Journals & Sightings

Journals and Sightings

This is a repository of all interesting things people have found in and around the valley. You are invited to experience these unfiltered stories about the life in Saspotsey and all the nearby gems which enrich the experience of anyone who wanders here.

The old gonpa of Saspotsey was built from what the valley itself provides: earth, stone, trees and plants. Like the older temples of the Sham Valley, it belongs to a world of travellers, traders and artists moving along the road that joins Ladakh and Kashmir, and its art carries traces of both. After a recent cloudburst right above Gompa Nompa, the effect of time has fastened and a more rapid degeneration of art and culture can be witnessed here.

Colour from stone and plant

The murals and thangkas of Ladakh were painted with colours from the earth and from plants. Blue came from azurite, red from vermilion and yellow from orpiment, with indigo and madder as plant dyes. The pigments were ground by hand and mixed with glue. A thangka was painted on cotton prepared with chalk or clay, and each layer of colour had to dry before the next was added.

Earth and stone

The walls are made of sun-dried mud bricks set on stone foundations. Mud and stone is how most Ladakhi monasteries and houses are built, and thick walls hold the day’s warmth through the cold nights and long winters. A building of earth needs very little from outside the valley. It is made from the ground it stands on.

Carved in wood

Gompa Nompa in saspotsey is a lot similar to the oldest temples of the Sham Valley, such as Alchi, which are known for Kashmiri-influenced woodcarving on doors, pillars and brackets, and their Buddha images were made in both clay and wood, which is rare to see elsewhere in Ladakh. Even the clay images were often built on a wooden armature, with fine mud plaster modelled over it. They held the community’s prayers, and they tied a small place to a wider network of teachers and craftsmen.

Willow and poplar

Wood is used for the frame: pillars, beams, door frames and window frames. Poplar logs carry the roof, willow branches are laid across them, and grass and packed mud go on top. Both trees grow where water reaches the valley floor, so the timber of the gonpa, like its fields, depends on the same glacial water channels. Poplar is a soft wood, so its beams and brackets need regular care under the weight of the roof.

Learn from Nature

Not long ago, a cloudburst struck Saspotsey, and the old gonpa was caught in it. Its marks can still be seen. The walls carry the stains and cracks left by the water, and the mural, probably painted around the 11th century, has survived with the traces of that day on it. The wooden sculptures still hold the debris the flood carried in. Earth and wood are sensitive to water, and a single night of heavy rain can undo what the building held for nearly a thousand years.

Restoring a place like this takes time. It is careful, patient work, done in small steps, and from the outside it can look as if nothing is happening. That is normal. Rushing an old mural or a wooden image does more harm than waiting, so the progress is slow and often unnoticeable, but it is real.

Visit Mindfully

The gonpa is a heritage site that is still recovering, and how we behave inside it matters. Please step lightly and touch nothing: not the walls, the murals, the sculptures or the carvings. Do not bring in extra light, which means no torches and no flash, because light slowly fades old pigments, and the chambers are meant to be seen in the light they have. Treat the broken debris with the same respect as everything else. It is part of the story of this place, and it is not to be moved, picked up or taken away. If you want to photograph anything, ask first and follow what you are told.

In our high-altitude landscape, water begins far above the village, in the snow and ice of the surrounding mountains. As the seasons turn, it melts and runs downhill, and it supports our homes, our fields and our livestock. Because there is only so much of it, the careful use of water is part of everyday village life.

From mountain to field

Water does not arrive in the village on its own. It travels through a network of small channels, built over generations, that carries meltwater from the streams above across the slopes and down to the fields. These channels are simple, and they work because people look after them. Every spring, households clear them of silt and fallen stones so the first flow can pass.

Turn by turn

A channel can only water one place at a time, so the water is shared in turns. Using stones and mud, farmers block the stream and divert it into the field that needs irrigation. When that field has had enough, the blockage is opened and the water is moved to the next one. The work is done by hand, in rotation, with each household waiting for its turn and passing the water on in good faith. This rotation matters most for those who live far from the source. Water is steered, field by field and village by village, so that it keeps travelling instead of staying with those closest to the mountain. In this way, glacial water reaches the farms and homes at the far end of the system, and it is used where it is needed.

When the water runs short: Kumik, Zanskar

Not every village is so fortunate. In Kumik, in the Zanskar Valley, the glacier that once supplied the village has retreated, and the village now depends on a few springs. In winter the situation is harder still, as most of the springs freeze and water has to be carried by hand.

The project we follow in this journal responds to that. A pipe is being laid from a spring on the nearest mountain down to the village, so that clean water can flow without a long walk and a heavy load. The idea is simple, but it changes the working day of a whole village.

Learn from Nature

Water is not only a practical resource. It is a shared responsibility. Keeping channels open, taking turns, repairing what a flood or a hard winter has damaged: none of this works unless households cooperate.

The story of water in Saspotsey is therefore also a story about community. Our fields, our food and our livelihoods begin with the mountain water that reaches the village, and looking closely at this system helps us understand how people have adapted to life in a place where every natural resource matters.

When the barley turns gold, all of Saspotsey is in the fields.

The Barley Fields

Barley, called nas in Ladakhi, is our main crop. At nearly 3,700 metres the growing season is short, and barley is one of the few grains that can ripen in time. Mustard, peas, lentils, kidney beans and potatoes grow alongside it in small terraced fields held up by stone walls and watered by channels from the mountain streams.

Cutting and Drying

The harvest begins around September, roughly a hundred days after sowing. Families cut the stalks with a sickle, called a zora, and lay them upside down on the field for a couple of days to dry. The bundles are then carried home and stacked in heaps, where they dry further for about two weeks before threshing.

Working Together

No family can finish this alone, so neighbours work each other’s fields in turn. Ladakhi villages call this shared labour langde, and it means every harvest gets in without hiring outside help. Much of the work in the fields is done by women.

Threshing and Winnowing

Traditionally, the dry crop is spread on a round threshing ground of packed earth. Dzo, cows and horses walk in circles over it to loosen the grain, and in many villages a song keeps them moving. Two people then stand facing each other with wooden forks and toss the grain into the air. The wind carries the chaff away and the heavy grain falls back down. The straw is kept to feed the animals through winter.

A Sign of a Good Harvest

In many Ladakhi homes, a few of the best ears are tied to a pillar of the house as a sign of a good harvest.

A Changing Way of Farming

Farming here is changing. Many younger people now work in tourism and other jobs, and fewer households depend only on their fields. Still, families keep sowing barley, and the harvest remains the time when the village works side by side.

Visiting at Harvest Time

By September, the wild roses along the field edges have turned to red hips. Guests staying in a homestay during harvest may be able to join their host family in the fields, depending on the household. To a visitor, the golden terraces are a view. To us, they are a year of shared work, and the harvest is how we mark its end.