Carla Grissmann at Ladakh

An Incident in the Life of the Celebrated Humanitarian, Carla Grissmann (1928-2011)

Carla and two Tibetan women in Ladakh, 1975

Carla liked this photo a lot. She carried it with her and I first saw it around 1980.

Ladakh was a prized destination for western travelers when I reached the Kashmir region in the 1960s. The winding bus ride from Jammu to Srinigar was long, slow, and arduous, and for outsiders, Ladakh was closed off due to the cross-currents of Pakistan-India-China civil unrest. The Cultural Revolution was raging in China, and the “Tibet situation” was a political flashpoint. Carla Grissmann made the journey from Kabul in 1975, soon after Ladakh was opened to outsiders.

I had traversed the same journey in 1968, dropping down through the Khyber Pass to Peshawar, crossing into India at Lahore, and then up into Kashmir. My trail ended at Srinigar. Turned back there, I made my way to the Tibetan enclaves around Kathmandu where tourism had not yet hit. But by  Carla’s journey in1975, Kathmandu was overrun with tourists while Ladakh remained relatively unknown; Carla relished her early exploration of the area. She had numerous photos of what she called the “rainbow hotel“. Its proprietor had painted all the rooms in bright pastels, certain that the colors would make his hotel the destination of choice for the western influx of “hippie” tourists he eagerly anticipated. Carla joined in the fun, helping him create menu items for the hotel restaurant and decorating ideas for the rooms. Carla always spoke with great enthusiasm about her summer in Ladakh, but to my knowledge, she did not make a return visit.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this vignette about Carla’s journey to Ladakh. There’s more adventure to be had in my full length novel A Lesion of Dissent, just a click away below at Amazon.

<== Cover, Amazon Edition