There is a place, high among the mountains of the Indian Himalayas, where the sun always seems to shine. A place where the klu, the water spirits that live in the nearby Zanskar River, reveal copper to those who have learnt to recognise the whistle that the metal emits. The place is called Chiling, and the families who live here have been working silver, copper and gold ever since the village was founded by four Nepali silversmiths and their Ladakhi brides in the 16th century.
In winter, people from the ancient kingdom of Zanskar pass through Chiling as they make their way to the important Ladakhi town of Leh. Zanskar lies 50 miles away, at the point where the river that flows past Chiling begins its life. The gorge down which the river tumbles is deeper than America’s Grand Canyon, making any descent in summer imposs-ible. But every December, a miracle occurs. Rivulet by rivulet, the river — known locally as the Chadar — solidifies. As temperatures in the gorge free-fall to -15F, the ice becomes firm enough underfoot to support the weight of a person.
The Zanskaris discovered this frozen highway aeons ago, and, for generations, have used it to travel to Leh in order to sell their goatskins of cheese and rich butter. Orders for teapots, puja bowls and jewellery are placed with the silversmiths en route, and collected on the return journey.
I travelled to Chiling during January to place my own order with the silversmiths, and to attempt to traverse the Chadar with my guide, Sonam Stobgais. Sonam has lived in Zanskar all his life; he has walked the Chadar every winter for the past 30 years. Over time, he has formed a friendship with Tsewang Rabgais, who, at the age of 85, is the oldest silversmith in Chiling. Tsewang is the last metalworker able to detect the barely audible whistle that copper ore in the Zanskar River produces when water flows over it.
AS SONAM steered me towards the cloak of poplar trees that hid Tsewang’s isolated home, a line of tattered prayer flags flapped in the breeze of a new Himalayan morning. As the pennons issued their silent litanies over the surrounding snow-tipped peaks, I detected the faint resonance of metal being tapped against metal.
Sonam released the catch on the 4ft-high door to Tsewang’s compound, and I ducked under the lintel. The single-storey building, with its roof of thatched willow, consisted of living quarters, a sheepfold and a workshop. A moment later, I found myself crouching in front of a wizened man sitting cross-legged on a yak-wool blanket in the tiny atelier, which was exposed on its south-facing side so that he could benefit from the sunlight that poured in around him. On a shelf behind Tsewang sat several unsold copper chang pots, all covered in cobwebs. To his right, a small hearth was stacked full of charcoal. Tsewang periodically pumped a set of sheepskin bellows in order to ready the coals for the smelting process. The old man was making a brass chain for an ornament. After threading a new link onto one end of the chain, Tsewang placed it on a tiny iron post so that he could strike the metal with his hammer.
In front of Tsewang stood a finished teapot. Made from silver, copper and brass, it was an intricate combination of the crude and the sophisticated. Would Tsewang make a teapot and a silver bracelet for me, I asked Sonam. The silversmith looked up from his work and smiled when Sonam posed my question. Tsewang’s spec- tacles, with lenses as thick as the bottom of beer glasses, betrayed the number of years he had been working metal. He struck his first pot in 1929, and used to haul copper ingots weighing up to 3lb from the riverbed; on heating, they had yielded almost pure copper. “Yes,” Sonam told me after a short conversation with the metalworker, “Tsewang will make you a teapot. But he will ask his son to make you the bracelet, as his sight is not so good for fine work.”
Tsewang informed Sonam that the teapot and bracelet would be ready for collection in a few weeks’ time. We agreed on a price of about £50 for both items, and then left this tranquil scene — silent save for the song of a solitary alpine chough — in order to turn our attentions to the frozen river.
AS WE glided silently over the 3ft-thick transparent ice, I marvelled at the water flowing visibly beneath my feet. Then I spied a family of tea-chest-sized boulders that had been lifted from the riverbed and suspended midstream. At one point, I stumbled across a runnel of glaze stained the palest shade of violet; it was as though the end of the rainbow had been dipped into the Chadar and frozen in place. At certain points, the river flowed freely, unshackled by the constraints of the ice. Its colour was sublime. Free of the glacial till that, in summer, turns the Chadar as brown as Belgian chocolate, the waters became a kaleidoscope, melting from jade to silver. On one memor-able afternoon, the river transmogrified into liquid turquoise.
