Mornings in Leh

The sun comes up at 5am. My bed (mattress, rather) is up against the wall with the window in it. Being 3500 meters closer to the sun than back in Bombay, the curtains are defenceless against the brightness. Tiredness tends to allow sleep for another hour or hour and a half. By 6:30, I can’t help but wake up. Once I’m up, it’s nearly impossible to go back to sleep. When asleep, my eyes are shut tighter than usual and my eyelids are weighed down with blocks of iron. Opening my eyes in the morning means fighting all that resistance. The fighting isn’t all that difficult to do since the light does most of it for me. How I wish it didn’t. But the blocks of iron leave for good once I open my eyes. 

Now I’m up. This is generally followed by sitting up in the now frigid mattress holding the blanket close to my body for about fifteen minutes. When I tire of staring into space, I get up to use the loo. Now this is a traditional compost toilet. So I must head downstairs armed with sufficient toilet paper and resolve. Still woozy and drowsy, I must crouch over the hole in the ground and do my business. Toilet paper never leaves me feeling clean enough. When God gave us the jet spray, why must we waste so much paper? 

Now I head to the kitchen. There I put two big vessels of water on the stove to heat up. This tends to take time. I go upstairs and bring down an empty bucket. I then sit down to read a chapter from ‘The Humorous World of Jerome K. Jerome’. By then the water is generally hot enough. I pour it into the bucket and lug up to the bathroom. I then pause and catch my breath. I take a mug of water to brush my teeth with. Before I begin, I dip my hands into the warm water. This is always my favourite part of the day. My fingers live for those few moments of warmth. 

Bathing is the next big ritual which is done with half a bucket of wonderfully warm water. Standing on the cold bathroom floor barefoot and naked is chilling even to think of. Having a bath is a combination of experiencing icy cold and welcoming warmth. Pouring the warm water over myself, I feel toastier than I do even inside a jacket and layers of blankets. But the moment I lay down the mug and begin to soap, it feels like I’m running a block of ice over my body while the cold air gushes around me and tickles me to the bone. This I try to do in as few seconds as possible before getting to pour that last bit of water over myself again. The three steps I take across the floor toward my towel makes me shiver- almost like a wet dog after its bath. 

Dry and clothed and groomed, I head down for breakfast. This is no ordeal. It’s generally toast (cheese optional) and tea or coffee. Maybe even Maggi noodles. So far, the yummiest breakfast I’ve put together was chopping up a banana onto a slice of toasted bread and covering it with another slice of toast covered with peanut butter. The sandwich was very filling and incredibly tasty. 

By now, it’s about 8:30 and that leaves me with two hours before work starts. Now I begin to feel sleepy and cold again. I try not to doze off. I do things like reading a book or writing in my diary. For example, here I am writing this blog post. 

None of the above paragraphs are complaints, mind you. They may be annoying, testing, mean and exasperatingly unavoidable things to do, but I’m not complaining- at all.