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2003-07-06/07 - Leh (Day 82-83)

I've realized that everything seems to feel "normal" now - the food, the cows on the streets, the power going off for hours at any time of the day, the blaring horns - it all has lost its sense of newness for me. According to the books on culture shock, the timing is just about right, between the 2nd and 3nd month in a place, one will cease to have the amazement of a tourist and one will get used to the place. I find that losing that sense of wonder to be quite saddening though. Looking for photos is getting harder as things once strange become increasingly familiar. Good or bad, I am becoming accustomed to all that strangeness which is India.

Most of these couple of days have been spent reading, though I spend one afternoon buying silver from the Tibetan markets and even more unique look through several hundred of the Mugal miniature paintings which have such a deep flavor of Arabic and Islamic culture. As I am on the border of the Islamic portions of India, the flavor of that culture is starting to seep into what I am seeing and these paintings are an example. With the beauty of illuminations from the Islamic books, they have been done on old paper and carry with them a sense of age. I asked a shop owner to show me a few which turned into the two of us going through book after book of the paintings, sitting on small benches and sending out for cups of chai, as I look through each one fascinated by the level of detail in the scenes.

However, we haggle to a point where neither the shop owner nor I are going to budge but there is a large gap between us.. I leave the store disappointed we could not reach a deal as there were some beautiful paintings but I will just have to think about them for a while.

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