Daring to be Still
In 1975, I was invited to accompany a film crew on an expedition to Ladakh – a remote and ancient kingdom on the Western edge of the Tibetan Plateau that had only just been opened up to the outside world. Crossing over the mighty Himalayas, we arrived in a breathtakingly beautiful Shangri-La. The wide-open smiles of people exhibited great contentedness and confidence, and the hum of Buddhist mantras filled the air.
Ladakh brought an incredible lightness to my being, and I decided to stay on after the film-crew left. I ended up spending much of every year in Ladakh for the next 40 years.
Traditional Ladakhi communities were in charge of their own destinies. They relied on one another – and on the plants and animals around them – to meet their physical,
