The love For 'Himalayas'.

'Tu jo muskaye, tu jo sharmaye...
Jaise mera hai Khuda jhumtaa...'

In love with the very word Himalaya !

Many friends post pictures of mountains from all over the world. Places like the Swiss Alps are so very beautiful. But they never 'connect' with me. These places invoke nothing in my heart.

Whereas the very thought of the Himalaya, stirs something inside me. Maybe it's our grounding, maybe it's spiritual, maybe it's our culture, maybe our roots, who knows.

All I know is that it's love at first sight with the Himalaya !

Unreal, like a mirage !

• Ladakh is a high altitude desert as the Himalaya creates a rain shadow, generally denying entry to monsoon clouds.
• The main source of water is the winter snowfall on the mountains.
• The sheer grit of the local people, creates these isolated patches of farming.
• Greening initiatives can go wrong, primarily because of lack of prior experience.
• The Defense Research and Development Organisation, is pushing farmers to diversify crops and has planted hundreds of trees to counter land erosion and desertification, and to assure growing demand of wood.
• The greening process in Ladakh does require large amounts of water.
• There isn’t much public knowledge about the impact of larger forest areas on local raining patterns.

For posterity's sake, we hope they strike the right balance.

This is Tagar, an extension of Sakti village, on the outskirts of Leh town in Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir. July 2008.

Picture taken early morning, from a moving car.