They say the color blue… has a deep connection with the city of Leh…

… They say the god that brought life to the world was himself, born in Leh… And, the first thing that the god saw when he opened his eyes was sky… henceforth, the god tried and tried to make things in the world as blue as the sky, but never could. And to this day, all things that are blue in the world, try to be as blue as the sky above Leh…

It has been about a week now traveling through this wild landscape. Traversing passes, dozens of switchbacks, dirt roads, ledges… that climb 3,000 feet up the side of a mountain… where I expect the top, instead is the basin of yet another magnificent range of jagged peaks set into the blue Ladakhi sky. Up the ladder…

Through massive canyons… crisscrossing the headwaters of the Indus that drains some thousands of miles behind us into the Arabian sea… through the small mud-brick villages with thatched roofs…  Leaving the villages with tiled mosque-minarets near the Pakistan border… into the villages with-white washed stupas with golden caps like beacons that measure neither distance nor time as we near Tibet…Up more…climbing more… more space… More blue sky…

Star photo-session in Lamayuru Monastery…

Stupas at Thiksey Monastery

Thiksey herself….

11 more days… in the blue sky… Loving Leh…

Alex