Life
Why I go to Ladakh to think
The beach is where I stop thinking. The mountains are where I take the one question I have been avoiding.
Every year or so I take a week and go somewhere with no sea, no phone signal worth the name, and mountains on every side. For the last few years that has been Ladakh, in the far north of India, at the top of the Himalayas.
People are surprised. I am the one who talks about beaches. But the beach is where I go to stop thinking. Ladakh is where I go to think.
What the altitude does
At three and a half thousand metres the body slows down whether you ask it to or not. You walk slowly. You sleep early. You cannot rush, because rushing makes you dizzy. After two days of this something in the mind slows down to match.
I bring one notebook and one question. The question is usually the one I have been avoiding in Dubai: a decision about work, a conversation I owe someone, a plan for the next few years that keeps not getting made. I do not force it. I walk, I look at the monasteries, I drink a great deal of tea. Somewhere around the fourth day the answer is usually just there, and it is usually simpler than the version I had been carrying around.
Why this matters for the work
I tell families to do this, in their own way. Not Ladakh necessarily. But a week, once a year, away from the business and the phone, with the question you are avoiding.
Most of the big decisions I help families with are not urgent. That is the problem. Nothing forces them. The will can wait, the succession plan can wait, the conversation with the children can wait, and so they wait, sometimes for decades, until something happens that removes the choice.
A week in the mountains does not answer the question for you. It removes the noise that was stopping you from hearing that you already knew.
The practical part
If you are tempted: go in September or October, when the roads are open and the light is extraordinary. Fly into Leh and do nothing for two days; the altitude is not a joke. Stay somewhere small. Leave the laptop at home, properly at home, not in the bag.
And take the one question. Only one. That is the whole trick.