The good for all shop
There’s this little place in Leh called Dzomsa, “the good for all shop.” In its own words, “Dzomsa is: laundry, water refill, homegrown, homemade products.”
I am a lover of context and detail. This shop has a lot of that. It’s a place I feel like I can learn about Ladakh. It’s also a place that is peaceful. Earlier this week I typed out a short and effusive description of Dzomsa to a dear friend. And I thought well, the idea of just diving in and starting to blog again feels big and daunting. So how about I just grab this handhold. Meaning, how about I just start with a topic chosen mostly at random that I naturally wanted to share.
Just a bit of spatial orientation first. Dzomsa is beside the main market street of Leh, which is 3,600 metres above sea level and the small capital city of Ladakh. Ladakh is in the Trans-Himalaya and is a Union Territory of India, meaning that…you should Google it if you want to learn more. Especially now, at the time that I’m publishing this.
Kashmir is to the west, the plains of India to the south, China to the north. I was going to tell you about the significant military presence here. But as far as orientation goes, for the purpose of this post, you’re far better off knowing that agriculture has been and continues to be a critical part of the 1,000+ years of Ladakhi history.
I think part of my interest in the shop originally had to do with how I think it’s just amazing that people here build a life. In doing so they need to be basically expert in managing water and agriculture, in a high-altitude (cold) desert.
We have been in Leh for 1 week and I have been to Dzomsa five times so far. It’s convenient to pop in, but I make excuses to do so because I want to keep returning.
(Note: I’m publishing this a few weeks after writing it, and I’ve since left Leh.)
Dzomsa is: water refill
As you walk in there’s a metal cistern with a spout and instructions, “please don’t touch your water bottle to the spout.” The cistern has UV-purified water. Anyone can walk in off the street from 10 am to 10 pm for a refill. Except for during the 2-3 pm lunch break, or unless Sonam, who owns and runs the shop, has stepped out momentarily. And outside the 4-5 month tourist season it will just be closed. It is 7 rupees per litre to refill your bottle.
(Yesterday I learned that if you don’t have your own bottle, you can also buy a used one from the shop for 3 rupees. They’re under the cistern on a shelf. Relatedly, and of course it does, Dzomsa also offers recycling.)
I thought of the gym, or airports, with the water bottle refills with the digital count that increases by 1 or 2 when you use it. On the cistern there’s a laminated sign dated January 1, 2025, commemorating the 89,000-odd disposable water bottles averted since the shop opened. When I found Dzomsa on Google Maps not long before we flew here, the image of the water cistern had the laminated sign but it was from 2024. If each time a new sign needs to be made, I wonder how the frequency is decided.
Beside the cistern there are 2 jugs of apricot juice that are umber-coloured and 2 jugs of sea buckthorn juice that are bright orange. There is a tray of delicate glasses below various signs, “Sour Juice,” “Unsweetened juice: Please try a small sample before buying, it is very sour.” The handle of the risky jug has ted tape on it. A glass of juice is 40 rupees.
There are 2 tables at the windows. Every time I’ve been in there’s been fresh flowers on each table. White daisies, purple daisies. It is very dry here. Where do the flowers come from? But it has been the rainiest August on record since the Morovian Mission — that’s a big church up the road with a school and who knows what other community initiatives — started recording data with their weather station. It sounds like they’ve had that weather station for some time. On the dreary days of the past week with the grey rain and the grey road and the grey water swooshing through the grey concrete irrigation channels, the purple flowers have brightened up the place. On sunny days, there’s so much light streaming onto the flowers and across the tables.
When I was sitting alone at one of the tables the other day, drinking from the risky unsweetened juice jug and reading a book from the buy-and-sell shelf, a man walked in, looked at me, and remarked “I didn’t know this was a place to sit and read.” Sonam was sitting at the table where you pay, and responded with a casual “yeah.” I felt momentarily self-conscious and interpreted what was probably nonchalance as ambivalence. Sometimes the tables are empty, and visitors to the shop are all milling around. Other times, someone is sitting at the table and chatting with Sonam. Yesterday when I went by to fill up my water bottle, there were three visitors sitting together at the shop, it sounded like they’d just met each other and were going over the basics: where are you from etc. Other times one table has been occupied by me, or by me and Bell.
(It turns out that Dzomsa means “meeting point” in Ladakhi, and that it is indeed a place to sit, alone or with others.)
Dzomsa is: laundry
I think about how all the signs on the walls and shelves offer people the context they need to give informed consent. It’s a high-context place. Context is also given verbally.
I first went to Dzomsa a day or so after we’d arrived in Leh. It was midday and my heart was pounding from the stroll, because I was not acclimatized. I felt gaslit by how harsh the sun felt despite it being not even 20 degrees C. I wanted to wash the clothes that Bell and I had worn for the five-day journey to here. There had been stressful discrepancies between names on passports and tickets and visas. There were unsuccessful negotiations about bringing our stove on the plane. Before boarding in Vancouver I had worn three pairs of pants to stay within baggage weight restrictions. It was a sweaty journey. I had to reassure myself that I wasn’t the only visitor who dropped off pungent clothes at Dzomsa.
Sonam and I had a whole discussion about the laundry service. Because it was now after 11 am, I was outside of the time window for same-day service. And with the forecast for rain, it might be two days or more until the clothes were ready because they only do line dry.
