Landscapes of memory along a contested corridor

 

“Not all frontiers draw their lines with wire and warning.

Some frontiers speak in orchards, water channels, and an older, slower grammar of staying.”

 

A Summer Borrowed from Routine

By June of 2015, my life had become a well-tempered checklist. The laptop opened to the same avalanche of tabs each morning; the coffee cooled at the same paragraph; the deadlines arrived with the regularity of trains that never dared be late. I was making a living and misplacing a life—one carefully planned deliverable at a time.

Ladakh had, by then, become my recurring antidote. But that summer, when I finally carved a thin wedge of days out of the calendar, I wasn’t called by the famous conversations—Khardung La’s theater, Pangong’s loud blue, Nubra’s soft dunes. What tugged at me instead was a quieter sentence on the map, a line that ran west of Leh along the lower Indus and then bent toward a name that felt like an intake of breath: Batalik.

It was the word’s mix of softness and iron that got me. Say it aloud and the consonants arrive like small stone steps; let it linger and you hear echoes—of a corridor long contested, of villages that learned to keep their hours steady while history ran hot through the valley, of orchards tying memory to land with the humble precision of irrigation channels.

We told ourselves this was a recce, that work allowed the indulgence because future trips might depend on what we found. In truth, I wanted to walk through a place where people still spoke in the language of staying, not leaving; where war and work had both been normalized into daily chores, but where quiet still chose the last word.

 

The Indus at Our Shoulder: Leh to Khaltse

We left Leh early, not with the fever of a rally but with the patience of people who hoped to be taught. Past the palace ruins that watch the town with the patient sternness of elders; past Spituk with its reluctant morning bells; past the familiar bend where the Indus and Zanskar fold into each other like two stubborn rivers forced to share a sentence. The road west sits on the Indus’ left shoulder for long stretches—sometimes confident on a ledge above, sometimes tentative on a narrow strip that seems borrowed from the water’s generosity.

BRO signboards kept their end of the conversation. “Be Gentle On My Curves,” the yellow placards begged. “After Whisky, Driving Risky.” Old jokes, still useful. Basgo’s ochre ruins arrived and left like a stern parent’s cough. Alchi tempted with its painted quiet—I waved a mental apology and kept going. The day wanted us further.

At Khaltse, the Indus crosses under a purposeful bridge and the road climbs a notch. A small tea stall kept alive by the eternal trinity of biscuits, Maggi, and gossip gave us our first news of the corridor. “Bema’s apricots will be early,” the man at the kettle said, thumb pointing downstream as if the fruit had agreed to a schedule with him. He asked the question that lives on every road in Ladakh: “Where?” We said “Batalik,” and his face did something like a nod before the muscles actually moved. “Go respectful,” he said. “There are memories.”

Permits were checked and annotated in that Ladakhi way—efficient without raising its voice. We were reminded not to photograph checkposts, bridges, units, and installations. Not because anyone was cruel, but because the corridor had earned the right to be cautious. We promised the way grateful people promise: with eye contact.

 

Bema: A First Lesson in Soft Speeches

Southwest of Khaltse, the Indus runs broader, slower, heavier with summer. The mountains step back just enough to allow villages to imagine themselves permanent. Bema was the first of these—stone houses wearing their wooden balconies like shy jewelry, apricot shade settling onto courtyards, irrigation channels gossiping between fields of barley and buckwheat.

We didn’t arrive as explorers. We arrived as customers for tea. That is how you learn a place—by giving it the dignity of work. The woman at the kettle poured salt tea and sweet tea in quick alternation, as if to see which belonged to our mouths. Both did. She asked where we were headed and, when we answered, she said the sentence I would hear in different accents over and over on this road: “Go slow. There is nothing to chase.”

A boy in a red sweater held a half-built wooden toy and asked a question I still can’t forget for its simplicity: “You have come to see?” It did not carry the suspicion we’ve grown used to in places where tourism is a blunt instrument. It held curiosity, yes, but also a reminder. Seeing is a job and a responsibility.

