About 8 a.m. on the 23rd we left for Zanskar, to the southeast of Kargil, an area that was reached by road only in 1981. The jeep for the trip cost us 10,000 rupees (over $200), while a public jeep might have cost something like 1500 a piece, but we wanted to make photo stops. We first headed south up the Suru Valley, along the Suru River, a Moslem area that was converted from Buddhism in the 16th century. About 15 miles up the valley we passed a huge Indian Army base, the biggest I've seen since the one east of Leh in the Indus Valley. In the lower part of the valley there are quite a few villages and towns, with barley fields (or maybe they are wheat at this lower elevation) and quite a few trees, poplars and willows and others. It is a fertile valley. We stopped to see a big mosque described as Tibeto-Saracenic in design. The road was paved for only the first 10 miles or so.
About 40 miles up the valley, just before the town of Panikhar, we caught our first views of Nun and Kun, wreathed in clouds and both over 7000 meters (over 23,000 feet). From Panikhar we made a big loop along the river through an increasingly deeper and more scenic canyon to the village of Parkachik, the last Moslem village, and then headed east along the river higher and higher into much more remote and uninhabited area. We passed a black glacier just beyond Parkachik. The views were spectacular despite the now cloudy sky. As we got higher the grass was almost all yellow, with lots of orange bushes interspersed on the lower areas near the blue-gray river.
About 12:30 we reached the very small village of Rangdum in a wide, gravelly valley where another river joins the Suru. Rangdum Monastery is 3 miles away on a small hill before the barren brown mountains behind it. From the village, the views of the wide, gravelly valley with barren brown mountains, some snow and ice topped, all around were spectacular, and the sun was now shining. We had planned to spend the night in Rangdum, to break up the long journey to Zanskar, but despite the sun, the wind was blowing and it was very cold in the wind. We checked out the "Tourist Bungalow" and it was very unappealing, with broken windows letting in the cold. Plus, the altitude given in the guidebooks was about 3760 meters, about 12,000 feet, but in reality, according to my altimeter, it was more like 13,000. Rather than spend a very cold night there, we decided to head to Padum, the main town of Zanskar.
We had a rice and dhal lunch and left about 2:40, passing the monastery and heading up the Penzi La, 4400 meters, or about 14,400 feet. The clouds partially blocked the views of the snow covered mountains, but still the scenery was great. It was cold and windy on Penzi La, and right after the pass we could see the very large white glacier called Drang Drung, quite close to the rocky road. We descended into the barren valley below and followed the Stot River, with mountaintops above mostly hidden by clouds. After an hour or more, villages began to appears, with Tibetan style homes and barley fields. We reached the village of Phey about 6:30 and it became dark a little before 7. Soon a full moon arose over the massive mountains to the east, with a very bright planet to the right and a little lower. In the dark we crossed the Stot and arrived in Padum, 11,500 feet in elevation, about 7:30. It had taken us eleven and a half hours to travel the 145 or so miles from Kargil. It was very cold and windy in Padum. We found a cold hotel and a fairly good restaurant, and after dinner I went to bed under two heavy coverlets.
I got up and out about 7 the next morning. It was 52 degrees in my room and colder outside. The sun had not yet risen over the high mountain to the east. The sky, however, was clear. I walked to the old town, about half a mile from the new town, in the cold and climbed up the rocky hill there to the small monastery on top. The sun made its way over the mountain about 7:45 and there were great views of the town and wide valley. The Stot River comes in from the northwest and joins the Tserup River coming in from the south or southeast (we had traveled along the upper Tserup on the way to Leh from Manali, just before the Gata Loops).to form the Zanskar River which flows generally north to the Indus. They say that in the winter, when the passes are blocked with snow, the only way in or out of this valley is along the frozen Zanskar, but that in recent years the ie is hard enough during only one month, in comparison to several months in the recent past. From the hill in old Padum I could see across the valley to Karsha Monastery wedged onto a mountainside, and to small Pipiting Monastery on a small hill on the plane, and up and down the three river valleys leading into and out of the wide valley.
After breakfast, we left about 10:30 on a jeep tour with a very interesting driver from Karsha. First, he took us down the Zanskar River about 20 or 25 miles, past marvellously twisted strata of rock on the mountains, to the small but picturesque village of Zangla, with a ruined fort on a pinnacle above and a nunnery above the other side of the village. They are continuing to build the road from here to the Indus along the Zanskar River and the driver said they have completed about a third of the 150 kilometers, and that he thought they would take 20 more years to finish, though I have read more optimistic estimates.
We spent almost two hours at the nunnery, with 13 nuns, plus an American male teacher staying there for six weeks. They showed us around and then shared their lunch of new potatoes (that they had grown) and rice, plus butter tea, with us. They were very nice and great fun. We saw one old nun darning her red socks.
It had clouded up by the time we left between 1 and 1:30. We drove back the way we had come, stopping at the Songde Monastery about 700 feet above the valley floor. It was cold and windy up there, with great views of the valley, mountains and the village below. All the barley fields in Zanskar had already been harvested before the approaching winter. In fact, the driver told us it had become noticiably colder just in the past two days. We looked around the monastery and then had sweet tea and biscuits with a monk who was our driver's wife's uncle. We gave him a ride down to the village below with his bag of a fragrant juniper-smelling plant that they burn for its agreeable odor.
We then headed back towards Padum, but before reaching it crossed the Stot River to get to Karsha, also about 700 feet above the valley floor. It is a much larger monastery than Songde, with 70 versus 35 monks and many more buildings wedged against the steep mountainside. We made the steep climb to the prayer halls near the top, with great views over the valley. About 5:30 we got back to Padum, where it was very windy and cold. We spent another cold night there, without electricity as the power was out all over town. Padum is the Zanskar's biggest town, with 1500 people. I saw only three other western tourists there.
I would have preferred to spend another day there, but Phil and Kirsty were cold, as was I, and wanted to leave. We left the next morning, a bright and sunny morning with great views of the snow capped mountains above the town, about 7. It was a spectaclar ride back, with great views all the way under sunny skies. The Stot Valley was magnifient under the ice and snow capped mountaintops now visible. It was cold all morning, though. It was interesting to see the activity in the villages.
We reached the Drang Drung Glacier about 10:30 to see it gleaming white in the sunshine, with magnificent snowy mountains above it. Fresh snow speckled the lower mountainsides and the Penzi La had quite a bit of snow. There had been none when we first came over it. It is getting late in the season in Ladakh. Usually, the passes stay open until October, but sometimes they can be blocked by snow as early as late September.
We came down along the Suru on the other side of the pass through more magnificent scenery, with the snow topped mountains towering over the Suru and the rocky areas or orange-yellow grasslands along it, and stopped at the Rangdum Monastery for a short look in the cold wind. About 12:30 we reached Rangdum for another rice and dhal lunch. It was sunny and not very windy, much more pleasant than on our first stay, and we had our lunch out in the sun. We continued down the scenic Suru Valley, and had pretty good views of Nun and Kun, with only a few clouds, from a little lower than Panikhar about 4. As we came down through the lower Suru Valley villages there were boys playing cricket in the now barren fields. We got back to Kargil about 6:30 (another eleven and a half hour trip) and it was considerably colder here now than on our first stay. Autumn has arrived and winter is on the way.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
September 19 - 22, 2010: Leh to Kargil
On September19, Phil, Kirsty (Mark was going on a trek with his father) and I headed west from Leh, down the Indus, by jeep. The Indus Valley narrowed considerably into a rocky gorge, with a few villages along the way. We soon passed the confluence of the blue-gray Zanskar River, coming from the south, and the muddy Indus. It took a while for the two rivers' waters to mix.
Our first stop was Basgo, in a pretty little side valley with a ruined fortress and two monasteries accessed by a steep, but relatively short, climb. The monastery prayer halls were locked, but there were great views from the rooftops. We could see the villagers harvesting barley below. From Basgo we headed west, then north into a side valley to the monastery at Likir, on a rocky hilltop. It had some beautiful prayer halls and more great views of the valley and surrounding stark, brown mountains from the rooftops. The barley fields here were already harvested. From Likir we headed to Alchi across the Indus, where we had lunch and then visited the small, old monastery right next to the Indus, a little unusual because usually they are on mountaintops, or at least up above the nearly village.
