Ladakh

The Tza Tza are finally back home. They had a long trip to Italy and spent time in different places. They look still new while here I cannot find new ones anymore, they traveled across time.

Not being religious I don't know a lot about uses. But a monk told me that they are made to be hided in caves on the mountains and not to stay in home.

Where they were stolen from I don't know. so I chose a place lost in the middle of 5000 m passes in the middle of the country, between Ladakh and Zanskar. A small, nice, and simple Gompa inhabited by few honest and quite poor monks.

I chose just by feeling refusing listening to big monks advise in b”ig money / important monasteries”. I arrived there an the two monks they told me “TzaTza ?” ...”you can put it there on top” “if you climb up you'll find a place”

Not very important staff for them indeed, and probably is looking a bit crazy to everybody that a foreigner bring such a thing back and give them a lot of importance.

But I felt it was good. Some good hearted person made them and carried them to the mountain.

Not lucky was who took them away more than 30 year ago.

....more hike than fly ...

16 kg is too much to be carried for long time i need to save at least 1 kg in the backpak. And if I grow 2 kg myself I can fly at 73.

With this idea in mind I start to build a cuben tent, i plan to buy a new tablet/hibrid computer. And ... I start to transfer to google earth all the datas that are on my old and heavily repaired paper map of Yunnan and Sichuan that is traveling with me since 2004.

Impossible.

It is incredible the amount of information contained in a paper map full of my writings and sketches, name of places, mountain peaks, and all the roads I traveled. And all this can be read in one single eyesight without zooming out and in. A paper map is a magic tool that can be oriented and shown to anybody to ask informations. No matter who, at the end he will understand. Still those things are Impossible to be done on a mobile phone.

I give up. I decide to cut it in half trowing away the Sichuan plains. But is such a pain to cut this map. She guided me in my most beautiful travels around Tibet since the first one with Giacomo. I got lost so many times and she learned with me, slowly, the roads. A long journey we did to know that area, Asking around for directions and for the names to be translated.

But a decision has to be taken. There is a sudden climate change when ones travels downhill from the Tibetan plateau to chengdu. The last chain of mountains act like a dam for the sea of fog permanently covering the sichuan plains. And this is a place where I will never travel. I am getting old and selection has to be done.

After all this thinking and cutting I saved around 30 grams.

I was in Nepal, the flying season was clearly at the end, cold was coming...

 I started searching the internet and ...

 

 

there is a new boat in my life 

 

from now on, from November to January, a fixed point in my endless samsara through seasons