The river ran metallic green under the sun, moving as if it was late for something only it understood. We let Bema put its small order into our day—tea, a chat about rain and roads, a reminder to buy apricot kernels later, a warning about a crossing where the Indus had been moody.

 

Dha & Hanu: Stones That Remember Names

We turned off along a spur where the valley narrows—toward Dha and Hanu—villages whose names often travel on the same breath as phrases like “ancient Dardic” and “distinctive traditions.” It would be easy to turn these places into specimens; many have tried. We did not come to label. We came to listen.

Stone greeted us first. Homes here have a heft that remembers winter. Lintels were carved with modest patterns not meant for cameras, only for doors. Fields hung on slope; willows and poplars stood as if the wind had been kind first and a disciplinarian later. Women walked with the confidence of people whose lists were longer than ours. Men argued with stone in ways that resulted in walls.

A small gompa at the edge of one hamlet held a room of warmth—butter lamps, a faint trace of juniper smoke, a drum that seemed to hum even when no hand moved. Outside, the mani wall wasn’t neat; it was loved. I spun one wheel, but more out of gratitude than entitlement.

We were invited to sit in a courtyard where apricot kernels dried on a tarp and a girl with wild hair repeatedly tried and failed to balance one on her nose, laughing each time as if failure were the point. The elder of the house wore her headgear in a way that was both ordinary and ceremonial—seed and flower tucked with care, silver lying heavy on history’s collarbone. I did not photograph—not without asking—and when I asked, she refused with a smile. It wasn’t a rejection of me. It was an affirmation of her right to keep her face for her people.

We spoke instead about water—its assignment through channels (each family’s turn written in memory rather than ink), how much the river had taken in the last decade, how much it had given. She pointed to a wall where a faint line marked the flood of a year I remembered only as a headline. For her, it was a calendar entry with a smell and a sound.

“The valley did not present itself for inspection. It offered work to my attention: carry, listen, wait.”

 

Between Villages and Checkposts: The Corridor’s Low Voice

A checkpost near Darchik asked for our permits again, not suspiciously but as if reminding us of the corridor’s terms. A young jawan with a smile that had learned to be careful asked whether we had enough water. He pointed to a patch where the river had eaten a ledge last season. “Drive closer to the mountain,” he said, “even if the road suggests otherwise.”

A truck stopped while we waited, its back piled with hay and a few children waving under it as if it were a fort. The driver wore his cap backward and his patience forward. He handed the jawan a packet of biscuits, a bro-code of a frontline that is more neighborhood than theater. I have seen borders that shout. This one whispered—in warnings, permissions, small exchanges of generosity.

We passed Garkon, where terraces stacked themselves into the hillside as neatly as clauses in a careful sentence. In the distance, bunkers built into rock were left over from years when arguments got loud. I tried to look without staring, the way one looks at scars on a friend’s arm and decides to love without interrogating.

 

The Bend Toward Memory: Approaching Batalik

The road to Batalik narrows into intention. The Indus—the only extrovert in a valley of introverts—tightens its grip on stone; the mountains make fewer allowances for mistakes. The village itself announces with understatement: a cluster of houses whose wooden balconies shelter apricots and opinions, a mosque with a voice that knows when to listen, a school whose roofline can count winter exactly, a shop that sells pins and pencils and the ancient human hope that a tool is a step toward dignity.

We checked into a small homestay run by a family that treated hospitality as a craft rather than a performance. The father, Yaqoob, had hands like deliberations. The mother, Fatima, moved as if winter still required efficiency in summer. Their teenage son was a pair of legs and a grin, bringing tea before questions. The room had a low bed, clean quilts, a window that understood light, and a bucket whose price in that heat was worth any bill.

We set our bags down in the way you set down your pride in a place that has no use for it.

 

“Some places will sell you a view. Batalik made me earn a gaze.”

 

A Walk Down to the Water

The Indus at Batalik isn’t a river so much as a decision. It moves with the confidence of water that remembers the work of glaciers and the tug of gravity across ages. We walked down to a place where stone, for once, stepped back. Children with river legs skipped between boulders. A boy flung a line, not expecting fish so much as remembering how to throw. The sky was doing its Ladakhi trick—blue to the horizon, clouds pretending to be harmless, sun practicing severity in short bursts.