From Alchi we recrossed the Indus and continued downriver. We turned off the main road at Khalsi, where the main road crosses the Indus to head to Kargil, and instead continued along the Indus on a narrow road through spectacular canyon scenery, with a few villages of barley fields and many more trees than upriver, some with leaves turning yellow. After about 40 miles on the narrow road along the river, we stopped, gathered our backpacks, and hiked about 10 minutes on a rocky path to the village of Dha. We passed women carrying crates of tomatoes on their backs to a waiting truck and we passed tomato fields on our way to our guesthouse, arriving just before dark. Dha is at only about 9500 feet, a few hundred feet above the Indus, so we felt relatively warm, and even had dinner outside the guesthouse under a grape arbor. We had delicious fresh tomatoes and even had grapes and peaches for desert.
Dha is a small village, with only paths (the road is below, along the Indus), and with 38 families and 250 people, 100 or so of which, we were told, are away working. The people are called Dards or Brokpa, and are very European-looking. One woman we saw had startling blue eyes. One theory is that they are descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great. Another is that they are descendants of the Aryans who migrated into India and Europe thousands of years ago and have never intermixed. They are Buddhists, but with animist traditions.
I took a walk for about an hour an a half before breakfast the next morning, walking through the village and along the fields to the upper end of the village and then along an irrigation channel to a bridge over a tributary of the Indus. Dha is a very beautiful village, with an abundance of agriculture after the harsher conditions upriver. I passed trees of apples, apricots, pears, peaches, mulberries and walnuts. There were patches of tomatoes, beans, cabbages, barley, millet and alfalfa, and some other stuff I didn't recognize. And lots of flower patches. The older women in traditional dress wear their hair in three long braids with bright flowers on the tops of their head. I also passed lots of rock huts with wooden doors that house goats and sheep at night. Many were being let out to graze.
After breakfast our guesthouse host gave us a great tour of the village, passing the houses and fields, with great views down to the Indus and up and down the valley. He knocked some walnuts off the trees and we cracked them and they were delicious. We headed up to the new fields, created in the last 20 years by a second irrigation canal coming from the Indus tributary, and to a rocky pinnacle with prayer flags, with great views of the village, fields, and beyond. Afterward, I walked around on my own and came across two very European-looking old men sitting in the sun. They motioned for me to sit on a rock next to them and we had a sort of conversation. One man had a handlebar mustache and the other had three coin shaped objects on the edge of one of his ears. Nearby an old woman in traditional dress was shelling apricot pits to get to the nuts inside. Apricots were also drying on nearby rooftops.
It had clouded up in the late morning and we left about 1, after lunch under the grape arbor. Before lunch a man was boiling barley nearby to be used for beer, using very little wood, but a lot of straw and some dung to keep the fire going. We came back the way we had come the day before, crossed the Indus at Khalsi, went into a side valley and then zigzagged up switchbacks on a steep brown mountain, rising about 1800 feet, with great views as we ascended. About 4 we reached Lamayuru, at about 11,500 feet, with a monastery towering above the town on a rocky pinnacle. We checked into a guesthouse and then I watched barley being threshed by a team of two yaks and three dzos (half yak, half cow) led by a guy who guided them in a circle by a rope (they were all tied together by their horns) and sang while he did so. Two or three women kept adding bundles of barley to the threshing circle. Nearby a man and two women were winnowing the barley with wooden pitchforks. It was all quite dusty, but I watched for more than half an hour. At one point they added another dzo to the team. The two yaks were on the outside, and all the animals kept trying to eat the straw when they got the chance.
I then walked up to the monastery, passing through the little village as goats and sheep were herded into their evening quarters. One old woman was particularly energetic with them, scampering up the inclines rapidly and throwing rocks at them. It was a steep but short climb to the monastery. It was past 5 and the prayer halls were locked, but I could walk around the main building, with prayers wheels on the sides, and the two chortens next to it, with stupendous views of the valley and town below and the mountains beyond on all sides. One section to the east was a sort of South Dakota-syle badlands. An older monk with a hand-held prayer wheel was making a circuit of the monastery and chortens, and I talked to two eleven year old monks and one fifteen year old monk, the latter with a Yankee wool hat with "NY" on it. They spoke some English and were quite friendly. Later I went through the courtyard of the monks quarters and about 15 young ones, including the three I had talked to, were loudly reciting prayers, trying to memorize them, here and there around the courtyard. An older monk was also there, apparently to make sure they stuck to their lessons. He was carrying a switch.
From there I walked up to the hill above the monastery, with a little temple and prayer flags, for even more spectacular views of the monastery below and the countryside beyond. I made it down to the guesthouse just before dark. At dinner there were two Brazilian woman besides the three of us. I spoke some Portuguese with them, as one didn't speak much English, and it slowly came back to me, though often Spanish or Italian words came out instead. They had spent 3 days at a lecture by the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala.
It was sunny the next morning and I got out about 7 and walked along the road down past stacks of barley, men and women transporting barley to town by donkeys, and denuded barley fields with yaks, dzos and donkeys grazing on the stubble. There were great views in the early morning sunshine back towards the monastery high above the town. After breakfast the three of us walked up to the monastery, visited the prayer halls, and walked all around, including up to the prayer flags above the monastery for those fantastic views. We descended the monastery and left Lamayuru at noon, heading up to a pass at about 13,800 feet, with rocky, serrated ridges near the top. We descended into a high valley and then crossed another pass at about 12,500 feet and then descended into the scenic Wakha Valley. Stopping at the town of Mulbekh, we saw a thousand year old, 25 foot high Maitreya Buddha carved into a solitary, steep rock right next to the road and then took a narrow road above the town to a ruined fortress and two restored, but apparently empty, small monasteries. The site was fantastic, with a narrow, rocky access path to the monasteries and great views of the valley and the Zanskar Range beyond.
From Mulbekh we proceeded to nearly Shargol to see another monastery, this one seemingly wedged into a hillside. Shargol is the dividing line between predominately Buddhist and predominately Muslim areas, and we had begun seeing mosques and women and girls in headscarves. It is only 20 miles from Shargol to Kargil, but it took us an hour and a half, not so much because the road was bad (though it wasn't good), but because it was narrow and there were a lot of trucks coming the other way, including a convoy of maybe 100 army trucks. They are the kings of the road here. We got to Kargil a little after 5. It's at 9200 feet, so feels warm. The main street was busy with stollers,. All the women and girls are in headscarves, and there are at least two posters of the perpetually scowling Ayatollah Komeini (the Muslims here are Shia), though among the currency on display in the restaurant we ate in last night is an Israeli note. The people are very friendly.
It was overcast and even rained a bit today, though it has cleared up in the afternoon, and I took a walk around town, in part along the fast-moving Suru River, which flows to the Indus. Lots of people were on the main street and school kids were just getting out of class. The "Line of Control," the de facto border between India and Pakistan, is only a few miles away, less than 5 I think. We seem to be the only foreign tourists in town and have spent part of the day arranging the next leg of our trip to the Zanskar Valley. We leave tomorrow morning.
Our first stop was Basgo, in a pretty little side valley with a ruined fortress and two monasteries accessed by a steep, but relatively short, climb. The monastery prayer halls were locked, but there were great views from the rooftops. We could see the villagers harvesting barley below. From Basgo we headed west, then north into a side valley to the monastery at Likir, on a rocky hilltop. It had some beautiful prayer halls and more great views of the valley and surrounding stark, brown mountains from the rooftops. The barley fields here were already harvested. From Likir we headed to Alchi across the Indus, where we had lunch and then visited the small, old monastery right next to the Indus, a little unusual because usually they are on mountaintops, or at least up above the nearly village.
From Alchi we recrossed the Indus and continued downriver. We turned off the main road at Khalsi, where the main road crosses the Indus to head to Kargil, and instead continued along the Indus on a narrow road through spectacular canyon scenery, with a few villages of barley fields and many more trees than upriver, some with leaves turning yellow. After about 40 miles on the narrow road along the river, we stopped, gathered our backpacks, and hiked about 10 minutes on a rocky path to the village of Dha. We passed women carrying crates of tomatoes on their backs to a waiting truck and we passed tomato fields on our way to our guesthouse, arriving just before dark. Dha is at only about 9500 feet, a few hundred feet above the Indus, so we felt relatively warm, and even had dinner outside the guesthouse under a grape arbor. We had delicious fresh tomatoes and even had grapes and peaches for desert.
Dha is a small village, with only paths (the road is below, along the Indus), and with 38 families and 250 people, 100 or so of which, we were told, are away working. The people are called Dards or Brokpa, and are very European-looking. One woman we saw had startling blue eyes. One theory is that they are descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great. Another is that they are descendants of the Aryans who migrated into India and Europe thousands of years ago and have never intermixed. They are Buddhists, but with animist traditions.
