Gompa And Pangong Tso, Ladakh, India
Beautiful Buddhist gompa in a spectacular landscape at Pangong Tso, Ladakh, India.
Here’s a favorite image of mine, from years gone by, featuring a gompa overlooking the marvellous Pangong Tso (i.e., Pangong Lake) in Ladakh, in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in northern India.
A gompa is a monastery, or other religious building, common to Tibetan regions of the Himalayas.
While I’m not sure exactly what year I created this image, it was made with a Hasselblad camera and Hasselblad Carl Zeiss 150 mm f/4 Sonnar lens sometime in the early to mid 90’s.
In addition to the gompa, you’ll notice cultivated fields running down to the lake, dwarfed by the view across to the mountain range in the background.
We arrived, hours later than expected, and not long before this image was made.
I distinctly remember a sudden spurt of energy, no doubt brought on by the beautiful but fading light.
After a breathless climb up a steep hillside I paused, with labored breathing in the rarefied air, to look down onto this glorious scene. Soon after, the late afternoon light passed below the mountains behind me, plunging the scene into cold, flat light.
While Pangong Tso and the surrounding landscape are truly beautiful to behold, it’s in a wild, remote and, over recent times, disputed part of the world.
China now controls the 50% of the lake that’s located in Tibet, while India controls 40% within Indian-administrated Ladakh. Ownership of the remaining 10% of Pangong Iso is in dispute between the two countries.
Vehicle breakdown on the road to Pangong Tso, Ladakh, India.
The Road To Pangong Tso
It was my third journey to Ladakh, and the trip to Pangong Tso involved a grueling 4-wheel drive adventure, with numerous break downs along the way.
At 4,250 meters (13,900 feet) above sea level, the lake is 134 km long and 5 km across at its widest point. Despite being salt water, the entire lake freezes over in winter.
The drive from Leh, the capital of Ladakh, to Pangong Tso traverses the Changla pass, the third highest pass in the world.
Spanmik, the tiny village on either side of the gompa, seemed to be almost deserted the night I stayed. Though I did see some shepherds herding their flocks back towards the village after having grazed them nearby.
Back then, it was a total medieval scene to behold.
Nevertheless my traveling companion and I were treated to a bonfire on which a sheep was cooked my the muslim school teacher station at Spanmik. It was quite an experience eating freshly slaughtered meat, by a raging fire, under a star laden sky.
These days there’s a tent city for tourists during the season but, back then, we ate in the grounds of the single room school and slept, under the stars, on the ground outside.
Pangong Tso and The Function Of Art
I exhibited this image as part of a Masters in Photography I completed at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) in the mid 90’s. Many of the images from that exhibition were displayed with accompanying text.
The text for this particular image read as follows:
“She was his first great love
He thought on his life
And wondered what he would do when she was gone.”
Juxtaposing the image with the text was designed to produce a somewhat ambiguous result. It causes folks to think about the image in a way far removed from how they otherwise would.
In this case the objective was to illicit memory and imaginings, my own and those of my audience.
I believe that the function of art is not so much to provide answers, but to ask questions and provoke thoughtful response.
Ultimately, I hope that folks will extract their own meanings and interpretations from my photos. By placing more poetic, non caption-based text alongside the image at the top of this post, I hoped to intensify the viewers interaction and response beyond what they would otherwise expect by looking at the image in isolation.
Glenn Guy, Travel Photography Guru, at Pangong Tso in Ladakh, India.
Pangong Tso: A Very Personal Connection
The he in the text is me, while the she refers to my dear old mum. Mares passed away, at 93 years of age, a few years ago.
It’s amazing how our mind is sometimes concentrated on the most important aspects of life when we immerse ourselves in foreign cultures and exotic locales. Mix physical activity, stress, fatigue, exhilaration and beauty together and such insights are likely to be quite intense.
That’s certainly been my experience, again and again, over years of travel photography adventures.
I guess I was experiencing all of the above and that’s what brought my sub-conscious to the fore when I made this image.
Pangong Tso is a spectacular location and I'm grateful for the opportunity to have photographed there. But it's the deep connection I felt with my mum, while photographing that particular landscape, that's most important to me.
What a wonderful thing to be amidst such awesome natural beauty and to be reminded of what is most important in one’s life: love and family.
Visiting Pangong Tso was an amazing experience for me, and the photo that resulted, after all these years, still brings me great joy.
Glenn Guy, Travel Photography Guru
