The blog

is closed
until further notice.


Apologies,
Miss Smilla.

I had a dream...

Negev Desert
"Forty days and forty long nights
Since I set out across these desert plains
I'm following a call
The sweetest promise of them all
A long forgotten melody
Longing for a place I've never been"
Noam Blat, Love Line

I dreamt of a desert last night.

I was walking in it. Briskly placing one foot after the other, hearing the small stones crunch under the soles of my shoes. The ground was displaying a palette of earthly shades: orange, yellow, ochre, burgundy, brown. I looked up to see the sun high and proud in the sky; I was surprised to notice that it wasn’t scorching me – instead I felt nourished by its warmth.

There was nothing but sheer, vast, limitless space around me.

I walked fast. At some point I started to run. I never wondered where I was going. Destination was not a question. Yet there was a sense of purpose. Or maybe just a sense of running. A sense of my lungs working joyfully to accommodate the rapid air exchange, of my heart expanding and contracting, of my legs carrying me effortlessly the way they can’t anymore in my awake state (I have a knee condition). I was cutting through the space. I was running. Euphoria hit me with a near-nauseating force. I felt liberated.

Why such a dream?

Maybe because I had the privilege to hear Noam Blatt’s beautiful song “Love Line” live last night and its captivating images slept into my dreaming state.

Or maybe because I went to sleep feeling acutely lonely and my subconscious responded by serving a dream that would soothe me and lift me.

But the space, the open space. Devoid of cars, of buildings, of noise. Of relentless continuum of doing. Of people.

I remembered the enchanting places I’ve been to: driven or walked through, or gazed down at from some distant peak, or from the airplane.

New Zealand

 The Australian red outback. The Nullarbor plains. The moon-like landscapes of Ladakh. The tree-less, wind-swept paths of Nepal’s high Himalayas. The dangerous mirages of the Death Valley. The mysterious, whispering, cloudy plains of north-eastern Turkey. History –laden ruins of Ani at the border with Armenia. South of New Zealand’s South Island: diverse, astounding, surprising. And more, many more.

Ladakh

Then: Negev Desert in Israel. Climbing the rocks to look down at the fires of the beduin camps, sleeping close to the stars as foxes scuttled by.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, the desert has become to me a symbol of liberation (argh. As if I were the only one).

Somehow, somewhere, travelling has become to me means of shedding my usual reservations and anxieties. In the absence of everyday duties, expectations and the intermingled web of connections that make my world – only then – I can be bold. I become less of the anxiety-ridden and self-doubting little girl and more the Intrepid Explorer in muddy shoes, with a notebook filled with new foreign words, turning the shady corners, asking uncomfortable questions, venturing the roads less traveled. 

It is my secret slice of heaven; my tiny taste of fearlessness.

Australian Outback

It's not going to be easy, leaving Sydney. My life here has richness and diversity that continue to feed my senses, fill my heart and infect my mind with inspiration. I've been feeling very alive lately, and sometimes even happy.

But I can’t wait to relish the forbidden taste again.

But yes, it's that time of the year again!

It is a very exciting time all around.


Miss Smilla is going to be travelling again.




Poland, Israel, Palestine, Gaza Strip.
Paris and Berlin. Maybe more.


There are not many things on this earth that can make Miss Smilla more happy. Except for falling in love (irrevocably, with reciprocation) maybe. 



"But love, such a word..." Cortazar


The prodigal blog will live again.

Good students

I’ve been a bad, bad girl.

A bad writer, I mean. Deserted the poor place completely. Not that anyone visits it anymore. The memoirs of my Israel trip are but ghosts in the glaring Now. (Happy ghosts but). I’ve made this blog a forlorn land by my absence.

I had intended it a travel blog, mind you. I hadn’t employed much thought to the predictions of its further gloomy future. Suspended in space, waiting for Miss Smilla’s next travels to inflame her keyboard.

The travels that are bound to come. They are in fact inevitable. They pollinate my dreams and hatch in my brain and speak to me in the quiet hours of my days, biding their time.

Not yet but. Not yet.

My last months have been busy and studious. I started and almost finished my diploma. The studies rocked. I’ve been collecting praises for my laboured academic writing all around (and I sweated blood and tears with every word. Never again). Now I’m foreseeing a bright future as a community services worker. Do I really? Well, I’m trying.

And I have settled in Sydney. Having moved five times, I have now found a happy home. Anxiety visits only occasionally. Friends visit more often. I’ve been training my body to become strong, resilient. I have been learning to say No to things that don’t nourish me. I have been learning to say Yes to some things brave and dangerous.