I took a walk for about an hour an a half before breakfast the next morning, walking through the village and along the fields to the upper end of the village and then along an irrigation channel to a bridge over a tributary of the Indus. Dha is a very beautiful village, with an abundance of agriculture after the harsher conditions upriver. I passed trees of apples, apricots, pears, peaches, mulberries and walnuts. There were patches of tomatoes, beans, cabbages, barley, millet and alfalfa, and some other stuff I didn't recognize. And lots of flower patches. The older women in traditional dress wear their hair in three long braids with bright flowers on the tops of their head. I also passed lots of rock huts with wooden doors that house goats and sheep at night. Many were being let out to graze.
After breakfast our guesthouse host gave us a great tour of the village, passing the houses and fields, with great views down to the Indus and up and down the valley. He knocked some walnuts off the trees and we cracked them and they were delicious. We headed up to the new fields, created in the last 20 years by a second irrigation canal coming from the Indus tributary, and to a rocky pinnacle with prayer flags, with great views of the village, fields, and beyond. Afterward, I walked around on my own and came across two very European-looking old men sitting in the sun. They motioned for me to sit on a rock next to them and we had a sort of conversation. One man had a handlebar mustache and the other had three coin shaped objects on the edge of one of his ears. Nearby an old woman in traditional dress was shelling apricot pits to get to the nuts inside. Apricots were also drying on nearby rooftops.
It had clouded up in the late morning and we left about 1, after lunch under the grape arbor. Before lunch a man was boiling barley nearby to be used for beer, using very little wood, but a lot of straw and some dung to keep the fire going. We came back the way we had come the day before, crossed the Indus at Khalsi, went into a side valley and then zigzagged up switchbacks on a steep brown mountain, rising about 1800 feet, with great views as we ascended. About 4 we reached Lamayuru, at about 11,500 feet, with a monastery towering above the town on a rocky pinnacle. We checked into a guesthouse and then I watched barley being threshed by a team of two yaks and three dzos (half yak, half cow) led by a guy who guided them in a circle by a rope (they were all tied together by their horns) and sang while he did so. Two or three women kept adding bundles of barley to the threshing circle. Nearby a man and two women were winnowing the barley with wooden pitchforks. It was all quite dusty, but I watched for more than half an hour. At one point they added another dzo to the team. The two yaks were on the outside, and all the animals kept trying to eat the straw when they got the chance.
I then walked up to the monastery, passing through the little village as goats and sheep were herded into their evening quarters. One old woman was particularly energetic with them, scampering up the inclines rapidly and throwing rocks at them. It was a steep but short climb to the monastery. It was past 5 and the prayer halls were locked, but I could walk around the main building, with prayers wheels on the sides, and the two chortens next to it, with stupendous views of the valley and town below and the mountains beyond on all sides. One section to the east was a sort of South Dakota-syle badlands. An older monk with a hand-held prayer wheel was making a circuit of the monastery and chortens, and I talked to two eleven year old monks and one fifteen year old monk, the latter with a Yankee wool hat with "NY" on it. They spoke some English and were quite friendly. Later I went through the courtyard of the monks quarters and about 15 young ones, including the three I had talked to, were loudly reciting prayers, trying to memorize them, here and there around the courtyard. An older monk was also there, apparently to make sure they stuck to their lessons. He was carrying a switch.
From there I walked up to the hill above the monastery, with a little temple and prayer flags, for even more spectacular views of the monastery below and the countryside beyond. I made it down to the guesthouse just before dark. At dinner there were two Brazilian woman besides the three of us. I spoke some Portuguese with them, as one didn't speak much English, and it slowly came back to me, though often Spanish or Italian words came out instead. They had spent 3 days at a lecture by the Dalai Lama in Dharmsala.
It was sunny the next morning and I got out about 7 and walked along the road down past stacks of barley, men and women transporting barley to town by donkeys, and denuded barley fields with yaks, dzos and donkeys grazing on the stubble. There were great views in the early morning sunshine back towards the monastery high above the town. After breakfast the three of us walked up to the monastery, visited the prayer halls, and walked all around, including up to the prayer flags above the monastery for those fantastic views. We descended the monastery and left Lamayuru at noon, heading up to a pass at about 13,800 feet, with rocky, serrated ridges near the top. We descended into a high valley and then crossed another pass at about 12,500 feet and then descended into the scenic Wakha Valley. Stopping at the town of Mulbekh, we saw a thousand year old, 25 foot high Maitreya Buddha carved into a solitary, steep rock right next to the road and then took a narrow road above the town to a ruined fortress and two restored, but apparently empty, small monasteries. The site was fantastic, with a narrow, rocky access path to the monasteries and great views of the valley and the Zanskar Range beyond.
From Mulbekh we proceeded to nearly Shargol to see another monastery, this one seemingly wedged into a hillside. Shargol is the dividing line between predominately Buddhist and predominately Muslim areas, and we had begun seeing mosques and women and girls in headscarves. It is only 20 miles from Shargol to Kargil, but it took us an hour and a half, not so much because the road was bad (though it wasn't good), but because it was narrow and there were a lot of trucks coming the other way, including a convoy of maybe 100 army trucks. They are the kings of the road here. We got to Kargil a little after 5. It's at 9200 feet, so feels warm. The main street was busy with stollers,. All the women and girls are in headscarves, and there are at least two posters of the perpetually scowling Ayatollah Komeini (the Muslims here are Shia), though among the currency on display in the restaurant we ate in last night is an Israeli note. The people are very friendly.
It was overcast and even rained a bit today, though it has cleared up in the afternoon, and I took a walk around town, in part along the fast-moving Suru River, which flows to the Indus. Lots of people were on the main street and school kids were just getting out of class. The "Line of Control," the de facto border between India and Pakistan, is only a few miles away, less than 5 I think. We seem to be the only foreign tourists in town and have spent part of the day arranging the next leg of our trip to the Zanskar Valley. We leave tomorrow morning.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
September 10 -18, 2010: Nubra Valley, Dalai Lama in Leh, Pangong Tso
I'm back in Leh and will try to get this posted. Internet here is very slow and unreliable, because the land lines are still down following the August floods and they have to rely on satellite transmission.
On the 10th Phil and I had planned to begin a 3 day trip to the Nubra Valley, but between 2 and 4 in the morning I was quite sick, with vomitting and diarrhea. I felt okay after that, but I was extremely tired and spent the day in bed until the early evening. I ate some cookies about 10.
I felt fine the next morning. The streets were wet after rain during the night and the brown mountains above Leh were dusted with newly-fallen snow. After breakfast, Phil and I left with an English couple, Mark and Kirsty, about 8:30 on a jeep bound for the Nubra Valley. The morning was sunny and the views spectacular as we climbed above Leh towards the Khandung La, first passing the green barley and vegetable fields of upper Leh and a village, Ganglas, a little higher and then the stark, brown mountains above. The road was paved and very good till we came near the pass where it was much more rocky. We zigzagged up the steep mountains and reached Khandung La about 10. Snow was on the ground and it was very cold. The snow was not deep at all, but was slippery in places. The signs at the pass say it is the world's highest motorable pass and give its elevation as 5602 meters, about 18,380 feet. My map and other sources say about 5360 meters, or about 17,500 feet, and my altimeter was much closer to the latter.
From the pass we continued down through more spectacular stark scenery, passing a lone marmot (a mammal that looks like a prarrie dog, but several times larger) and reaching the village of Khandung for a tea break. We passed army camps on both sides of the pass, one with soldiers with white suits and goggles, probably bound for the Siachen Glacier, where Indian and Pakistani troops confront each other at 6000 meters, about 20,000 feet. Khandung had few homes but extensive barley fields. We continued down and finally sighted the Shyok River far below and a small green village on its banks, backed by steep brown mountains. We reached the valley floor near where the Nubra flows into the Shyok and followed the Shyok downriver to the village of Diskit, with a whitewashed monatery on a ridge far above the town. We had lunch there and continued down the valley about 6 miles to Hunder, another small village where we spent the night. The valley floor is at about 10,500 feet elevation and is quite rocky and sandy. The rivers themselves are gray, with several channels.
On the way to Hunder from Diskit we stopped at sand dunes where there were about 15 Bactrian camels (the ones with two humps). It had clouded up by then and I rode one for about 15 minutes over the sand dunes. They seem a tiny bit more polite than the one hump variety. Bactrian camel caravans used to travel between China and India through the Nubra Valley, and we were told that these are the descendants of lame camels left behind. We reached Hunder about 6 and walked about until dark, about 7. It is a spread out village, with whitewahed houses among stone walls and barley and vegetable patches. We had home-grown tomatoes for dinner, along with rice and dhal and vegetables, and they were delicious.
