Mature Flâneur

The Waterfall That Changed My World

In Ladakh, a new way of seeing

Rust-red Himalayan desert (Note: This is not Ladakh, as I have no photos from that time. I took this photo in Mustang, Nepal, which has similar terrain and TIbetan Buddhist culture — note the monumental Stupa just above the cultivated valley on the bank of a mountain stream. The story below took place in a similar location). Photo credit: Tim Ward

I’m going to tell you about a waterfall so small and insignificant that it doesn’t appear on any map. It can be found in the Himalayas in a ravine high above Hemis Monastery in Ladakh, India. It is a waterfall that changed my perception of the world, irrevocably and forever. I seldom tell this story and am only sharing it here in response to the March Globetrotter’s monthly challenge to write about a special waterfall in your life.

I had come to Ladakh in the summer of 1984, intent on studying Buddhism and had settled on Hemis Monastery because I had learned the lama there spoke English. He was the 12th Drukchen Rimpoche — that is, the 12th incarnation of the founding lama of the Drukpa Kagyu sect of Tibetan Buddhism. He was also only 22 years old in his “current body,” and so had been educated in India, which is why he spoke English, unlike most older lamas who had fled from Chinese-occupied Tibet.

12th Gyalwang Drukpa - Wikipedia