I have taken fancy to being in the air. Crazy Miss Smilla, go figure.

I have acquired a kind of a love life. And, but of course, it’s complicated!

These have been amazingly good months. But that’s Too Much Information already.

Right now: sitting in front of the open fire in a little bush cabin in the Blue Mountains. Outside the rain is stopping, the birds are doing their thing. It might turn out to be a fine day. If I were to stay huddled on the couch, whining for the Negev desert and the middle-eastern sun, I’d be an utter fool.

Yalla.

Belated anniversary

This time last year I was in Ladakh. Its barren beauty and limitless space-ness didn't intimidate me; it enchanted me. Its moonscape deserts have become my secret inner sanctuaries, places I visit in times of hardship and stress.

Then the tragedy happened.

Here's in memory of the many victims of the flash floods in Leh and surroundings, on the 6th August 2010.

Suffering and serenity.

A story of the flash flood and its aftermath in Ladakh

 The incredible Ladakh

6 August 2010.

It was well into the night, when the tragedy struck.

It happened during my second week in the northern state of India called Ladakh, famous for its high planes, looming Himalayas and friendly self-sustainable people.

Something woke me up from my heavy sleep; I heard distant, but alarmed voices coming from the hotel corridor. Then I realized that torrents of rain were tearing through my open windows into the room. I struggled up to close the windows and looked outside. It looked like the Armageddon had come. The sky would come aglow with the lightning every few seconds, promptly followed by the grim rumble of the storm. The rain and wind were a howling tumult outside, assaulting the windows and doors. The trees on every visible slope were in anarchic motion: swaying, rustling, tossing. There was scurrying of panicked human movement outside, someone trying to close the doors, usher valuable possessions inside. Other inhabitants of the hotel seemed awake and unrestful too.

My initial excitement soon turned to anxiety as I blindly fumbled around the room, trying to drag my sodden possessions away from the window, looking for matches (electricity was out by then). Still, as the rain and hail gradually lost its intensity, I managed to reconcile with the land of Morpheus, in my comfy enough bed, in sturdy enough hotel, quite oblivious to the rest of the town.

As soon as I got up the next morning and took my first stroll down the main road to meet my friends and arrange some exciting adventures for the day (river rafting or mountain-biking, it was to be decided), I realized that something was amiss. Muddy waters filled the main market area. Big clusters of silent people stood gathered all around town. The shops were closed.

Soon I was to find out that when I peacefully slept in my bed, many Leh citizens were already bemoaning the biggest natural calamity to have ever happened (or at least not to be remembered even by the oldest citizens). The cloudburst up in the mountains had propelled flash floods and mudslides. Indu River’s banks swelled up with water, until the river broke out and spilled all over lower Leh and several surrounding villages, causing unprecedented damage: literally wiping out Choglamsar and several other villages, washing away bridges and hence severing the communication with these places. Some onlookers remarked on helplessly observing brown masses of lave-like mud descending upon them with great speed. What could these people do against such unstoppable force, but grab their children and run for the nearest mountain top? Many didn’t even manage that. At the time of writing this article at

least 137 people died, buried under their mud houses that collapsed in the storm; over 400 were injured, 500 were still missing and hundreds lost their homes and other possessions. A tourist mini-bus travelling to Manali overnight got swept off the edge down the mountain ravine – all its passengers as well as the driver were killed, another 100 tourists were stranded on treks or tourist routes. Leh, situated in an arid mountain desert at an altitude of 3,505 metres, normally receives virtually no rainfall all year and has no planned drainage system.

In spite of having heard about what happened, I didn’t really register it fully for the first part of the day; it didn’t sink in just yet. You didn’t so much as glimpse rubble or collapsed buildings or dead bodies around upper Leh. Then my friend and I walked down to the bus station and there we sighted tell tale signs of the night’s before ravage that we won’t soon forget. The bus station was completely flattened, with broken buses and cars floating around in big pools of mud. The whole place wore desolate look with smashed houses, debris and flesh piling up in huge mountains. The district hospital also got flooded, yet it was lined up with bodies – both injured and dead. The victims lay under a small rooftop – contorted and bloodied corpses, fear frozen on their faces and hands still reaching for help. There was buzz of flies and wailing of the bereaved coming from all directions. My friend attempted to take some photos, but started crying so much that we had to leave; we were shaken to the bone.

