Early in the morning the crew went off to do bike shots with the riders as I took a leisurely hot water bucket bath (my first in 4 days), packed my bags and had a bread-butter breakfast.
We left for Tso Moriri around 9 am, and took lots of drone shots on the way. Had lunch at the beautiful lake 20 minutes before Tso Moriri, and took drone shots with one of the riders coming down the hill.
We reached Tso Moriri around 4 pm and went straight to meet the Goba at Korzok. There was an issue over there that the villagers had gathered around to resolve, so we had to come back an hour later. Spoke to a couple of villagers who said that the locals couldn't make shawls of pashmina because of a lack of skill, and had to give away the raw material to Kashmiri traders who bought it for cheap and sold it to the market for a hefty profit.
We sat in the Goba's little tent, made of yak skin, and discussed the problems of the pashmina community over cups of warm milk tea. The temperature dropped drastically as soon as we stepped out of the tent, and we realised how warm the tent had been the whole time.
At 7 pm the hills, filled with stars as far as the eye could see, were chilly, windy and had taken on a quiet, dominating air. Over there it seemed as if the elements were unrelenting - you either lived according to the rules of nature that applied to that region, or you packed up and left.
The nomads, who earlier travelled on yaks, seemed to have long given up that aspect of their lifestyle, seeing as how the plains were dotted with parked Boleros and other SUVs.
Our AD also mentioned that the Changthang community was found to have hordes of cash in reserves at the time of demonetisation, and that hardly any family in the region was strapped for money. Lol.
And yet their way of life, and the problems they seemed to have (plus their grouses against the government) seem to suggest they're the long forgotten remnants of an industry that has sidelined the very people that keep a huge aspect of the region's culture alive and thriving.
I couldn't get any sleep till almost 2 am, wondering if the footage we'd got was any good to cut a series out of.
I sat and went through each and every clip we'd shot over the past seven days.
Quite a lot of it I found superlative, and I almost found it hard to believe this has all been the product of our collective labour, a team that only met for the first time like seven days ago.
Sitting in my Versova home, going through endless content portals watching both inspiring and insipid stuff I often wonder which side of the fence I'm going to find myself on when given the opportunity to truly create.
Now that the opportunity was here, and I've done mostly all I could, I think I want to safely say it's the side of the fence I would like it to be. Don't know if it's the side the world wants to see, though - although I truly hope it is.
But there's tastes and distastes, and there's hardly I can do anything on that front.
For now, it's on to the last day of this epic journey that I just can't seem to find more (better) adjectives for.
Maybe it's the cold.
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