The Last Shangri-La Under Threat
There was a time when places like Prince Edward Island and Ladakh existed in separate realms of the imagination—one, a bucolic dreamscape of emerald meadows and wildflower-dotted lanes; the other, a raw, untamed expanse where silence stretches as wide as the Himalayan sky. If Anne of Green Gables painted childhood in hues of golden nostalgia, Ladakh speaks in a language of ancient earth, where time moves with the wind and the sun-chapped hands of monks turning prayer wheels.
And yet, both landscapes share a peculiar kinship—a relationship between solitude and the human spirit. They are places that whisper to those with restless souls, places where beauty is both gentle and ruthless. They demand nothing of us but stillness, and in return, they give us something we never knew we were missing.
A Fragile Paradise on the Edge
But there is something else they share now—an encroaching shadow. Just as Anne Shirley’s world of gabled houses and poetic reveries has faded under the weight of modern tourism, so too does Ladakh face the slow erosion of its untouched majesty. The place once known as “The Last Shangri-La” is no longer a well-kept secret. The jagged mountain passes, once traversed only by wandering monks and wool-clad shepherds, now pulse with the hum of motorcycles and the hurried footsteps of trekkers in search of Instagrammable vistas.
This new attention brings with it an uneasy question: Can Ladakh remain the land of quiet contemplation, or will it, like Green Gables, be reduced to a nostalgic echo? The commodification of beauty is nothing new, but here in the Himalayas, where the air is thin and the landscapes are fragile, the cost of intrusion is higher.
A Journey Between Two Worlds
To understand Ladakh in its truest form, one must stand at the edge of a precipice at dawn, feeling the crisp wind burn the lungs, staring into a horizon so vast it seems to collapse into itself. It is a place where silence reigns, where the stars hang lower in the sky, and where human presence is reduced to insignificance against the weight of eternity.
It is here, in this rugged stillness, that one might imagine Anne Shirley herself standing, her red braids whipping in the wind, feeling the same thrilling sense of possibility she once found in the whispering trees of Green Gables.
But how long will such moments last? How much longer can Ladakh remain untouched before it, too, is reshaped by the hands of those who come not to listen, but to consume?
The Poetics of Landscape—Prince Edward Island vs Ladakh
The wind speaks in different tongues in Prince Edward Island and Ladakh, but the message remains the same: nature is both a refuge and a reckoning. Anne of Green Gables is a hymn to the pastoral, a world where rolling fields unfurl like pages of an old novel, and where every tree and brook seems to breathe with the weight of untold stories. It is a place where time moves gently, where cherry blossoms announce the arrival of spring like a whisper rather than a declaration.
Ladakh, by contrast, is a land where nature is carved not with a painter’s brush but with a sculptor’s chisel. The wind here does not whisper; it howls, reshaping the land over centuries with its relentless touch. The sky is not a soft blue but an unforgiving sapphire, stretching endlessly above the ochre-hued cliffs and glacial rivers. Here, solitude is not just an aesthetic experience but a test of endurance, a reminder that beauty in its purest form is often unyielding.
A Landscape that Shapes the Soul
Anne Shirley saw Prince Edward Island as an extension of her own imagination—each tree was a character, each path a story waiting to unfold. To her, the landscape was a living companion, a canvas for her endless daydreams.
In Ladakh, the relationship with nature is different. Here, the landscape does not indulge the romantic mind; it strips away all illusion. The mountains, eternal and indifferent, do not care for poetry. And yet, in their silence, they offer something deeper than words: the chance to feel small, to be part of something ancient and enduring.
The Lush vs. The Barren—Two Kinds of Beauty
It is easy to romanticize Anne’s Green Gables. The pastoral beauty of Prince Edward Island has a softness that invites nostalgia, a world that feels safe, enclosed, familiar. Ladakh is the opposite. It is a land of extremes—where summer days can be scorching and winter nights colder than comprehension. It is a place where the winds have no master, where rivers carve through canyons with the force of inevitability.
But if you look closely, the spirit of Anne Shirley exists in Ladakh too. In the fluttering of prayer flags at a remote monastery. In the golden light that turns the mountains to fire at dusk. In the untamed beauty of a land that refuses to be softened.
What Do We Seek in a Landscape?
Perhaps the question is not whether one place is more beautiful than the other, but what we seek when we immerse ourselves in a landscape. Are we looking for comfort or confrontation? Do we wish to be soothed by beauty, or to be made raw by it?
For those who yearn for gentle nostalgia, Prince Edward Island will always be a sanctuary. For those who long for the wildness of the unknown, Ladakh remains one of the last frontiers.