It was cloudy with a few drops of rain the next morning, and after another walk around the village, visiting the gompa above the village, with a ruined fort above that, we headed to Diskit and spent an hour or more in the monastery above the village. They were great views of the valleys and the confluence of the Nubra and Shyok. The monastery itself was interesting, with wall paintings in the prayer halls. A steep and rocky chasm is on one side. Nearby is a statue of the Maitreya Buddha (the Budbha of the future) that was completed only 2 months ago and is something like 60 feet high, situated on a hill below the monastery. We visited that, with great views of the monastery.
From Diskit we drove upriver and crossed the Shyok and then proceeded up the Nubra Valley until we reached the village of Sumur, where we had lunch and found a hotel for the night. After lunch we drove another 15 miles or so up the Nubra Valley, with more stark, steep, brown mountains above us on either side, to a hot springs at Panamik. The hot springs were none too scenic, but they were very hot. I wouldn't want to bathe in them without cold water added. Back in Sumur, we visited the monastery above the village, where some monklets were playing cricket in the late afternoon, and then walked down to our hotel.
We made the beautiful trip back to Leh the next day, and I think I enjoyed the spectacular scenery even more on the return trip. The pass was no longer snow covered. We arrived on the outskirts of Leh about 1, hitting a traffic jam as the Dalai Lama was arriving that day. A crowd of (I would guess) 15,000-25,000 had gathered in dusty rectangular area on the grounds of Lamdon School and were waiting for him. Cars were parked on the side of the road above the crowd and people were streaming down to join it. We were stopped for maybe 45 minutes on the road above the big crowd, and were told it was because traffic was stopped in town to allow the Dalai Lama to get from the airport to the gathering. We finally got to town about 2.
Phil and I had lunch and then walked up to the gathering, arriving about 3:15 and joining the huge crowd. There were many people in traditional dress, mainly older people, but they were much outnumbered by those in modern dress. It was quite an interesting crowd, with people coming and going while that low, guttural Tibetan chanting emanated from the covered stage. We spotted the Dalai Lama under a golden parasol in the center of the stage leading the chanting. Eventually, we made our way to the right hand side of the stage and had very good views of him. There were many red robed monks on the stage and the Dalai Lama wore a red robe with a yellow sash. After the chanting ended, he said a few words to the crowd and we positioned ourselves near the exit from the stage to catch his departure. Red hated monks lined his route and I joined the scrum trying to see and photograph him as he left. He spoke to a television reporter on the way out and then waved to the crowd as he got in his car. There wasn't much security around, although I did see one Indian soldier with a rifle. His motorcade left in a cloud of dust and it was interesting to see the crowd depart. Eventually we joined them on the road back into town full of walkers and cars.
It was sunny the next morning and Phil and I left on a jeep tour of some of the sites around Leh about 9:30. First, we went to Stok across the Indus from Leh, where the former royal family of Ladakh still has a palace that it uses part time. The king of Ladakh was deposed in 1846 when the Dogras of Jammu invaded, but his descendants still style themselves kings, and there were some interesting photos of them in the palace museum. The palace in Stok was similar to the one in Leh, but renovated. There were some beautiful rooms, including a prayer hall and a small museum with some beautiful things, like royal regalia, and there were great views from the palace roof. We could see Leh across the valley. After the palace we visited a dilapidated 350 year old stone building that was the royal physician's home and a monastery at the upper edge of town.
From Stok we recrossed the Indus and headed upriver (the way we had come from Manali), eventually crossing it again and heading up into a very rocky hidden gorge to Hemis, where there is a big monastery, the most important in Ladakh. It has a huge courtyard, something like 130 feet by 65 feet, and some beautiful prayer halls, one with wooden pillars maybe 30-40 feet high. Hemis also has an excellent museum (including musical instruments, religious articles and even a tiger and a snow leopard skin) and great views from the roof of the rocky gorge in which the monastery is situated. On the way to and from the monastery we passed very long manis, or prayer walls, with prayers carved on stones on the top of the 3-4 foot high walls. They must have been half a mile or more in length.
On the way back to Leh we stopped at Thikse Monastery on a hill above the valley. It has many buildings and the prayer halls where quite interesting. One had a Buddha several stories high that you gazed upon from the top story, maybe from the shoulders up. In another, several monks were making a mandala on the floor of crushed stone dyed several colors. The colored crushed stone was in several little bowls and the monks would take some and put it in a metal tube and them carefully tap the tube, making the powder drop out carefully onto the mandala. One monk told me it would take two days to complete, and after seven days it would be swept up. While we were there the ten or so monks working on the mandala took a break to eat momos, which are Tibetan dumplings. They offerred me one and it was very good. We had some great views of the Indus Valley from the roof of Thikse Monastery.
From there we proceeded to Shey, where there is a ruined, but partially renovated palace that was apparently once the major palace of the Ladakhi kings. It had a 2 or 3 story Buddha in a dark hall, with gold on the wall paintings around it, which a monk showed us by the light of his cell phone (and our flashlights). The Buddha dates from the 17th century, is made of copper, and is gilded. From the palace we climbed up the rocky ridge to two ruined forts higher up, with prayer flags fluttering in the wind, for great views back toward Thikse and of the Indus Valley as a whole. We got back to Leh just before dark.
It was sunny the next morning and about 9:30 Phil, Mark, Kirsty and I left on a jeep bound for Pangong Tso ("Tso" means "Lake"). We traveled up the Indus to Karu, where we took a road that headed towards the lake via Chang La. We passed Chemrey Monastery on a rocky hill and above a dilapidated fort and above a wide valley with barley fields as we climbed the steep road to the pass. The road was paved until near the pass, as the roads in this area are important to the military, worried as they are about China and Pakistan. I was told half of the Indian army is in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, of which Ladakh is a part. It was sunny but very cold at the pass, about 5360 meters or 17,500 feet. Work crews of men and women were rebuilding a wall. We talked to some Indian soldiers, one from West Bengal and one from Maharashtra. The army offers free tea at the pass and has a medical facility if you need oxygen.
From the pass we made the descent through more stark landscape, finally reaching the village of Tangste where we had lunch. From Tangste we travered a beautiful canyon to the lake. We passed some yaks in a green area near the river and reached another green area where we found about a dozen marmots emerging from their dens. Our driver had brought some cabbage leaves, which he used to entice the marmots to come out. They were somewhat wary, but I suspect used to tourists feeding. They were great fun, and we could feed them and even pet some of the braver ones. One was much larger than the others. Apparently she was the mother of the others.
We reached the increadibly blue lake about 5, and drove along it for about 6 miles to the village of Spangmik, with nine families, where we spent the night in a home with three rooms for tourists. I walked through the village and down to the lake after the sun had set behind the steep mountains and it was cold when the wind blew. The lake is at about 4200 meters, or 13,800 feet. I passed stone walls, cattle grazing, goats being brought home, and barley fields. The lake is very clear, but is said to be brackish, as there is no outlet. It is about 80 miles long and only a few miles (2-3) wide. Its eastern end is in the part of Kashmir claimed by China and occupied by the Chinese since the 1962 war.
The home we stayed in was quite comfortable. We had rice and dhal an chapattis in the kitchen for dinner and slept warmly on mattresses on the floor under heavy covers. The man of the house told us they have two children, eleven and twelve years old, both in school in Shey, where they have gone to school since age 7. That must be hard on both parents and children. He said his children want to return to Spangmik once they finish school.
I got up about 5 the next morning to pee and could spot Orion, Taurus and the Pleaides in the starry sky. The half moon had set, a planet was setting over the high mountains to the west, and the sky to the east above the mountains and lake was brightening. I got up for good about 6:45 and walked down to the lake in the morning sunshine. There was ice on the edges of some of the streams and water channels in the village. (It amazes me how much water flows down through these villages from the dry mountains above them. It comes from glaciers even higher up, and we could see them from Spangmik.) There were maybe 6-8 yaks at the lake shore, and as usual they were pretty skittish. We had breakfast in the sun and then sat there until about 11 enjoying the sunshine and the views of the lake. We could have happily spent another day there. On the way back to Leh we stopped to see the marmots again, this time with cookies and chapattis. I again enjoyed the beautiful trip and we arrived back in Leh about 5. It had been sunny all day, a beautiful day.