Hardly any shop or business was to be open that day. Tourists (including myself) were roaming the streets searching for food and water. And of course there was neither biking or rafting to be done.

As soon as I left my place again in the early evening, I realized that something was again brewing in the air, something big. As I looked up over the rooftops, scanning the mountain peaks, I saw the muscular grey-black clouds heaping up, layer upon layer. They were apocalyptic in their size and menace. They were already pressing hard on the peaks, squeezing down buckets of rain; very soon they’d be pressing down on us. The hills visibly darkened as I watched.

The lubricated wind, moist and relentless, was beginning to buffet me, filling out my clothes. There was the heavy imminence of rain chasing my every step, and so it seemed, everyone’s step. The air was moist. It smelled of wet ground, just like I remembered from back home, spending summers in the cottage house in the country, when the farmers used to turn the soil. It was the river, having swollen threefold since I last crossed the bridge, carrying tons and tons of brown muddy water. The angry waters had already started to wash away the banks. A crowd was gathered around the bridge, people carefully inching their way towards the shore, but not too close – peering down the darkening tumble with horrid fascination; people smoking and talking in high pitched voices. The rumour had it that water was gushing down from Khardung La (highest pass) and it was just a matter of time before it got here, causing more damage and mayhem.

I walked away from the bridge, chased by the deafening roar of the river. My chest felt constricted and my breath was coming out in short gasps. I realized I was making whimpering sounds. I was simply scared, with that cold sticky fright that often has something to do with fearing for one’s life or others’.

I nearly ran down Changspa road, normally busy and bustling with tourists and local businesses. It was mostly dark and silent. The lights had blown with the first powerful gust of wind. A bee line of about 30 anxious travellers slithered and writhed their way up to the only working phone booth. Many of these people had meant to leave Leh on buses, taxis or planes last morning or were hoping to do it the following day. No such luck though. We were all stuck in this town, waiting for the catastrophe to hit.

Having decided that I’d seen enough, I turned around to go back to my hotel. By then hordes of people were pushing up the road, anxiously making their way up towards

higher grounds like the Shanti Stupa[1] – the Buddhist refuge situated on top of the mountain. I blindly darted alongside these people, a single sheep in the herd, propelled by the notion of the group, unsure of my own goals. I hurried up through the bridge again, struggling to keep my balance in the wind and darkness.

“Away from the bridge!” a sudden sharp voice materialized near my ear and I felt an equally sudden and sharp stab of pain in my hand as a wooden stick connected with my knuckles. It was one of the soldiers of the army supervising Leh, trying to pull us away from the danger of the crazed river. I know he was just doing his job, but at that precise moment the brutality of the act hit the soft spot of my loneliness and confusion, and as if on command tears welled up in my eyes, self-pity ripened in my heart and I cried.

I was still wiping tears with the back of my hand, when I arrived at Jeevan Café, the yummy next door neighbour to my guesthouse. Harpreet Singh, a powerfully built and handsome owner of the place, Sikh in a purple turban, didn’t miss a beat. “What’s going on?” he asked upon seeing my crumpled face. I explained what had just befallen me. “What do you think it’s going to happen now?” I wanted to know. I was desperately seeking clues, advice, temporarily unable to access my own judgement or inner wisdom. “I don’t know, but in any case there’s no need to panic. If we’re meant to die here, we will. No need to worry about it” answered Mr Singh with such calm equanimity, that could be easily perceived as nonchalance, and that made me swallow hard. I know things aren’t rosy, but die???

Dying notwithstanding, Mr Singh kindly invited me upstairs to the rooftop restaurant to have a tea and take a few deep breaths. I promptly climbed up to the rooftop of Jeevan Café for a well-deserved ginger tea and veg biryani.

There was no shortage of groups of Ladakhi people – mainly what looked like families – huddled on the roadsides, or marching up with street with determined strides and big bags on their backs. They had fled their river-based houses. Some were shivering as the temperature kept dropping, clutching their water bottles. Many of them would be out on the streets all night, fearing their rooftops collapsing onto them; others would find the refuge on the top of the holy mountains, in quickly pitched tents, under Lord Buddha’s statue’s watchful gaze.

Unsure what to do next, I spontaneously decided to join a group of British tourists on their way to Shanti Stupa. Strange excitement danced in my body together with fear as we plodded through the darkened street leading up to the stone steps. The rocky mountain on top of which Shanti stupa sits had by then become the Mecca for the scared and the lost, foreigners and local folk alike. There were dozens of tents stretched everywhere. Lighters and headlights were flickering. Pop music was blasting from someone’s portable speakers; somehow inappropriate, belittling all that Waiting in the air. 