Anne Shirley, had she stood upon a Ladakhi cliff, might have gasped at its grandeur and whispered, as she once did beneath her beloved trees, “Dear old world, you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”
Kindred Spirits in Unexpected Places
In the quiet corners of the world, where the sky stretches beyond what the eye can hold and the wind carries the weight of unspoken stories, kindred spirits recognize one another—not by words, but by a shared understanding of silence. For Anne Shirley, a kindred spirit was someone who saw the world not just as it was, but as it could be. It was someone who understood the magic in the ordinary, the poetry in the everyday.
If Anne had ever wandered into the high-altitude villages of Ladakh, she might have found kindred spirits among the wool-clad shepherds and the prayer-spinning monks, among those who live close to the earth and listen to the wind. These are people who, much like Anne, have an innate sense of wonder—except their wonder is not shaped by the soft pastels of Green Gables but by the raw, sun-bleached vastness of the Himalayas.
A Different Kind of Childhood
In Avonlea, childhood was defined by apple blossoms, slow rivers, and the misadventures of a girl with too many thoughts and too little restraint. In Ladakh, childhood is shaped by the rhythm of the mountains. Here, children do not chase fireflies in twilight fields—they chase yaks across golden plateaus, their laughter swallowed by the wind. Their playground is not a gabled house with a white picket fence, but a monastery courtyard where maroon-robed novices memorize ancient scripts under the watchful gaze of towering peaks.
Yet, the essence of both childhoods is the same: a deep, abiding connection to the land. Just as Anne knew every bend in Lover’s Lane and every shade of light that touched the Lake of Shining Waters, Ladakhi children know the mountains by their scent, the rivers by their sound, and the sky by the way it changes with the season. The world, to them, is not a backdrop but a living, breathing companion.
The Poetry of Solitude
Anne once said, “It’s delightful when your imaginations come true, isn’t it?” In Ladakh, imagination is not a luxury; it is a necessity. Life here is defined by long winters, by months where the roads are swallowed by snow and the outside world feels like a distant dream. In such solitude, the mind wanders freely, weaving stories as old as the land itself.
This is where Anne and Ladakh intersect—not in their landscapes, but in the way they inspire the soul to stretch beyond its boundaries. Both Green Gables and Ladakh are places where solitude is not loneliness but a form of communion, where silence is not emptiness but an invitation to listen more deeply.
Finding Anne Shirley in Ladakh
If Anne Shirley were to meet a Ladakhi shepherd girl, what would they say to each other? Perhaps nothing at all. Perhaps they would simply stand side by side, staring at the distant peaks, feeling the same pull of the unknown, the same aching love for a world too vast to be fully understood.
Because, in the end, kindred spirits are not bound by geography. They are not tied to gabled houses or to high mountain passes. They exist wherever there is someone who looks at the world with a heart too full for words, with a mind that spins stories out of silence, and with a soul that is, above all else, awake.
Perhaps this is why Anne Shirley, had she been born in another time, another place, might have belonged just as easily in Ladakh as she did in Green Gables. The red braids would remain, whipping in the Himalayan wind, her wide-eyed wonder unchanged.
The Call of the Wild—Adventure in Two Forms
Adventure has many faces. For Anne Shirley, it was the thrill of a new book, a daring escape into the Haunted Wood, or the breathless excitement of a runaway carriage. In the gentle landscapes of Prince Edward Island, adventure was woven into the golden fields and the whispering orchards, found in places where imagination could roam freely. Every tree was a castle, every brook a wild river.
In Ladakh, adventure takes a different form. It is not the kind that can be imagined from a cozy attic window, but one that demands sweat, endurance, and a willingness to surrender to nature’s unyielding force. Here, adventure is not a fleeting thrill but a test of spirit—a trek through valleys where the wind howls like an untamed thing, a night spent under an infinity of stars, the slow, deliberate climb to a pass where the world unfolds below like an ancient map.
A Childhood of Wild Freedom
In Green Gables, adventure was softened by the security of home. Even when Anne lost herself in fantastical tales, she always returned to the warmth of a kitchen fire, the scent of freshly baked bread. Ladakh’s children grow up with a different kind of wildness—one not bound by stories, but by the raw elements of nature itself.
Their playgrounds are not sheltered groves, but vast, windswept plateaus. Their adventures are not make-believe tales of knights and fairies, but real journeys through landscapes where survival is a lesson taught by the land itself. They climb rocky cliffs with bare hands, cross frozen rivers on foot, and learn to navigate the moods of the mountains long before they understand the written word.