It was sunny all the next day, too. I walked up to the base of the palace for the views. The snow and ice capped mountains, including Stok Kangri at over 6000 meters (around 20,000 feet) across the Indus to the south were cloudless, and in fact there was hardly a cloud in the sky all day. The views were fantastic. I discovered an old man (probably about my age!) in a traditional long red jacket, and with a walking stick and a ball cap with a Dalai Lama button, sitting in the sun in a somewhat secluded area. He didn't seem unhappy to have me disturb his solitude. Down in the old city I watched bakers making chapattis. The take balls of dough, flatten them by hand, streak them with liquid (water and butter, I guess), and then place them on the inside of a big jar shaped oven, where they stick. The fire is below, I imagine. After a minute or so, they remove them with a metal rod.
Later in the afternoon, I climbed the Nezer Latho gompa near my hotel for more views of the area under the cloudless sky. Several days ago I met a Swiss guy named Bardo and his half-Bhutanese son of about 10 in the late afternoon at Nezer Latho. Bardo told me he had arrived in Leh in 1971 on a truck after a three day trip from Srinigar. He spent two and a half months in Ladakh and was fined and stripped of his souvenirs when he left. He said there were only two other foreigners here then, both working here. This is his first trip back since then and it was interesting to hear his descriptions of 1971 Ladakh.
The next day (today) is also sunny. After breakfast I walked up again to Nezer Latho for the views and have spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon doing errands and typing in this internet cafe. Time for lunch.
On the 10th Phil and I had planned to begin a 3 day trip to the Nubra Valley, but between 2 and 4 in the morning I was quite sick, with vomitting and diarrhea. I felt okay after that, but I was extremely tired and spent the day in bed until the early evening. I ate some cookies about 10.
I felt fine the next morning. The streets were wet after rain during the night and the brown mountains above Leh were dusted with newly-fallen snow. After breakfast, Phil and I left with an English couple, Mark and Kirsty, about 8:30 on a jeep bound for the Nubra Valley. The morning was sunny and the views spectacular as we climbed above Leh towards the Khandung La, first passing the green barley and vegetable fields of upper Leh and a village, Ganglas, a little higher and then the stark, brown mountains above. The road was paved and very good till we came near the pass where it was much more rocky. We zigzagged up the steep mountains and reached Khandung La about 10. Snow was on the ground and it was very cold. The snow was not deep at all, but was slippery in places. The signs at the pass say it is the world's highest motorable pass and give its elevation as 5602 meters, about 18,380 feet. My map and other sources say about 5360 meters, or about 17,500 feet, and my altimeter was much closer to the latter.
From the pass we continued down through more spectacular stark scenery, passing a lone marmot (a mammal that looks like a prarrie dog, but several times larger) and reaching the village of Khandung for a tea break. We passed army camps on both sides of the pass, one with soldiers with white suits and goggles, probably bound for the Siachen Glacier, where Indian and Pakistani troops confront each other at 6000 meters, about 20,000 feet. Khandung had few homes but extensive barley fields. We continued down and finally sighted the Shyok River far below and a small green village on its banks, backed by steep brown mountains. We reached the valley floor near where the Nubra flows into the Shyok and followed the Shyok downriver to the village of Diskit, with a whitewashed monatery on a ridge far above the town. We had lunch there and continued down the valley about 6 miles to Hunder, another small village where we spent the night. The valley floor is at about 10,500 feet elevation and is quite rocky and sandy. The rivers themselves are gray, with several channels.
On the way to Hunder from Diskit we stopped at sand dunes where there were about 15 Bactrian camels (the ones with two humps). It had clouded up by then and I rode one for about 15 minutes over the sand dunes. They seem a tiny bit more polite than the one hump variety. Bactrian camel caravans used to travel between China and India through the Nubra Valley, and we were told that these are the descendants of lame camels left behind. We reached Hunder about 6 and walked about until dark, about 7. It is a spread out village, with whitewahed houses among stone walls and barley and vegetable patches. We had home-grown tomatoes for dinner, along with rice and dhal and vegetables, and they were delicious.
It was cloudy with a few drops of rain the next morning, and after another walk around the village, visiting the gompa above the village, with a ruined fort above that, we headed to Diskit and spent an hour or more in the monastery above the village. They were great views of the valleys and the confluence of the Nubra and Shyok. The monastery itself was interesting, with wall paintings in the prayer halls. A steep and rocky chasm is on one side. Nearby is a statue of the Maitreya Buddha (the Budbha of the future) that was completed only 2 months ago and is something like 60 feet high, situated on a hill below the monastery. We visited that, with great views of the monastery.
From Diskit we drove upriver and crossed the Shyok and then proceeded up the Nubra Valley until we reached the village of Sumur, where we had lunch and found a hotel for the night. After lunch we drove another 15 miles or so up the Nubra Valley, with more stark, steep, brown mountains above us on either side, to a hot springs at Panamik. The hot springs were none too scenic, but they were very hot. I wouldn't want to bathe in them without cold water added. Back in Sumur, we visited the monastery above the village, where some monklets were playing cricket in the late afternoon, and then walked down to our hotel.
We made the beautiful trip back to Leh the next day, and I think I enjoyed the spectacular scenery even more on the return trip. The pass was no longer snow covered. We arrived on the outskirts of Leh about 1, hitting a traffic jam as the Dalai Lama was arriving that day. A crowd of (I would guess) 15,000-25,000 had gathered in dusty rectangular area on the grounds of Lamdon School and were waiting for him. Cars were parked on the side of the road above the crowd and people were streaming down to join it. We were stopped for maybe 45 minutes on the road above the big crowd, and were told it was because traffic was stopped in town to allow the Dalai Lama to get from the airport to the gathering. We finally got to town about 2.
Phil and I had lunch and then walked up to the gathering, arriving about 3:15 and joining the huge crowd. There were many people in traditional dress, mainly older people, but they were much outnumbered by those in modern dress. It was quite an interesting crowd, with people coming and going while that low, guttural Tibetan chanting emanated from the covered stage. We spotted the Dalai Lama under a golden parasol in the center of the stage leading the chanting. Eventually, we made our way to the right hand side of the stage and had very good views of him. There were many red robed monks on the stage and the Dalai Lama wore a red robe with a yellow sash. After the chanting ended, he said a few words to the crowd and we positioned ourselves near the exit from the stage to catch his departure. Red hated monks lined his route and I joined the scrum trying to see and photograph him as he left. He spoke to a television reporter on the way out and then waved to the crowd as he got in his car. There wasn't much security around, although I did see one Indian soldier with a rifle. His motorcade left in a cloud of dust and it was interesting to see the crowd depart. Eventually we joined them on the road back into town full of walkers and cars.
It was sunny the next morning and Phil and I left on a jeep tour of some of the sites around Leh about 9:30. First, we went to Stok across the Indus from Leh, where the former royal family of Ladakh still has a palace that it uses part time. The king of Ladakh was deposed in 1846 when the Dogras of Jammu invaded, but his descendants still style themselves kings, and there were some interesting photos of them in the palace museum. The palace in Stok was similar to the one in Leh, but renovated. There were some beautiful rooms, including a prayer hall and a small museum with some beautiful things, like royal regalia, and there were great views from the palace roof. We could see Leh across the valley. After the palace we visited a dilapidated 350 year old stone building that was the royal physician's home and a monastery at the upper edge of town.
From Stok we recrossed the Indus and headed upriver (the way we had come from Manali), eventually crossing it again and heading up into a very rocky hidden gorge to Hemis, where there is a big monastery, the most important in Ladakh. It has a huge courtyard, something like 130 feet by 65 feet, and some beautiful prayer halls, one with wooden pillars maybe 30-40 feet high. Hemis also has an excellent museum (including musical instruments, religious articles and even a tiger and a snow leopard skin) and great views from the roof of the rocky gorge in which the monastery is situated. On the way to and from the monastery we passed very long manis, or prayer walls, with prayers carved on stones on the top of the 3-4 foot high walls. They must have been half a mile or more in length.
On the way back to Leh we stopped at Thikse Monastery on a hill above the valley. It has many buildings and the prayer halls where quite interesting. One had a Buddha several stories high that you gazed upon from the top story, maybe from the shoulders up. In another, several monks were making a mandala on the floor of crushed stone dyed several colors. The colored crushed stone was in several little bowls and the monks would take some and put it in a metal tube and them carefully tap the tube, making the powder drop out carefully onto the mandala. One monk told me it would take two days to complete, and after seven days it would be swept up. While we were there the ten or so monks working on the mandala took a break to eat momos, which are Tibetan dumplings. They offerred me one and it was very good. We had some great views of the Indus Valley from the roof of Thikse Monastery.
