakhi and Tibetan shops and visiting monasteries that contain ancient paintings, statues and documents. Word has it that stories of Christ's early life appear in scrolls at Hemmis monastery outside Leh. These stories are mostly discredited, but there could be a grain of truth there somewhere.

I read about NGOs in the area and wrote to a few, offering to help for the ten days we are there. One theater group has recently presented a Chekhov play! There are solid well-established groups working to empower women, to help children, to preserve the local culture. I am bracing myself for bits of disappointment- I know that the cultural values from the West have infiltrated even to this remote plateau and I might see local kids in blue jeans and black leather jackets with substance abuse issues, listening to Ipods. But it's those beautiful ancient faces I long to see.

The very marketplace pictured in that 1909 National Geographic photograph that my friend Ginger and I saw as children, hanging on the wall of our classroom, is exactly where I'm going in my dotage! I know the luster of the past will shine forth in Leh...the modern veneer won't bother me.... Countdown!