February’s was the first meeting of 2010, the January one having been cancelled because of the bad weather. There was a backlog of business to attend to. It was agreed that the £110.10 raised at our Christmas lunch should be donated to BLESMA, the British Limbless Ex Servicemen’s Association. BLESMA helps injured service personnel and has been active since WWI. It is very busy at the moment because of the casualties from Iraq and Afghanistan. Visitors were welcomed and birthday cards distributed before our president, Mrs. Sue Smith, introduced our speaker, Mr. Bernard Trapp.

The title of Mr. Trapp’s talk was ‘The Last Shangri La’ and it was illustrated with excellent slides.

He took us to Ladakah, India, in the Himalayas, close to Tibet and I had the impression we were hopping over borders. We heard that the winters are very harsh and the roads the group traveled on are only open four months of the year. The roads were very steep, narrow and winding. They, of course, had to be maintained and the people who worked on them were poorly paid and worked under great hardships, especially as some parts were so high they were likely to get altitude sickness and their clothing was rarely suitable.

Rocks have to be split and reduced to rubble by hand and the tar has to be heated over primitive fires and there was no machinery to help at all. We even saw young girls splitting stones for a living in other parts of the region.

The picture of the principle town Leah with such a profusion of potholes made me stop fretting about the condition of our own roads. In contrast we saw magnificent temples, one completely gilded – yet all around there was abject poverty. In spite of this the people were neatly and colourfully dressed, especially when they visited the temples or the healing pool at the Golden Temple.

The majority of people are Buddhists and the Dalai Lama set up his establishment in the area after feeling from Tibet and the Chinese regime. All visitors have to obey the religious rules by removing their shoes and washing their feet if they wish to visit the Holy places. The group was able to witness the reverence with which the Holy symbols were treated and the Guru appointed to read the Holy book to the public sat in an enclosure to do so.

We were shown Holy prayer stands in very remote places. Prayer flags, probably bought from the monks who make them, surrounded these. Pictures of the ornate prayer wheels were interesting but we were unable to hear the tinkle of bells within them.

Transport throughout was difficult and the locals use mules and horses but some manage to get a ride on the roof of a bus (sometimes for days). Mr. Trapp and his party travelled by small bus, which was often hazardous.

In the area of Amritsar there is a large army presence and we saw school children catching the ‘school bus’, which was an army lorry. To our surprise the children were dressed in very conventional British-style uniforms and could have been leaving an up-market prep school. In contrast we saw people ploughing with oxen women carrying loads on their heads and very heavy special baskets on their backs (some men did this too). Some of the locals wore very colourful dress and looked very proud in it while some who had come from Tibet still wore their own national costume.

Some sat by the roadside in their elegant clothing ready to sell their goods and we were very surprised by their vegetable stalls as they contained all the vegetables we might grow and looked to be in very good condition. The tiny shops had some surprises too as they stocked drinks like Fanta and Coke, not to mention Kit Kats.

Life on this trip was sometimes difficult as the roads were scary and the accommodation was sometimes doubtful even in proper hotels where guests had visits from monkeys and geckos. One hotel was tented and guests slept in army fashion with their feet to the central pole. Some of the toilets were beyond description.

We saw team pickers at work but the end result in some areas was not to the travelers’’ liking - the tea with salt, sugar and yak milk was put in a long tube with a plunger to mix it, butter was added before it was served. The scenery was outstanding and the people were obviously well worth meeting but some other aspects did not really invite some of us to try for ourselves.
Mrs. Meg Sharp thanked Mr. Trapp on our behalf.