Across the water, terraces climbed in tight ladders. Beyond them, the slope toughened and then broke into outcrops where, someone told us, vikas (fox) sometimes watched the village as if taking attendance. I crouched to scoop water over my face and felt the particular shock of summer Indus—cold without cruelty, an instruction to remain awake.

I tried to imagine Batalik in winter—the water tightening its arguments into ice, the valley narrowing from geography into necessity, the conversations turning inward, the same checkposts translated into snow. Summer gives us the illusion of options. Winter teaches the truth: stay or leave; both are verbs with biographies attached.

 

Dinner in a Room That Had Learned Important Weather

Back at the homestay, dinner was a syllabus disguised as comfort: barley rotis with that grain’s friendly heft; greens cooked with garlic that meant business; dal thick with the kind of patience kitchens learn from grandmothers; a mutton stew (for the others) whose aroma kept my vegetarian vows respectful and resolute; apricot chutney that made the whole table feel like a story told by a fruit.

Fatima didn’t so much serve as practice her choreography, moving bowls and napkins as if she were adjusting planets. Yaqoob asked about our road, our tires, our health. When we told him we had no complaints, he looked pleased as a teacher whose students have learned the first principle: listen to the mountain.

After dinner, we sat on the low verandah. The adhan drifted from the mosque, merging with the Indus in a harmony I had not expected. Somewhere, a dog answered a night it respected. The generator coughed to an agreement with the dark and then settled into obligation. Stars started appearing as if the valley had rung a bell.

Yaqoob spoke of 1999 without drama. “We had rooms in the ground,” he said, not bunker but room—the way one would talk about a kitchen or store. “We kept the children there when the sound came down from the ridge.” He patted the air as if calming a horse. “It was a long few months. We grew used to counting things we had never counted before.” He didn’t need to say what. Silence finished the sentence.

I listened and realized that quiet here wasn’t the absence of noise. It was a learned skill—the ability to carry history and still proceed with the day’s work.

 

Morning: A Corridor of Chores

Morning in Batalik is efficiency softened by ceremony. The water channels are checked first—whose turn, which valve, how much. Goats are argued with; sheep are convinced; a cow decides for everyone else. Bread is rolled; tea is poured. The sun climbs with a bureaucrat’s steadiness.

We walked the lane. On a wooden gallery, a woman and a girl sorted apricots into baskets—the fruit still blushing, the unripe set aside for the evening. She offered one to me and, in the mountain custom, I refused twice before accepting. It was not the best apricot I’ve ever eaten. It was the most context an apricot has ever carried into my mouth.

At the school, a teacher wrote the word river on the blackboard and asked his class to define it without mentioning water. A boy raised his hand and said, “A thing that teaches stone to move.” Everyone laughed, including the teacher, who looked like the kind of man who likes it when definitions argue.

At the shop, we bought what we didn’t need—matchboxes, safety pins, biscuits—because the economy of small places is built not just on necessity but on participation. The shopkeeper studied our faces and said, “You came last night; today you look like you belong.” He meant we had found the village’s tempo and were no longer walking through it as if it were a screen.

 

A Ridge, a Bunker, a Breath

Yaqoob’s brother took me up a ridge that used to be nothing but stone and is now stone plus memory. He preferred to stay unnamed, and I understood. We climbed in switchbacks our lungs had not approved. Sedge, wild rose, a few tough grasses, and then the stubborn company of lichen. From the ridge, the river braided through light and stone, villages set like punctuation along its margins.

He pointed without pointing. “That slope,” he said, “was once very talkative.” He meant artillery, return fire, orders shouted into wind that carried them away anyway. “Now it is quiet. We do not complain.” We sat on a boulder that had warmed itself overnight by remembering the day. He told me how in those months, information traveled in whispers and in tea—mothers passing news with bread, children adjusting games so they could be called inside quickly without a fuss.

Then he told me something I will carry always: “When everything is loud, you learn to speak to your own heart in a small voice—so it can hear you.”

