Himalayan Desert

Last night we took the 6 up to Asian Society for The Arts Of Kashmir show.
One room featuring a fantastic selection of large 19th Century intricately made shawls on display , all finely lit thread textures ultra detailed smoothly finished , their use of saturated colors a deep universe onto itself.
A map of old Srinagar sewn into a shawl , Mughal Empire looms and who holds the pashmina , men fishing in Dal Lake ,
400 looms cut to 100 after Muslims came in from Afghanistan , special properties of River Jhelum's water.
Then you get to the shawl where the makers got into using black threads ... pure black abyssal space shapes fingers tendrils

Tibetan music from Zhang Huan's show drifts up from the floor below.
The Bookstore is filled with some interesting looking, quality seeming gifts, items, jewelry,
a good selection of books we didn't know at cut price.
Looking through i found Nina Rao's Himalayan Desert filled with stories of old Buddhist India and Tibet ,
she's visited the string of Monastaries from Ladakh, Spiti , Kinnaur to Lahul
tracing the ancient paths and connections to the crumbling to dust Guge Kingdom ruins in Western Tibet and back again ...
Mixing Indian , Tibetan , Chinese, Islamic and Buddhist cultures.
Walking to civilization along the frozen Zanskar River ... don't fall in the river is swift
and you'll be swept below the only break in the ice
never to be heard from again.