Day 8 Ladakh – Last day, Rest day in Leh
All this traveling for the past week and getting food poisoning had drained me both mentally and physically. I decided to just rest and recuperate on my last day in Leh. The hotel staff knew that I was sick, so they took good care of me by bringing breakfast and lunch to my room.
As I was feeling better in the afternoon, I decided to go to the Leh market for a stroll. Only handful of the stores were open since it was still off-season. Most of the stores, cafes, restaurants and hotels wouldn’t open until mid May. The stores I wanted to visit were open so that was a plus. I was glad that it was not super chaotic which is usually the case when the streets are flooded with tourist from the month of May to August.
My favorite was the Nomadic Woolen Mills, I liked the product they had because not only were they authentic but their designs were unique and you would not find it anywhere in the market. They source the pashmina wool directly from the nomads and employ local women to make them. Since handmade products are super expensive and don’t have a market for them, they still make their products by hand but use a machine operated power loom which reduces the time drastically to make these products and are much affordable for tourists. I ended up getting a super soft pashmina wool hat for my Dad. Since, I already have so many scarves, I decided to wait to purchase them during my next trip.
My guide also recommended couple of stores since they carry authentic stuff, which I visited but was not excited because the products were not locally made and were pretty expensive. The affordable stuff was mostly fake.
I enjoyed people watching in the Main square, from the woman vegetable sellers to the Buddhist lamas. In spite of the cold weather, everyone seemed to be having a good time. You will often hear the phrase “Shanti, Shanti!” Which simply means “Peaceful, Peaceful!” May be it was this outlook towards life or the sun that shining bright on a cold day, whatever the case might be, people of this region are always so optimistic.
As the sun set and the weather became super chilly, I headed back to the hotel for dinner and sleep time to catch an early flight back to Mumbai.
Can’t believe my Ladakh adventure is coming to an end! I had never imagined how beautifully the nature is at play over here and, somehow you can feel the spiritual connection and higher energetic frequency. The people of this land also taught me to be one with the Universe and how grateful I’m for all the Universe has given and keeps on giving. Not sure what lessons I’m going to learn on my next chapter of this joyful journey but, so far, I’ve learned that the best one can do is to just go with the flow without over thinking and over complicating things.
