Cows and donkeys go slowly about their business in Leh. Unlike in the villages, they have no tags, no bells, nobody is herding them. Here they have achieved true Independence.
Cows are large with prominent and protruding architecture of carcas-they are the meditative ships of the road with large wiry eye-lashes. There are also dzos, black and shaggy hybrids of yaks and cows..
The donkeys are charming and small, like mountain horses. They are more modest then cows, they cling to the edge of the road, in groups of two or three, delicately lining up to pass in the narrow spaces between the stone walls and the cars..
These animals, always a part of human and car traffic, and a few remaining old Ladakhis, who slowly walk around with their prayer beads and /or prayer wheels in hands-
they all slow the time for all of us who are speeding to get somewhere, to be something. Through their large and vacant eyes the eternity is looking at us..
When we walk home in the dark, once in a while our torch shine on a group of black cows or donkeys, quitely sleeping along the side of the road. They are just as calm and meditative in the dark..it is like passing a ship at dark sea...