To look down the valley from here was to see a landscape of terrible beauty and terror. An ominous greyness had descended, as the amassing black clouds killed the day long before it was due to give way to the night. Lightning bolts were striking one by one in the distance.

I didn’t make it very far up the hill at all. While mounting the first hundred of steps, we met a Ladakhi man, who asked us where we were going. “Up to Shanti Stupa, and yourself?” “I’m going home.” He answered. His eyed gleamed in the raising dark, his moustache making him look like the proverbial ginnie from the bottle. ”I like my home. Whatever happens to you, you can’t change it. It’s all natural”, he explained in broken English. It was the second time in this night that I heard such an acceptance of the natural order of things expressed and it again sounded genuine. I found that unknown man’s trust somehow infectious. I carefully stepped down and followed him, passed by Ladakhi women, carrying their possessions on their backs. Having given sufficient warning, the rain struck with fury of a boxer in the first round. Fist-sized silent drops landed like a flurry of blows and stinging where they hit me. By the time I reached the guesthouse, I was soaked to my underwear.

The father in the family owning my guesthouse welcomed with the candle, as I came under the roof. I straight away wanted to know what their plans were. “We’re staying here. We’re hoping it’ll be all right. Don’t worry, we are all here”, he reassured me.

I stayed then. I accepted the family’s invitation to join them in their sitting room. At least three generations squatted in this warm cubicle, lit only by flickering butter lamps. Prayer beads moved and prayer wheels whirled as Tibetan Buddhist mantras were being ceaselessly repeated in a low murmur. If you think that the atmosphere there was one of doom and gloom, well – you’re wrong. Children continued running around everywhere and the grandmother would every now and then stop praying to pour some butter tea or share some laughs with the others. Just another night in a Ladakhi home. Almost.

Luckily that night, the downpour, albeit heavy, ceased after a couple of hours. The river managed to stay within its constraints. No more damage was done and no more human victims were added to already devastating toll.

I left the family after an hour or so. I sat on my bed by candlelight for a long time. I thought of my semi-random choice to leave Choglamsar, where I had intended to stay before, and find a hotel in the upper, safer part of Leh. I was thus spared having to spend two nights on top of the mountain, if not the actual departure from this world. My thoughts ran out to all the other people in this town: the pilgrims at Shanti Stupa, the ones who stayed at their homes, to my friends, temporarily lost to me in different parts of town. Then I thought of all the trekkers whom the rains caught on distant trails. And I prayed for the safety of all of them.

I was one of the lucky ones. I survived, I wasn’t harmed, I didn’t lose anything. But walking through the sad remnants of what I remembered as bustling lower town left me devastated and changed me forever. Within the next few days Indian soldiers, police and paramilitary troops initiated the relief operation, sifting through destroyed homes and providing basic medical care to those injured. Several local committees were assembled who started enlisting volunteers to do some “cleaning up” work and to help the flood victims. For a few days I carried the mud out from what used to be a hospital. It was Sizyphus’s work, as the destruction was immense and the tools scarce. We did it factory-chain style, passing heavy mud-filled bowls from one to another, then emptying them on a pile outside, to be taken away by a truck. In the end the hospital was returned to some usability, but it was clear that the damage was so wide and vast, it would take many years to rebuild it.

Upon reflection I found it almost ironic, that the same people who I earlier worried I couldn’t help, ended up feeding me, giving me shelter, listening to me with compassion and sharing their ancient wisdom with me. No doubt they suffered greatly from their losses. They may have lacked material resources to protect themselves from the elements, or to deal with their effect. Yet as we worked arm in arm, they still laughed and sang songs together. They didn’t sit there mourning; they did what needed to be done. They took their time. They did it their way, with inner strength and grace. With acceptance of their fate, kindness and strong sense of community that I’d never experienced before.

Julley, julley![2]

Miss Smilla's Feeling for Deserts

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[1] Shanti Stupa The Shanti Stupa is an impressive white-domed structure in Changspa that is beautifully illuminated at night. It was built by a Japanese Buddhist organization to commemorate 2500 years of Buddhism and to promote World Peace. In Tibetan Buddhism a stupa represents enlightened mind.

[2] Greeting in Ladakhi language. Depending on circumstances it can mean „hallo”, „good-bye” or „thank you”.