From there we proceeded to Shey, where there is a ruined, but partially renovated palace that was apparently once the major palace of the Ladakhi kings. It had a 2 or 3 story Buddha in a dark hall, with gold on the wall paintings around it, which a monk showed us by the light of his cell phone (and our flashlights). The Buddha dates from the 17th century, is made of copper, and is gilded. From the palace we climbed up the rocky ridge to two ruined forts higher up, with prayer flags fluttering in the wind, for great views back toward Thikse and of the Indus Valley as a whole. We got back to Leh just before dark.
It was sunny the next morning and about 9:30 Phil, Mark, Kirsty and I left on a jeep bound for Pangong Tso ("Tso" means "Lake"). We traveled up the Indus to Karu, where we took a road that headed towards the lake via Chang La. We passed Chemrey Monastery on a rocky hill and above a dilapidated fort and above a wide valley with barley fields as we climbed the steep road to the pass. The road was paved until near the pass, as the roads in this area are important to the military, worried as they are about China and Pakistan. I was told half of the Indian army is in the state of Jammu and Kashmir, of which Ladakh is a part. It was sunny but very cold at the pass, about 5360 meters or 17,500 feet. Work crews of men and women were rebuilding a wall. We talked to some Indian soldiers, one from West Bengal and one from Maharashtra. The army offers free tea at the pass and has a medical facility if you need oxygen.
From the pass we made the descent through more stark landscape, finally reaching the village of Tangste where we had lunch. From Tangste we travered a beautiful canyon to the lake. We passed some yaks in a green area near the river and reached another green area where we found about a dozen marmots emerging from their dens. Our driver had brought some cabbage leaves, which he used to entice the marmots to come out. They were somewhat wary, but I suspect used to tourists feeding. They were great fun, and we could feed them and even pet some of the braver ones. One was much larger than the others. Apparently she was the mother of the others.
We reached the increadibly blue lake about 5, and drove along it for about 6 miles to the village of Spangmik, with nine families, where we spent the night in a home with three rooms for tourists. I walked through the village and down to the lake after the sun had set behind the steep mountains and it was cold when the wind blew. The lake is at about 4200 meters, or 13,800 feet. I passed stone walls, cattle grazing, goats being brought home, and barley fields. The lake is very clear, but is said to be brackish, as there is no outlet. It is about 80 miles long and only a few miles (2-3) wide. Its eastern end is in the part of Kashmir claimed by China and occupied by the Chinese since the 1962 war.
The home we stayed in was quite comfortable. We had rice and dhal an chapattis in the kitchen for dinner and slept warmly on mattresses on the floor under heavy covers. The man of the house told us they have two children, eleven and twelve years old, both in school in Shey, where they have gone to school since age 7. That must be hard on both parents and children. He said his children want to return to Spangmik once they finish school.
I got up about 5 the next morning to pee and could spot Orion, Taurus and the Pleaides in the starry sky. The half moon had set, a planet was setting over the high mountains to the west, and the sky to the east above the mountains and lake was brightening. I got up for good about 6:45 and walked down to the lake in the morning sunshine. There was ice on the edges of some of the streams and water channels in the village. (It amazes me how much water flows down through these villages from the dry mountains above them. It comes from glaciers even higher up, and we could see them from Spangmik.) There were maybe 6-8 yaks at the lake shore, and as usual they were pretty skittish. We had breakfast in the sun and then sat there until about 11 enjoying the sunshine and the views of the lake. We could have happily spent another day there. On the way back to Leh we stopped to see the marmots again, this time with cookies and chapattis. I again enjoyed the beautiful trip and we arrived back in Leh about 5. It had been sunny all day, a beautiful day.
It was sunny all the next day, too. I walked up to the base of the palace for the views. The snow and ice capped mountains, including Stok Kangri at over 6000 meters (around 20,000 feet) across the Indus to the south were cloudless, and in fact there was hardly a cloud in the sky all day. The views were fantastic. I discovered an old man (probably about my age!) in a traditional long red jacket, and with a walking stick and a ball cap with a Dalai Lama button, sitting in the sun in a somewhat secluded area. He didn't seem unhappy to have me disturb his solitude. Down in the old city I watched bakers making chapattis. The take balls of dough, flatten them by hand, streak them with liquid (water and butter, I guess), and then place them on the inside of a big jar shaped oven, where they stick. The fire is below, I imagine. After a minute or so, they remove them with a metal rod.
Later in the afternoon, I climbed the Nezer Latho gompa near my hotel for more views of the area under the cloudless sky. Several days ago I met a Swiss guy named Bardo and his half-Bhutanese son of about 10 in the late afternoon at Nezer Latho. Bardo told me he had arrived in Leh in 1971 on a truck after a three day trip from Srinigar. He spent two and a half months in Ladakh and was fined and stripped of his souvenirs when he left. He said there were only two other foreigners here then, both working here. This is his first trip back since then and it was interesting to hear his descriptions of 1971 Ladakh.
The next day (today) is also sunny. After breakfast I walked up again to Nezer Latho for the views and have spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon doing errands and typing in this internet cafe. Time for lunch.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
September 2 - 9, 2010: Manali to Leh
I spent my last day in Manali (Sept. 2) doing errands and arranging for up-coming travel. There are several options for traveling from Manali to Leh. There is the public bus, which takes two days, but is said to be quite uncomfortable. (But not as uncomfortable as a friend of mine must have had it when she traveled from Manali to Leh in the 70's on the top of a truck.) There are minibuses and jeeps that leave at 2 am and are said to arrive in Leh the same day at 8 or 9 at night, but they have only one driver, and one driver for that much time seems a bad idea. There are also minibuses and jeeps that leave Manali at 6 am, spend the night at Sarchu on the way, and arrive at Leh the next day. I decided on that option, but to have the minibus or jeep pick me up at Keylong on the way. Philip decided to do the same.
It was raining the next day at 7 when I awoke, but it had stopped by 8 and we left on a Keylong-bound bus about 10. Fortunately, it wasn't completely full as it was a rough ride over the Rohtang La. We had a lunch stop at Marhi about noon, at about 11,000 feet. The clouds/fog closed in soon after as we ascended and at about the same spot where I turned back on August 12 there was an hour delay for a bulldozer to clear the rocks blocking the narrow road. When we finally passed, I looked up at then many rocks, big and small, seemingly poised to tumble down. As we got by, a big herd of goats and sheep was coming down the narrow road to join the fray at the impasse. The road was terrible to the top, one of the worst I've been on. We were rocked almost as if we were on a boat on a stormy sea. We reached the pass after 2 pm, more than two hours after we had left Marhi, 10 miles away. The fog lifted at the pass, though we had cloudy skies as we descended the 40 or 50 switchbacks to the Chandra River. We followed it downriver, past soaring mountains with quite a bit of greenery on them, and one spectacular waterfall near a little town called Sissu, to the confluence of the Chandra and Bhaga Rivers, which join to form the Chenab, one of the major tributaries of the Indus. We followed the Bhaga upriver four miles to Keylong, arriving about 6. We had covered the 70 miles from Manali in 8 hours.
It was sunny the next morning at Keylong, at about 3300 meters or 11,800 feet. Across the Bhaga River on the mountainside is Khardong Gompa (Monastery), and we hiked to it. We first had to go about 500 feet down to the river and cross it on a footbridge over the narrow chasm, and then ascend more than a thousand feet through fields and a little village to get there, which took about 2 hours. There was a very large (mayble 10 foot high) prayer wheel there, and of course great views over the town and valley. We hiked down and had a late lunch and then after a rest attempted to hike up to the Shashur Gompa above Keylong, but we started too late to reach it and get back before dark. We had great views above the town, though.
