NEL REGNO DELLA LUCE – ENRICO RONDONI


I was led to climb the rugged mountains in the Ladakh by the fear that mass tourism could soon preclude the integrity of a poor but peaceful world under the blue sky as the blue of the sea and that the political and religious tensions between India and Pakistan soon bring the prohibition to cross those mountains enchanted.
I wanted to get into the “realm of light” going up the amazing curves that from Srinagar (Kashmir) climb up and over passes 4,000 meters high, along the only alternating one-way path. I wanted to witness the collective emotion in that part in the roof of the world in the Himalayas, when the most remote valleys in Ladakh and Zanskar come with slow groups of women, men and children of all ages wearing traditional ornaments. Lamaist faith Tibetans on their way to the same goal, the XVI century Phyi-Yang Buddhist monastery. Here, for the feast of the full moon of August, under the severe gaze of the Panchen Lama, it always takes place a mythological show: the performance of the struggle between good and evil, with sacred and profane symbols.

(from a text by Enrico Rondoni)