We descended because the sun had begun its business for the day. On the way down, he showed me a slope where buckwheat grows best and a wall the river had convinced to move two winters ago. We stepped around a raven who saw no reason to yield his patch of air to two humans who were already in debt to gravity.

 

Markets of Memory: Kargil and Back

We could have turned east from Batalik and threaded back to Leh by the same road. Instead, we chose the slightly larger arc: Batalik to Kargil, then Kargil to Khaltse, then Lamayuru and home. I wanted to see how the corridor fed into a town and how the town fed the corridor.

The drive out of Batalik wears the season’s heat like a coat it plans to take off at the first opportunity. The hamboting La spur (locals will tell you a dozen alignments; the important thing is the views) offered a vantage where the whole lower Indus pretended to be obedient. Kargil arrived with its particular music: shops selling school uniforms and memory cards, tailors arguing with hem and cuff, bakers arranging kulchas and sheermal in patterns that suggest geometry is edible.

At the market, we bought apricot oil decanted into old Pepsi bottles, an emblem of human economies that reuse and survive. I asked the shopkeeper whether the oil was from Bema or Darchik; he smiled and said, “From the river.” Fair enough. Labels are for people like me; lineage is for people like him.

We did not stay long. Kargil is less a destination and more a node—the place where roads confide in each other, where winter is a full-time job, where you can buy a plug that will fit a socket you didn’t know you had.

We took the road east, and the Moonland began—not the romantic notion, but the erosion that carves lamasery into stone. Lamayuru’s monastery held the landscape in a kind of tender custody. We stopped, bowed, and left—because some days your attention should remain with the river you have just been learning, not with the icon it has helped sculpt.

 

Interlude: Ethics for a Corridor That Remembers

I try to write these interludes before memory becomes myth. They’re not rules; they’re reminders—for me, most of all.

• Ask before shooting. People are not backdrops. Soldiers are not props. Checkposts are not souvenirs. If someone says no, accept the gift of clarity.
• Spend where you stand. Tea stalls and homestays are the infrastructure of dignity. Pay fairly. Tip a little extra at season’s end.
• Dress like a conversation is possible. In villages where conservatism keeps communities intact, modest clothing is participatory respect.
• Speak softly about 1999. It’s not a quiz category. If stories come to you, hold them clean. If they don’t, let silence do its work.
• Don’t geotag vulnerable places. The corridor balances security and visitation on a thin wire. Don’t shake it for likes.
• Carry your trash back. If it’s light when you buy it, it’s lighter when it’s empty. The Indus has enough to carry.
• Listen for instructions that arrive as suggestions. “Go slow.” “Not here.” “Better tomorrow.” In Ladakh, the softest words carry the hardest wisdom.

 

The Return as Rehearsal

The road back to Leh felt shorter and longer at once. Shorter, because the valley now knew us and allowed us to move through it without commentary. Longer, because the valley had inscribed more details into our looking—the way light pools under willows at four in the afternoon; the way stone walls lean into apricot trees as if asking for pardon; the way children carry water in old cooking oil cans because the river is not in the lane, not always.

At Khaltse, the tea tasted like reprieve. At Basgo, the ruins looked less desolate and more resolved, as if stones do, in fact, vote on how they would like to end. At Nimmu, the confluence rehearsed its daily drama and won again.

We reached Leh with a thin film of dust on our skin and a thicker layer of context under it. The guesthouse owner asked how far we got, and we told him. He pressed his palms together with a kind of priestly relief. “Good you went,” he said. “That road teaches manners.”

 

The People Who Stayed in My Pockets

Back at my desk, I emptied the shallow pockets of my notebook and found receipts for small purchases that carried more weight than invoices ever do. A slip with Yaqoob’s number on it, Fatima’s instruction about apricot oil in winter (“on the soles, not on the face”), the teacher’s definition of river, Noor’s drawing of a tree (he had followed us down the lane once, played with my pen, smiled, and then ran)—these were my souvenirs.

