A box-seat at a river crossing

Crossing the Zanskar. Photo: Christina Thompson

I STARE in amazement at the wooden box that will carry us across the river. As boxes go, it appears quite well made, if old and worn. Nevertheless, it is a wooden box, not what I would recognise as the promised "cable car".
But as I watch two local farmers sit calmly in the contraption as it is pulled across the Zanskar River by means of a frayed blue nylon rope,
I have the usual thoughts of a stranger facing a challenging situation in a foreign country: "Put your trust in the locals. They know what they're doing."

In fact, the ride looks quite exciting. The box, suspended from a cable that stretches to the stark, rock-strewn shore on the other side, will allow us to traverse a torrent of grey, silt-laden water from the peaks of the Ladakh range in the far north of India.

Our cheerful guide, cook and assistant cook energetically pack food, equipment and tents into the conveyance and send it across the river from a precarious gravelly knoll six metres above the water.
Waiting on the riverbank, I try to escape the burning sun and find meagre shade against the wall of the mudbrick structure that houses the tethered cable. The air is hot and dry and there are no trees or any other form of shelter. Heat radiates from the valley walls, intensifying the sensation of being slowly cooked. The high temperatures are unexpected, since for most of the year the entire region, sandwiched between the Himalayan and the Karakoram ranges, is cut off by bitter cold and deep snow.
As the cable car returns empty, the rope snags. Men struggle to untangle it, with desperate flicks and pulls, while the box remains suspended over the middle of the river. "What if the same happens to us?"I think. My trekking companion looks at me. We laugh and shrug our shoulders as the rope is finally freed and another load is piled on and sent across, with the assistant cook cradling the eggs.
Then it is our turn. We clamber awkwardly into the box, our knees squashed up and daypacks on our laps, my fellow trekker nobly occupying the open forward edge. We take the obligatory photograph, grinning widely, before the rope is released and we slide slowly towards the centre of the cable, watching the rushing opaque water tumbling over hidden boulders far below.
Then the rope is tightened on the other side of the river and we are hauled across to be greeted by our smiling Nepalese cook and by Chemit the horseman, who has been waiting patiently with his ponies on the far shore.
We leave the horses to be loaded as Tashi, our guide, leads us up a bare, rocky rise and around a bend into the Markha River valley - our home for the next few days.
"Slowly, slowly," Tashi cautions as
I extend my walking poles. We are surrounded by the red, purple, green and brown colours of the valley walls. There is not a breath of wind or hint of life, flora or fauna, around us. Just blue sky and the relentless afternoon sun, high in Ladakh.


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