Notes from Leh
The Hindu
There is also one item that takes prime position on the shopping lists of the locals — the beloved cherma
It is around 10 a.m. on a blisteringly cold Monday morning in early May as I find myself making an emergency grocery supplies run at one of the many stores that dot Leh’s pedestrian-only Main Bazaar. It was just the evening before when it was announced that the trial weekend lockdown imposed upon the Union Territory of Ladakh would now be extended throughout the coming week. Indefinitely. A precautionary measure, I’m told, as the rest of India is all but submerged under the deadly second ‘tsunami’ of the COVID-19 pandemic. My purchases are of the usual bread, eggs, biscuits, instant noodles kind that is the want of any penny-pinching backpacker to the Himalayan wonderland that is Ladakh. But for the locals shopping alongside me, it is a whole other story. Sure, there are huge sacks of rice and wheat flour being schlepped upon the backs of porters who scurry about the soon-to-be-shuttered bazaar. But there is also one item that takes prime position on the shopping lists of the locals. The beloved cherma.More Related News