Under Zanskar Light, Silence Becomes a Daily Practice By Sidonie Morel A Ridge of Air and Intent Arriving without the usual noise The road into Zanskar does not flatter anyone. It narrows and widens without warning, then tightens again at bends where the valley seems to fold itself, stone over stone. In the car, conversation thins. Not from awe, not from drama—simply because the air is dry enough to pull the moisture from your mouth, and the view is too exacting to let the mind drift. You notice practical things first: how quickly lips chap, how dust finds the hinge of the window, how the sun strikes the dashboard as […]

When the Month Rewrites the Household By Sidonie Morel Before the snow commits The first changes happen indoors In Ladakh the season rarely arrives with ceremony. The sky can be perfectly clear, the sun sharp enough to make stone look polished, and yet the house has already started acting as if winter has signed its name. A pot stays on the stove rather than being washed and put away. The kettle is kept within reach. A blanket is folded and moved closer to the one chair that gathers everyone without being assigned to anyone. The edits are small, almost modest, but they are deliberate. Doors are closed with a different […]

A Week Put Back Into Season By Sidonie Morel Early winter — the taste that only exists in one month In Ladakh, the kitchen keeps time in stored things. Late in the year, when nights sharpen and water containers start to skin over at the edges, the signs are not decorative. They are practical: apricots split and laid on a flat roof to dry in direct sun; greens blanched and spread thin on cloth; sacks of barley flour tightened against damp; jars opened, wiped clean at the rim, and closed again. The work sits where hands can reach it quickly, because winter reduces time outside. From a European kitchen supplied […]

From First Tea to Final Latch: A Ladakh Monastery Day by Time By Sidonie Morel 04:58 The first sound is not a bell but a small clearing of the throat in the corridor, the kind made on purpose so no one is startled. A match scratches, then another. Someone has already decided the stove will be persuaded today. I sit up, reach for my sweater, and fold the blanket back with both hands. 05:07 Water begins to move in a pot that was rinsed last night and left upside down on the shelf. The kettle is set on the flame with a calm that suggests repetition rather than devotion. A […]

Where the Day Is Kept 04:38 The stove has its own patience. Before light arrives, there is the small choreography that makes light possible: a hand feeling for the matchbox, a tin lid lifted without waking the whole room, the first scratch that fails, the second that catches. In winter the flame looks almost blue. In summer it is simply quick, as if it has been waiting. 04:54 Water goes into the kettle. Not much. Just enough for tea, enough to warm the mouth into speech. Outside, the courtyard is a darker shape inside darkness. Somewhere a dog turns and resettles. Somewhere a roof shifts under cold. 05:07 The first […]

Before the Fire Learns Your Hands By Sidonie Morel In Ladakh, a kitchen is not a room you pass through. It is a climate you enter. The moment the door closes, the world becomes smaller and more exact: the pull of the stove, the short radius of warmth, the slow choreography of hands that know what the air will do next. Outside, the valley can look like a photograph. Inside, it behaves like a living thing. I have learned to stop describing kitchens as “cosy.” That word is too soft, too decorative. Here, warmth is a task. It is produced, protected, rationed, and shared. It is the day’s first promise […]

Before the Valley Widens By Sidonie Morel Day 1 — Leaving Leh by Public Bus The old bus stand and the weight of the roof Leh’s old bus stand is not built for farewells. It has no clear edge, no threshold that marks the moment of departure. Instead, it operates as a holding space where people, goods, and intentions wait in loose proximity. Buses sit with engines off, their sides streaked with dust from earlier routes. Men move between piles of grain sacks, metal trunks scarred by travel, and bundles wrapped in blue plastic, tightening ropes with a practiced rhythm. What cannot fit inside is negotiated upward, onto the roof, […]

Before the Sun Finds the Courtyard By Sidonie Morel The Hour When Work Begins Without Witness Darkness as a Practical Condition, Not a Metaphor In the high villages of Ladakh, morning does not announce itself. There is no decisive moment when night gives way to day. Instead, the work begins in a dim interval when the sky still holds its color, neither black nor blue, and the ground offers only a partial outline of itself. This is not treated as a special hour. It is simply the first usable one. Doors open quietly. Courtyards receive movement before light. The temperature is read by touch—stone underfoot, metal at the latch—rather than […]

The Day the House Counts Water in Containers By Sidonie Morel A kitchen that starts with plastic, not a tap In Leh, the first object to move in the morning is often not a kettle. It is a container. A yellow jerrycan, scuffed on the corners, sits near the door where shoes and dust collect. It has a screw cap with a ring of grit caught in the thread. The jerrycan is not decoration and not an emergency measure. It is part of the house’s basic equipment in the same way a ladle or a broom is. When water arrives through a pipe, it announces itself with sound and speed. […]

The Year of Two Returns By Sidonie Morel The order of the year Autumn back to the village, spring back to the hostel In parts of the western Himalaya where winter closes roads for weeks at a time, the school year is arranged around two long journeys. Before winter tightens its grip, children return from the boarding hostel to their home village. When spring arrives and the route becomes usable again, they travel from the village back to the hostel to begin the next stretch of schooling. The movement happens twice a year, and the direction matters. It helps to name the sequence plainly, because the landscape can confuse the […]