As you drive into Leh and after the odyssey of a long drive, comes a fairy-tale ending. A fort, a palace and a monastery stand out against the sky, amidst an avenue of poplars. This is Leh. The journey has just begun. As the Buddhists say:`When you are ready, the teacher will appear.’

Above every village, large or small, rise the ubiquitous gompas or Buddhist monasteries, turreting the pristine air to break the articulate silence of the land of Vajrayana, the ‘Vehicle of the Thunderbolt’. Dominating life in these desolate places, built as acts of piety, believing in what are known as the Four Noble Truths, Sakyamuni discovered that man’s existence is inseparable from sorrow; the cause of suffering is desire and peace is achieved by extinguishing all desire. And your liberation lies in following the Ashtangiha Marg – the Eight-fold Path.

`Good walls make good neighbours’, admonished the poet, but here where there is no habitation you will still find yourself walking into walls. The visitor constantly sees what are little more than dents on the surface of the desert. More real than walls in the mind, these mani-walls too are dedicated to the glory of god. If you look carefully, engraved in Tibetan script is the eternal invocation: Om Mani Padme Hum (Hail to the Jewel in the Lotus).

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