The Adventure of Silence
Perhaps the greatest adventure Ladakh offers is not in its icy mountain passes or its hidden monasteries, but in the silence it bestows. In a world where noise has become inescapable, Ladakh is a place where silence is not absence, but a presence—a vast, enveloping thing that demands to be felt.
Anne, who found beauty in the rustling leaves and the murmuring brooks, would have been startled by Ladakh’s quiet. But given time, she might have fallen in love with it too—the way the mountains speak without words, the way the sky shifts in a slow, unhurried dance, the way time moves not in minutes but in the patient rhythm of wind and stone.
What Kind of Adventure Do We Seek?
In the end, the adventures of Anne’s world and the adventures of Ladakh are not so different. Both require courage, both invite discovery. The difference lies in what we seek from them.
Do we crave the kind of adventure that stirs the heart with nostalgia, that paints the world in gentle hues and soft imaginings? Or do we long for the kind of adventure that strips us bare, that humbles us before the vastness of the world and asks us to stand, raw and open, before something greater than ourselves?
Anne Shirley might have believed that adventure was found in storybook landscapes, but had she stood atop a Himalayan ridge, staring into the endless horizon, she might have realized something: some adventures cannot be dreamed—they must be lived.
The Literature of Place—Anne Shirley and Ladakh’s Silent Stories
Some landscapes demand to be written about. Prince Edward Island is one of them. It exists as much in literature as it does in reality, immortalized by Anne of Green Gables, where every tree and every lane is wrapped in the warm nostalgia of L. M. Montgomery’s words. Through Anne’s eyes, the landscape is a living thing—a companion to her dreams, a mirror to her emotions. The Lake of Shining Waters is not just a lake; it is a reflection of Anne’s boundless imagination.
But if Prince Edward Island exists in prose, Ladakh exists in silence. It has not been claimed by literature in the same way. The stories of its mountains are not captured in novels with gilded pages, but in the voices of those who have lived among them. Its literature is not found in bookstores but in the oral traditions of monks, in the quiet prayers whispered into the wind, in the footprints left on forgotten trails.
A Landscape That Speaks Without Words
Had Anne Shirley lived in Ladakh, she might have struggled at first. Without bookshelves lined with poetry, without well-worn stories to lose herself in, she would have had to listen differently. But perhaps, in time, she would have come to understand that not all stories are written. Some are etched into the landscape itself, carried in the wind that rushes down from the mountain passes, in the way the rivers carve their paths through time, in the silent watchfulness of the monasteries perched on cliffs.
If Prince Edward Island’s literature is about belonging, Ladakh’s is about endurance. Here, stories are not just about the past—they are about survival. The Ladakhi people do not just remember history; they live within it. The ancient prayer flags fluttering above high-altitude monasteries do not tell tales of longing, but of resilience, of a people who have learned to exist in harmony with a land that gives nothing freely.
Who Writes the Story of a Place?
The world knows Green Gables because it was given a voice. L. M. Montgomery, with her ability to infuse nature with emotion, turned Prince Edward Island into something almost mythical. Ladakh, on the other hand, remains largely unwritten. Its stories are scattered, held in fragments of travelogues, in the margins of history books, in the faded memories of passing wanderers. But does that make them any less real?
There is a certain kind of arrogance in believing that a place does not exist in full until it has been put into words. Some landscapes resist language. They refuse to be neatly categorized into chapters. They demand to be felt, rather than read about.
A Story Waiting to Be Heard
Perhaps this is why Ladakh has remained, for so long, a secret whispered among travelers rather than a setting in a bestselling novel. It is not a place to be romanticized into fiction; it is a place that must be experienced. To stand in its vastness, to feel the thin air pull at your breath, to watch the shifting shadows of clouds dance across the mountains—these are stories that cannot be confined to the page.
And yet, if Anne Shirley were to visit, perhaps she would take up the challenge. Perhaps she would sit on the edge of a cold mountain pass, her journal balanced on her knees, and try to capture what she saw. Perhaps she would write of the silence, of the way the wind carried prayers like invisible ink on the sky, of the colors of dawn as they set the ridges aflame.
But then, perhaps she would close the book, realizing that some places—like Ladakh—are not meant to be written into a single story. They are meant to be lived, and lived fully.
Where Would Anne Shirley Feel at Home?
For all her talk of grand adventures and far-off places, Anne Shirley was, at heart, someone who longed for home. Not just a house with four walls, but a place that felt like a belonging—a corner of the world that understood her in ways even people could not. Green Gables was that place for her. It was more than a setting; it was a sanctuary, a canvas on which she painted the ever-expanding landscapes of her imagination.
