The table they wanted is the one next to the ground sitting. Click on image for a larger view.
Soon after I checked in to my camp at Sarchu (located at the border of Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh) a strange incident took place: a group of people came to the camp in a small truck and asked the manager for Rs. 2,500. He said he was not authorized to do so and they should contact the owner.
The owner does not stay at the camp. And there is no way of contacting him from Sarchu. There are absolute no telephone links of any sort in this desolate high altitude cold desert. And who were these people? They had come from the Gram Panchayat (the local village Government) to collect an arbitrary, unofficial tax from the camp. Seeing the manager adamant in not paying up, they then made a weird sounding request to take the table I was having coffee on. Now why would they want that? So they don’t go back empty handed? When the manager refused again, the villagers left with no collections to show. When I asked the manager why they wanted the table, he had absolute no idea and could only laugh at the absurdity of the demand. He added that these villagers keep dropping in like this and he has perfected the art of shooing them away.
A word about the table: It is a low rise (maybe 18 inches), beautifully carved table with Bhutanese and Buddhist motifs. I wanted to buy one of these while in Leh in the following days but the idea of carrying it an already overloaded car did not seem a good idea. Next time.