We pretty much spent the next morning at the hotel. Our jeep arrived just before noon and we left about noon. There were four other passengers: a young monk in a red robe (and red high-topped sneakers) and a woman in the front and two out-of-uniform soldiers in the back. Philip and I got the middle seats and had plenty of room. We traveled up the Bhaga to Darcha where we had a police check and lunch, and then crossed the Bhaga River about 1:30 and followed a tributary on a pretty good road through spectacular scenery. However, the jeep was overheating as we were ascending the Barachala La (4980 meters, or about 16,300 feet). We had a twenty minute stop at a little stream and then an hour stop at a tent where we could drink tea and the driver took a nap. There was a little blue lake near the pass. From the pass we followed a river, under snow and ice capped peaks, to a wider valley and the tent camps at Sarchu, where we expected to spend the night, arriving a little after 6. But the driver wanted to continue to Pang, three hours away. I tried to persuade him to stay in Sarchu for the night as I didn't want to miss the scenery in the dark, but to no avail. We continued down the river and before 7 reached the Gata Loops, 22 switchbacks that climb above the river. We had some pretty good views of the valley and soaring mountains in the fading light, but by the time we reached the 22nd Loop, it was dark and you couldn't see much. I did see Venus rising over the jagged line of peaks to the west. In the dark we drove on a terrible road, with trucks still on the road, over two high passes, the Nachi La (4900 meters or 16,000 feet) and the Lachaling La (5065 meters or 16,600 feet). We arrived at the latter about 8:30 and had a quick look outside the jeep in the very cold air. The sky was full of stars and I could spot the Big and Little Dipper. The Milky Way was clearly visible. It took us about an hour to descend the 22 kilometers (about 13 miles) from the last pass on a particularly bad road through what appeared (in the dark) to be a narrow canyon to Pang, arriving about 9:30. It was quite cold at Pang, at about 14,800 feet (about 1000 feet higher than Sarchu). We were shown to a large tent where a Ladahki woman fixed us dhal and rice for dinner and then went to bed about 10:15 in an adjoining tent on mats with very thick coverlets to cover us. I had difficulty getting to sleep because of the altitude. I was breathing quite heavily, though had no headache. When I would start to fall asleep, my breathing would slow down as it normally does when you sleep and with not enough oxygen I would wake with a start. I didn't really fall asleep until after 2, I think.
And then I woke up a little before 5, though I stayed under covers until almost 6. I checked my thermometer after I got up and it was 41 in the tent, and in the 30's outside. We had an omelet and chapatti for breakfast and it warmed up once the sun came up. We left about 7 or 7:30, past the big army camp at Pang, and then ascended about 850 feet to the More Plateau, without a cloud in the sky. The flat plateau was not particularly scenic. About 40 kilometers (25 miles), out of Pang we turned off the road on what I thought might be a detour around road work. (There were road crews on the plateau.) I wasn't paying attention to the direction we were going until I noticed a lake, Tso Kar, that I didn't think the road would get close enough to for us to see. Soon I noticed we were on the wrong side of the lake, going south on its eastern shore instead of north on its western shore. Then we were heading away from the lake to the east and southeast. The driver didn't speak much English, but finally explained to us that the main road to Leh over Taglang La and Rumtse was closed for about 30 kilometers and we were taking a major detour of around 100 kilometers. 100 kilometers is only 62 miles, but on these roads that is a major detour, so I understood now why the driver wanted to stay at Pang rather than Sarchu. And the road was terrible. We were jolted all over the place. Finally, we reached some wet grasslands with nomads in tents herding goats and sheep. These were the first inhabitants of the area we had seen since Darcha, other than the army and the seasonal tent dwellers who tend the travelers between Leh and Manali in the summer. We reached the small town of Sumdho and followed a small stream down a narrow canyon until we reached the Indus about 11 or so and crossed it at a place called Mahe, 159 kilometers from Leh, about the distance we had been from Leh on the main road from Pang. We had lunch (rice and dhal) a few miles down the river at a small town with a hot springs called Chumathang. Then we followed the Indus down its narrow and rocky canyon. In a few places the valley was wide enough for some agricultural plots and villages, but mostly it was wide enough just for the river and the narrow road. Sometimes we traveled just beside the Indus and sometimes far above it. It was a beautiful trip through the stark brown mountains. The Indus was quite wide here, too, so far from the sea, though I'm not sure how wide. It was brown-gray, with lots of whitewater. I had seen it in 1994 in Tibet near its source and it was just a very small stream. After we reached the town of Upshi and again were on the main Manali-Leh road, the valley widened considerably and we usually couldn't see the Indus. The valley was still pretty brown and barren, but there were many more towns. We passed the big gompa at Thikse and the tree-lined road near Shey and reached Choglamsar, only 5 miles from Leh. Choglamsar was badly hit by the flash flooding and landslides of early August and there were still many mounds of dirt maybe 6-8 feet high, with stones and trees embedded in them, on the main road through the center of town. Men were attacking them with shovels and women were taking away big rocks strapped to their backs. Leh is up a valley from the Indus. (The Indus had dropped something like 3000 feet (from 13,800 to 10,800 by my altimeter) in the 100 miles from Mahe to Choglamsar.) We reached Leh, at about 3500 meters (11,500 feet) a little after 4 and found a good hotel where we could wash off the dust of the last two days. After the poor night's sleep in Pang, I went to bed about 8:30 and slept 10 hours.
It was cloudy the next morning and we had a look around the city. The Ladakhi people are Buddhists and closely related to Tibetans, though with a different language. There was a Buddhist kingdom centered here from the 16th century until the 1840's, and this area has been Buddhist for over a thousand years. It was only opened to tourists in 1974. Because of the August rain, tourism is very much reduced this year. We walked through the narrow lanes of the old town up to the former royal palace on a rocky ridge above the town. It was started in the 16th century and is ten levels high, though because of the slope of the ridge no portion is 10 stories high. It is under renovation and dun-colored, made of stone, timber and mud. It was fascinating to walk through its many rooms. Only 3 or 4 still have wall paintings. One is a beautiful prayer hall and another, one floor from the top, the king's audience chamber. There were great views from the top. It is about 300 feet above the town and another 400 feet (a steep climb) up the ridge from the palace are two gompas and a partially ruined fort, with even better views of the town, the green fields to the north and northwest, and across the Indus to the snow covered peaks to the south. From there we walked down on a different path to the town. Later in the afternoon we walked to chorten (stupa) on a hill, Nezer Latho, with more great views of the area.
At the ruined fort I talked with a Bengali doctor working for the government in New Delhi and here in Leh because of the August disaster. He told me the official death toll is 193, 163 of which were in Choglamsar and 21 in a town in Nubra Valley. He said 6 foreigners were among them. He said there is no official toll of missing, but that he thinks many bodies floated down the Indus.
The next day it was cloudy all morning and we took a leisurely walk up through the green area above Leh. We passed little channels of water, barley and vegetable fields, stone walls, and some beautiful traditional houses. We stopped at the Sankar and Tisuru gompas, the latter dating from the 11th century and in ruins, but with great views down the valley. From there we walked to the new Japanese built Shanti Stupa, with great views, and then to the suburb of Changspa for a late lunch. The sun had come out.
We were supposed to leave today for a 3 day tour of the Nubra Valley, but one of the four of us is sick, so it is postponed. I wandered around the narrow lanes of the old town this morning. Leh isn't a very big place, only 28.,000 people according to one of my guidebooks. Not a lot of people are in traditional dress, at least in comparison to the cities of Tibet. The people are very nice here, and there is a substantial Moslem population, who apparently began to arrive after a Ladakhi king invaded Moslem Skardu centuries ago and was defeated. The Moslem call to prayer at 3 am, for the pre-dawn Ramadan meals, has woken me up a couple of nights. I talked to a guy this morning who said he has never seen so much rain here. He also said the winters are much milder now. The Indus used to freeze, and no longer does. He is worried about the glaciers disappearing, and along with them the drinking water. I saw a film here about the impact of the modern world over the past three and a half decades upon the traditional lifestyles of the Ladakhis and their efforts to preserve the old ways.