But what if Anne had been born elsewhere? What if her world was not one of cherry blossoms and white-picket fences, but of windswept plateaus and sun-scorched monasteries? Would she have found the same sense of belonging in Ladakh?
Home as an Idea, Not a Place
Some people define home by its physical attributes—a familiar road, a well-worn armchair, the scent of baking bread. But for Anne, home was not just a structure. It was the feeling of being understood, of being allowed to dream without restraint.
In that sense, Ladakh, too, could have been her home. Not because it mirrors Green Gables in any traditional way—there are no apple orchards here, no twilight walks along riverbanks—but because it is a place where the landscape invites contemplation, where solitude is not emptiness, but an invitation to dream.
The Comfort of the Familiar vs. The Thrill of the Unknown
There is an undeniable comfort in the landscapes we grow up with. Green Gables gave Anne a world where every detail was soft-edged and familiar, where the seasons arrived with predictable grace, where adventure was thrilling but never truly dangerous. It was a world that welcomed her imagination, that responded to her love with its own kind of quiet devotion.
But Ladakh does not comfort. It does not soften itself for its inhabitants. Instead, it demands something of them. It is a land that tests its people, where survival itself is a testament to resilience. Could Anne, with her romantic soul, have thrived in a place that required endurance over whimsy, practicality over poetry?
And yet, perhaps she would have found another kind of poetry here. Not in the gentle glow of lanterns in a farmhouse window, but in the fire-lit prayer halls of ancient monasteries. Not in the lilt of a brook in the springtime, but in the deep, rhythmic chanting of monks as they greet the rising sun. She would have found beauty, though it would have been a different kind of beauty—one that required patience, one that revealed itself slowly, like the first light creeping over the ridges at dawn.
A Universal Longing
Perhaps the question is not whether Anne would have found a home in Ladakh, but whether we can find home in places unlike our own. The world is full of landscapes that, at first, feel foreign—too harsh, too silent, too vast. But given time, these same landscapes can teach us something: that home is not always about familiarity. Sometimes, it is about a feeling—of belonging, of connection, of knowing, in some quiet and unshakable way, that this place, too, understands a part of us that words cannot explain.
Anne Shirley, standing on a high Himalayan ridge, might have looked out over the valleys below and whispered, “Dear old world, you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.” And in that moment, Ladakh might have become her home, too.
Final Thoughts: When Two Worlds Meet
In the end, what connects Anne Shirley’s Green Gables and Ladakh’s timeless wilderness is not their physical landscapes, but the way they make us feel. They are both places that awaken something within us—a longing for adventure, a deep appreciation for beauty, and a recognition that the world, in all its varied forms, is worth marveling at.
For those who grew up with Anne of Green Gables, Prince Edward Island will always symbolize the golden light of nostalgia, a place where childhood and imagination reign supreme. But Ladakh, in its vast, untamed grandeur, offers a different kind of escape—a world where silence speaks, where nature humbles, and where the human spirit is both tested and set free.
A Place for Dreamers, A Place for Wanderers
Perhaps the greatest lesson of all is that home is not one place, but many. It is wherever we find a landscape that speaks to our soul. It is in the whispering pines of Avonlea, and in the barren beauty of Ladakh’s high-altitude deserts. It is in the places that welcome us, in the places that challenge us, and in the ones that leave us forever changed.
Anne Shirley might have never set foot in Ladakh, but her spirit—a spirit of wonder, curiosity, and a boundless love for the world—belongs here just as much as it does in Green Gables.
Your Own Green Gables, Your Own Ladakh
So, dear reader, where do you find your Green Gables? Is it in a quiet countryside, wrapped in the comfort of familiarity? Or is it in the unexplored corners of the earth, where the wind carries stories older than time?
If you’ve ever dreamed of stepping into a story, Ladakh offers one waiting to be lived. And who knows? Perhaps, as Anne once did, you will find yourself standing on the edge of the world, whispering, “Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet.”
Photo: CBC
Join the Journey
Whether you are a lover of literature, a traveler seeking untamed beauty, or simply someone who understands the poetry of a windswept landscape, there is a kindred spirit in you. If Ladakh has been calling to you, now is the time to listen.
Discover the last Shangri-La, where adventure meets serenity.
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About the Author
Declan P. O’Connor is a columnist and storyteller who explores the intersection of literature, travel, and the human spirit. His work blends poetic narrative with immersive landscapes, uncovering the stories that exist beyond the written word.
