Ladhak & Kashmir 2010 - Day 9 - Rangdum Gompa

The valley widened. There was a wall of mountains in sight. A bleak, wide basin it was that we were in.
The hill on which Rangdum Gompa stands iss dwarfed by the mountains around it.
This Gompa stands in incredible isolation.
The Buddhist settlement has begun again, after that stretch of Muslim villages in and around Kargil.
From the roof of the Gompa, we could see the river split into several meandering channels. Hundreds of them. It was unlike anything I had seen before.
Hundreds of years ago, when better humans walked the land and therefore, better climate prevailed, and more rains and water, what a river, what a mighty river this must have been, when there weren’t hundreds of rivulets flowing like marooned strands of hair, but one river from the base of this mountain to that one faraway…!