As a cold draught swept down the canyon to herald the onset of another cold night, Sonam and I passed a cave. It looked to me like an ideal spot to spend the evening, but Sonam shook his head. “That cave is known as the Gyalpo Kalzos,” he informed me, gravely. “A long time ago, seven Zanskaris — including a rather plump cook to one of the kings — were traversing the Chadar. They slept in this cave. During the night, the ice melted and they became trapped for seven days. Six of the men hatched a plan to eat the cook. The cook got to hear of the plot, and prayed all night to the gods to save him. The cook had been a good man to the deities, and so, in the night, the gods gave the cook a dream about placing branches from a nearby bush into the water. The cook then awoke and acted out what he had dreamt. The ice froze around the bushes and, in the morning, all seven men were able to escape. Since that day, nobody has slept in that cave.”
After several days of ice-walking, we reached Sonam’s home in the Zanskari village of Padum. From October until May, snow blocks all other routes into Zanskar, and the community reverts to a way of life that has changed little over the past three centuries.
I found a certain comfort in being cut off from the rest of the world, but after only a week, it was time to head back — reports were coming in that the Chadar was starting to break up.
TWO DAYS later, we were back on the ice. In many places, the surface looked as though it had been rattled by an earthquake. Ominous cracks barred our way. Water bubbled out of holes in the ice and flowed across our path. Without Sonam, I would have been lost as to which way to turn. Even with his help, it was sometimes necessary to wade through water so cold that it felt as though the rusty teeth of an iron trap had snapped shut around my ankles.
On the last day, I packed my rucksack for the final time and made good my escape from the frozen river. As afternoon descended into evening, and the sun drew back its fingers from the end of the gorge, I abandoned the Chadar and climbed the hill to Tsewang’s home. The old man was putting the final touches to my teapot. As he filed down the sharp ends of the pot’s brass handle, the silversmith told me that he once made an urn for the monastery at Rizong. The vessel was so large, Tsewang and a fellow metalworker had spent 10 days working on it. From the inside.
Later that evening, as Sonam and I warmed ourselves around the dying embers of a deadwood fire, my dragoman told me of the Indian army’s plans to build a highway along the walls of the gorge, to link his homeland with the outside world all year round. Resignedly, he mused that the road-builders would roll empty barrels of bitumen into the bottom of the gorge. Then the water spirits would desert the river, and the Chadar would be finished. I asked him if, perhaps, there were other icy thoroughfares awaiting dis- covery? “No,” he laughed, and shook his head. “There are no more Chadars.”
Paul Deegan flew to India as a guest of STA Travel
TRAVEL BRIEF
Independent travel: STA Travel (0870 160 6070, www.statravel.co.uk) has flights with Gulf Air, from Heathrow to Leh, via Abu Dhabi and Delhi (from £585), and to Delhi from Birmingham, Heathrow, Manchester and Newcastle via Frankfurt (from £493). Jet Airways (020 8970 1525) flies from Delhi to Leh; £74, one-way.
In Ireland, Ebookers (01 241 5689, www.ebookers.ie) has flights with Air France to Delhi via Paris; from €842.
To secure the services of Sonam Stobgais, write to him at: Padum, Ganskit, Zanskar 193024, District Kargil, Jammu & Kashmir, India. Allow eight weeks for letters to get through between May and September only. To visit the silversmiths by road from Leh, contact Dawa at The Oriental Guest House, Changspa, Leh, Ladakh 194101, India (00 91 1982 53153). Tour operators: Tribes Travel (01728 685971, www.tribes.co.uk) has a three-week trek along the Chadar from February 1 for £1,350pp, including internal flights, accommodation and guide. It can book flights to Delhi for about £500.