I returned some hours later, joking that I’d been duly warned and was ready. That prompted more context, and even offers of alternative places I could go if I wanted a place with a dryer. I gave my informed and enthusiastic consent. We went to another room where I reluctantly (because of the smell) emptied my neon orange dry bag and counted the items so that I could write the details in a big paper ledger. Laundry is 150 rupees per kilo.
The laundry room had several signs on it, about the specifics of the types of detergent they use, including the brand, and how the only chemical they use is the detergent so they won’t be able to remove any special stains. And how they only use line dry, the details of the same-day service. I felt weird asking for more time to read all the signs, so I didn’t.
It rained for days after I dropped off the laundry and I didn’t want to pester or pressure. When I went by some days later to ask if I could just have it back because it clearly was the worst week for line dry in Leh, Sonam said my clothes had been done for a few days already!
Dzomsa is: homegrown, homemade products
I wonder now if the juice has served a strategic purpose to initiative visitors before we are onto the real deal, the majority of the shop, the Ladakhi handmade and locally grown products. By the time I reach these shelves I am in-the-know, invested, curious. I’ve had the UV filtered water. I’m curious about that the UV filtration set-up looks like, and who is doing it. I’ve had the sea buckthorn juice. I’ve shopped local, caused no harm, hydrated, dosed with Vitamin C. So when I come to the shelf with dried sea buckthorn berries, some bags whole and others pulverized, I have enough context and experience to easily be curious. I feel like “us” not “them.”
There’s just 1-2 products per wooden shelf, but it feels dense and plentiful. Every product is accompanied by a carefully written sign that tells you something about the product that could be useful whether or not you will buy it. So it’s like instead of seeing books together cover to cover on a shelf, seeing the first paragraph of 1-2 books per shelf.
Here is an example. Different lengths of Tibetan prayer flags are neatly rolled up, covering three shelves (1 shelf for short, 1 for medium, 1 for long). There’s no need to display them because they are strung up all around Leh. The sign explains that these particular flags are hand-stamped with a woodcut block with lead-free ink made from kitchen soot. It’s the first paragraph of a story! Whose kitchen soot? Is the ink made in a kitchen? Are the woodcuts made from the poplar trees that grow around here? Is the technique passed down through an apprenticeship? Are they made by monastics? I’m given a little and I want to know so much more.
What I know I also like about Dzomsa is the precise pricing on every single thing. The 7 rupees per litre of water refill. The 190 rupees for the medium prayer flag. The 320 rupees for 200 grams of pitted dried apricots (pre-measured into a little brown bag). The kernels are for sale on another shelf, they look like short almonds.
I’m a tourist here, and I’ve come to interact with people in India, which commonly involves negotiation. I need to finesse this skill. Straightforward and explicit prices are a comfortable break.
Here are some things that are for sale currently that I haven’t already talked about:
- Bags of tsampa, roasted barley flour
- Capers, not in liquid but covered in coarse salt
- Various teas, like mint and chamomile and blends
- Sauerkraut
- Apple cider vinegar
- Apricot preserve, plum preserve, apple preserve (“preserves without pectin”)
- Tomato puree
- Walnuts
- “Regenerative” beans streaked white and burgundy, matching the Leh Palace and gompas throughout Ladakh
- Dried apple slices, dried carrot slices
- Himalayan rock salt
- The Ladakhi munch mix which looks so much like that kind of health food cereal of popped cereals that I’d have grimaced at in my youth in the health food aisle. Not anymore! Now I want it!
- The apples in a wicker basket with muslin on top of them
- Clusters of green grapes—“the first season that they have taken”
- Apricot lip balm “with only 2 ingredients, not 35 chemicals you don’t need”
- Apricot oil (for what I do not know, I did not read the sign)
- Postcards with black-and-white pictures on them
With every product it seems as if thought has been given to what is the most valuable context that could be delivered on a little sign. Some products are marked with the date of the harvest they belong to. The apples “no need to wash, they have been picked straight off the tree.” How quickly to eat the perishable products depending on whether you’re refrigerating them, whether you’re staying here in the Himalayas, or if you’re moving on to hotter regions. Maybe the shop has been hit with bad reviews in the past by people who bought things with unreasonable expectations or a shortage of context. Or maybe the shop is run by people who enjoy sharing context. This attitude of informed consent and education really appeals to me.
What I have bought from Dzomsa so far: their time and effort to wash 1.3 kg of our clothing. 200 grams of dried and pitted apricots. 2 small clusters of small green grapes. 4 postcards. 1 litre of UV water. 10 prayer flags strung on a cotton string. A publication from the Ladakh Research Centre had an MSRP of 200 rupees. But because it was second-hand and it didn’t have a Dzomsa price, “sometimes people just leave books here without telling us,” Sonam offered it to me without payment.
Dzomsa is: a portal
I was listening to an interview with Arundhati Roy recently about what the people of Kashmir have been and are experiencing. At the end, the interviewer asked her what we (people listening) could do to help. She said that we could read and learn the history, because how can we understand the present — to say nothing of trying to affect it — if we don’t understand the context?
Dzomsa has for me been an easy place to gain a tiny bit of initial context about Ladakh that then makes it so much easier to notice and be curious. At the very least I’ll be paying more attention to what people are growing, eating, and selling.
I’ll only learn a tiny bit about Ladakh while I’m here, but whatever I do learn, I think this place has played a role. I’m very grateful to Sonam for taking a chance on it and offering such a gift and portal to visitors.