Before the trucks came,
the mountain spirits knew where we belonged

Before the trucks came,
the bubbling streams were the focus of our homes

 But when the trucks came,
we began to doubt what we'd known all along

When the trucks came, we were told
we were poor, we were dumb, we were wrong!

 It all started in '69 when they
opened up the borders ...

Over high passes and into our land
came folks from every quarter

Some were amazed to see the scenery,

Some were entranced by our
Buddhist philosophy

But we came face to face with the
ghosts of an age that didn't sing our songs

They took our children to train in schools
that stole their mother tongue

They took our young men into an army
that turned them into automatons

And I heard today that in a monastry
three Buddhist monks were killed

Now the town's death quiet with a brittle curfew -
just as the zealots willed

 In the final years of the century
resistance began to grow

Thousands of women from across the land
remembered what they already knew

'We'll take pride in who we are...
our customs, food and land

We'll meet this global storm with spirit,
we'll lead our children to a conscious land'

Now the mountain spirits
know where we belong

And the bubbling streams
are the focus of our homes

We no longer doubt
what we've known all along

We tell this tale as a
warning to what can go wrong!

Deep in the Northern Indian Himalaya, inaccessable by road in winter, Ladakh is an ecologically harsh high-altitude desert that supports life only along the occasional valleys carrying glacial and snow melt-water from the 6000 meter peaks above.

The air here is cool, clear and very thin. We huff and puff up th steps to our room. Our Ladaki mother - 'ame-le' has two husbands the brothers Chennmo and Norbu. This practise was common in Ladakh until recently and has the great advantage of keeping the population down and the land together.

After 12 hours of weeding every blade of grass from the veg patch with an enthusiasm that even to most ravenous crow couldn't muster we headed for the huge Denjang kitchen. Life for the family begins at 5 - cleaning , drinking tea, prayer room offering. Then it's off to the fields at 6 or to the yard for milking.

Meme-le (the grandfather) visited last night. Such a tiny wrinkled man you've never seen. He sat crosslegged on the floor in a puffy blue anorack and black crocheted trousers and an very unlikely (so we thought) crusty hair-do (very short on top and shoulder-length whisps down the back behind).

The walks around the house and up the stream are magical. The land buzzes with energy, life coaxed out of the desert through the labours of a thousand hands building canals, walls, terraced fields and small stone dams.

The desert itself is intense - orange, brown-yellow, free-standing rocks and columns, landslides and marmot networks of caves and burrows. I have tried to capture the scene in paint... the light moves, collapsing and sliding into something entirely different in minutes.

"Turn back, turn back"

Leh is in turmoil... people are pouring down Fort Road along the tourist drag. Fear ringing their eyes, the local men gather in groups speaking in low whispers... I stand nearly but can't make out their plans.

Thupsten Wangchuk, a Ladakhi monk (who we call 'His Shinyness'), says that three monks have been killed in Padum monastry in Zanskar and a German tourist is missing. The Buddist Association in its furious response has somehow managed to insult the Koran and now hundreds of ventilated Muslims are gathered outside the mosque calling for the death of the towns Buddists (a full 50% of the towns population). An immediate strike is called and the shops are shut in five minutes flat. The rootless Kashmiri traders are heading rapidly for home in fear for their lives.

Smoke-spewing army trucks are pouring into the centre, disgorging hundreds of soldiers on to the streets. We get the feeling that they are relieved to find themselves 'useful' after months of barraked tedium.

Even on the fourth day of curfew, and in a typical example of how tourists can fail completely to connect with a place, Italian, British and American package tourists are wandering the streets in search of chocolate cake and cappuccino.