The cobbler of Leh makes hay while the sun shines on Ladakh

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This was published 9 years ago

The cobbler of Leh makes hay while the sun shines on Ladakh

He sits amid a pile of shoes watching the world go by.

By Michael Gebicki
A brush with life:  The cobbler.

A brush with life: The cobbler.

He sits cross-legged on the side of Old Fort Road, under a plastic tarpaulin that prevents him from seeing the Sankar Monastery that crowns the hilltop above Leh, the capital of Ladakh, high in India's trans-Himalayan region. A slight man with a big moustache, he is a busy island surrounded by brushes, twine, polishes, spare soles and needles. Whether it's a hiking boot distressed from a punishing trek among the peaks of this high altitude desert or a plastic sandal, there is no footwear he cannot mend, renew or re-stitch. I've come to him with my motorbike boots, which are caked with oil, dust and grime from 10 days riding an Indian-built Royal Enfield across the Himalayas, and badly in need of salvation. "No problem," he tells me. He comes from Rajasthan, another desert state of India, from a small village out near Bikaner, close to the Pakistan border. He makes 2000 rupees a day, the Tibetan woman who sits next to him tells me, about $40, which is a tidy sum for a manual worker in rural India. She comes from Dharamsala, near the headquarters of the exiled Dalai Lama, stays here for the summers, selling beads and necklaces that she threads as we chat. She's tried three times to get a visa to enter the United States but she's been rejected each time. Karma, she tells me, it's not going to work out for her. Today the cobbler is joined by his infant daughter who is unbearably cute. When I sit down in the wonky plastic chair that he belts with a rag to shift the dust she cuddles up against me, infinitely trusting.

Four children he tells me, holding up fingers. She's the youngest. His is a sociable occupation and he is witness to all the comings and goings of Old Fort Road. A cow wanders past chewing on a cardboard box. Further down the hill a girl mounts a bike for the first time and careers down the slope for a few metres before she falls off, shrieking with laughter despite the whizzing cars that threaten disaster for a novice cyclist. Up the road there's a commotion. Glass shatters as a pane breaks in a Tibetan curio shop. A crowd gathers and I wander up. There's shouting inside the shop, the sounds of a scuffle. Eventually a thickset Ladakhi man emerges with his T-shirt in tatters, blood smeared across his back, mouth red with the stuff. He addresses the crowd, looking for supporters. Another man emerges from the shop and pulls down the metal shutters, shop closed. Two women police officers are enforcing the one-way rule at a traffic barrier just up the road but show no sign of interfering.

When I return the cobbler has finished cleaning and blacking my boots and now he's applying a white paste, all natural he tells me, and buffing them until they gleam like new. The price is 150 rupees, $3. I tip him another dollar. "Jule, jule," thanks, he says. He's going to have a good day, but then it's a short season when the tourists are around, before bitter winter catches Ladakh by the throat, and he has to make hay while the sun shines.

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