I thought of the soldier at the bend to Thang who had told me, in a sentence without adjectives, what it means to wait. I thought of the elder in Dha who refused my photograph and gave me a story instead. I thought of the boy in Bema who asked if we had come to see, and how I had learned that seeing is not the same as looking.

 

The Corridor’s Grammar: Stone, Water, Work

If you asked me now to define Batalik’s quiet resolve, I would not start with the war, though the war lives in the stone. I would start with work. The water channels whose turns are remembered by dawn, the apricot harvest that ensures lamps and skin and pans will glow through winter, the walls that hold when the river attempts persuasion, the rooms in the ground that were dug and kept ready; these are the verbs of the corridor.

I would add listening—to the river’s edge when it offers a choice between two roads, to the elder’s voice when she says “now,” to the child’s correction when you mispronounce the village name, to the checkpost’s suggestion that “today is better than tomorrow” or vice versa.

And then I would add refusal—the gentle refusal to allow those months of 1999 to define the only story; the firm refusal to become museum or spectacle; the daily refusal to let fear undress dignity.

“Batalik isn’t loud because it doesn’t have to prove it survived. It’s quiet because it intends to keep doing so.”

 

A Small Cartography of Return

I know I’ll go back. Not to repeat an itinerary, but to tend a relationship. I want to sit again on Yaqoob’s verandah and watch the river practice deciding. I want to buy apricot kernels from Bema and pretend, for a few winter weeks, that the corridor has sent me a season in a paper bag. I want to walk once more through Dha and Hanu and ask someone to teach me the names of the things I call “flower” and “grass” and “grain,” because correct names are small acts of love.

I want to stand at that checkpost where the jawan asked if we had enough water and say, “Yes, and thank you for asking.” I want to stand in the mosque’s wooden quiet again and let the adhan and the river braid a sound in my chest that emails can’t dislodge. I want to sit in the school and hear, one more time, how children define river without mentioning water.

And yes, if work cooperates, I want to bring others—not to “show them,” but to place them gently in rooms where kettles boil and people have time to accept or refuse their company. To travel in this corridor is to perform apprenticeship. It is not an acquisition. It is not a conquest. It is not an “experience” to be consumed.

It is a relationship to be honored.

 

The River at the Edge of My Desk

Back home, the Indus took up residence at the edge of my desk. I catch myself, in the middle of a well-behaved morning, turning the cap on a Pepsi bottle full of apricot oil, inhaling, and remembering Fatima’s instruction: “On the soles, not on the face.” I rub a little into my fingers and they become, for a second, useful again.

The laptop still opens to too many tabs. The calendar still likes the sound of itself. But the corridor—Bema, Dha, Hanu, Garkon, Batalik—has given me a new unit of time: from kettle whistle to the last sip; from the river’s green flare to its steel; from a child’s question to my attempting an answer that doesn’t lie.

Sometimes, while writing, I hear the corridor’s whisper: Go slow. There is nothing to chase. The line steadies my hand. The sentence learns to breathe. The day remembers that work is not war, and if it begins to feel like one, there is a road west, along a river with a long memory, to a village that changed countries but kept its soul—and will lend you, for a few days, enough quiet to hear your own.

 

Practical Notes (because ethics travel better than itineraries)

• Permits: In 2015, we obtained permits in Leh for the Dah–Hanu–Batalik corridor. Expect checkposts and be respectful—they’re part of the valley’s immune system. Rules evolve; ask locally and obey gladly.
• Photography: Avoid shooting checkposts, bridges, installations, and personnel. Ask before photographing people; if the answer is no, keep the moment, not the image.
• Homestays: Choose them over hotels when you can. They are libraries of local knowledge disguised as beds.
• Season: Summer opens roads and orchards; winter narrows the world and deepens listening. Both are teachers. Travel with humility in either.
• Spending: Tea, bread, oil, fruit, small repairs—these are the vectors of dignity in the corridor. Use them.
• Pace: The road’s speed limit is also a wisdom limit. Go slow. The corridor will not tolerate hurry without charging interest.

And if you need a single line to carry with you past the last checkpost and into your next weekday, let it be this:

“Go respectful. There are memories