And then I woke up a little before 5, though I stayed under covers until almost 6. I checked my thermometer after I got up and it was 41 in the tent, and in the 30's outside. We had an omelet and chapatti for breakfast and it warmed up once the sun came up. We left about 7 or 7:30, past the big army camp at Pang, and then ascended about 850 feet to the More Plateau, without a cloud in the sky. The flat plateau was not particularly scenic. About 40 kilometers (25 miles), out of Pang we turned off the road on what I thought might be a detour around road work. (There were road crews on the plateau.) I wasn't paying attention to the direction we were going until I noticed a lake, Tso Kar, that I didn't think the road would get close enough to for us to see. Soon I noticed we were on the wrong side of the lake, going south on its eastern shore instead of north on its western shore. Then we were heading away from the lake to the east and southeast. The driver didn't speak much English, but finally explained to us that the main road to Leh over Taglang La and Rumtse was closed for about 30 kilometers and we were taking a major detour of around 100 kilometers. 100 kilometers is only 62 miles, but on these roads that is a major detour, so I understood now why the driver wanted to stay at Pang rather than Sarchu. And the road was terrible. We were jolted all over the place. Finally, we reached some wet grasslands with nomads in tents herding goats and sheep. These were the first inhabitants of the area we had seen since Darcha, other than the army and the seasonal tent dwellers who tend the travelers between Leh and Manali in the summer. We reached the small town of Sumdho and followed a small stream down a narrow canyon until we reached the Indus about 11 or so and crossed it at a place called Mahe, 159 kilometers from Leh, about the distance we had been from Leh on the main road from Pang. We had lunch (rice and dhal) a few miles down the river at a small town with a hot springs called Chumathang. Then we followed the Indus down its narrow and rocky canyon. In a few places the valley was wide enough for some agricultural plots and villages, but mostly it was wide enough just for the river and the narrow road. Sometimes we traveled just beside the Indus and sometimes far above it. It was a beautiful trip through the stark brown mountains. The Indus was quite wide here, too, so far from the sea, though I'm not sure how wide. It was brown-gray, with lots of whitewater. I had seen it in 1994 in Tibet near its source and it was just a very small stream. After we reached the town of Upshi and again were on the main Manali-Leh road, the valley widened considerably and we usually couldn't see the Indus. The valley was still pretty brown and barren, but there were many more towns. We passed the big gompa at Thikse and the tree-lined road near Shey and reached Choglamsar, only 5 miles from Leh. Choglamsar was badly hit by the flash flooding and landslides of early August and there were still many mounds of dirt maybe 6-8 feet high, with stones and trees embedded in them, on the main road through the center of town. Men were attacking them with shovels and women were taking away big rocks strapped to their backs. Leh is up a valley from the Indus. (The Indus had dropped something like 3000 feet (from 13,800 to 10,800 by my altimeter) in the 100 miles from Mahe to Choglamsar.) We reached Leh, at about 3500 meters (11,500 feet) a little after 4 and found a good hotel where we could wash off the dust of the last two days. After the poor night's sleep in Pang, I went to bed about 8:30 and slept 10 hours.
It was cloudy the next morning and we had a look around the city. The Ladakhi people are Buddhists and closely related to Tibetans, though with a different language. There was a Buddhist kingdom centered here from the 16th century until the 1840's, and this area has been Buddhist for over a thousand years. It was only opened to tourists in 1974. Because of the August rain, tourism is very much reduced this year. We walked through the narrow lanes of the old town up to the former royal palace on a rocky ridge above the town. It was started in the 16th century and is ten levels high, though because of the slope of the ridge no portion is 10 stories high. It is under renovation and dun-colored, made of stone, timber and mud. It was fascinating to walk through its many rooms. Only 3 or 4 still have wall paintings. One is a beautiful prayer hall and another, one floor from the top, the king's audience chamber. There were great views from the top. It is about 300 feet above the town and another 400 feet (a steep climb) up the ridge from the palace are two gompas and a partially ruined fort, with even better views of the town, the green fields to the north and northwest, and across the Indus to the snow covered peaks to the south. From there we walked down on a different path to the town. Later in the afternoon we walked to chorten (stupa) on a hill, Nezer Latho, with more great views of the area.
At the ruined fort I talked with a Bengali doctor working for the government in New Delhi and here in Leh because of the August disaster. He told me the official death toll is 193, 163 of which were in Choglamsar and 21 in a town in Nubra Valley. He said 6 foreigners were among them. He said there is no official toll of missing, but that he thinks many bodies floated down the Indus.
The next day it was cloudy all morning and we took a leisurely walk up through the green area above Leh. We passed little channels of water, barley and vegetable fields, stone walls, and some beautiful traditional houses. We stopped at the Sankar and Tisuru gompas, the latter dating from the 11th century and in ruins, but with great views down the valley. From there we walked to the new Japanese built Shanti Stupa, with great views, and then to the suburb of Changspa for a late lunch. The sun had come out.
We were supposed to leave today for a 3 day tour of the Nubra Valley, but one of the four of us is sick, so it is postponed. I wandered around the narrow lanes of the old town this morning. Leh isn't a very big place, only 28.,000 people according to one of my guidebooks. Not a lot of people are in traditional dress, at least in comparison to the cities of Tibet. The people are very nice here, and there is a substantial Moslem population, who apparently began to arrive after a Ladakhi king invaded Moslem Skardu centuries ago and was defeated. The Moslem call to prayer at 3 am, for the pre-dawn Ramadan meals, has woken me up a couple of nights. I talked to a guy this morning who said he has never seen so much rain here. He also said the winters are much milder now. The Indus used to freeze, and no longer does. He is worried about the glaciers disappearing, and along with them the drinking water. I saw a film here about the impact of the modern world over the past three and a half decades upon the traditional lifestyles of the Ladakhis and their efforts to preserve the old ways.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
August 20 - September 1, 2010: Shimla to Manali via Kinnear and Spiti
I'm back in Manali after a beautiful but sometimes difficult trip through the Kinnear and Spiti valleys. My back and butt suffered on the buses along the way, and even the rides on jeeps were none too comfortable, though better than the buses.
It rained all morning the day I left Shimla (August 20) on another rickety bus from another chaotic bus station and it rained for the 2 to 2 1/2 hours it took for us to ascend to Narankot at about 9000 feet. All I could see was rain and fog and big brown puddles on the road. From Narankot we descended rapidly to the valley of the Sutlej River 6000 feet below. The rain stopped and the clouds parted and there were some great views down the terraced green slopes to the frothy, surging brown Sutlej below. The brown water almost looked thick. We followed the Sutlej, at times maybe 1000 feet above it, though at other times we were right alongside it. I got off after a six hour journey from Shimla at Jeori and jumped on the bus heading up the mountainside to Sarahan. The bus was full and I was bracing myself for standing on the journey when I noticed people were on the roof of the bus. I climbed up and traveled with 2 Israelis and about 20 Indians up there. We had to dodge branches and electrical wires, but the views were great. It took us a little over an hour to zigzag up the mountainside and we reached Sarahan, at 9000 feet, about 3500 feet above the river, a little after 6 and checked into the fairly comfortable monastery guesthouse. I went inside the monastery, after depositing my shoes, camera and leather products outside and donning the required orange hat. Inside were two 2-3 story towers of alternating timber beam and stone layers (supposedly resistant to earthquakes). Not much was going on. I had a terrible dinner of vegetable (cabbage) momos (a Tibetan dumpling) in a dark cafe and a bucket bath, but with hot water, in the guesthouse.
The next morning I walked around the village, with some great views of the monastery, including from a pheasant reserve (57 pheasants, 5 species, I was told) above the village. It begin to rain about the time we left on the bus to Jeori about 12:30, this time inside the bus. From Jeori I caught a bus, and had a good seat, up the Sutlej. It was another scenic trip on a rickety bus, and with a friendly English-speaking seatmate. There are a lot of hydroelectric projects along the river, though, so parts were like a construction site and very muddy. At the town of Tarpi I changed busses and soon after we turned away from the Sutlej, at about 6000 feet and made a steep ascent up the Baspa Valley to the southeast. We climbed about 3000 feet over about 10 miles, taking over an hour on a very narrow road on the edge of the cliffs above the Baspa River. There were great views, with the river eventually 1000 feet or more below us. The valley widened a bit just before we reached Sangla at about 6. I got a hotel and looked around the ugly center of town. It was cloudy and a little rainy, and I had another crummy dinner of vegetable momos.
It was sunny the next morning, though, and I enjoyed walking down from the road through town to the Baspa River maybe 300 feet below through the old town of stone and timber houses with several temples with fine wooden carving. Doors, lintels and balconies of homes also had fine carvings. The lanes were narrow, with no vehicles, and there were apple and apricot trees, and apricots drying here and there. Some men were repairing a temple. An old man invited me into the courtyard of his home and we talked a little.
It had clouded up and was starting to rain when I left about 12:30 on the bus further up the valley to Chitkul, another beautiful trips along the rocky slopes and through pines and firs and maybe cedars and junipers. (I'm not really sure about my trees.) The valley is wider here than on the ascent to Sangla, so the road was not so precarious, though it still took us an hour and a half to go 15 miles. In Chitkul, at about 11,200 feet, I found a not very good hotel and looked around in the rain. While there are trees on the opposite bank of the Baspa, which is well below the village, there are almost none on the Chitkul side. It is rocky and barren, though the village is pleasant with stone and timber houses and temples, narrow lanes and grassy spaces between the houses. Someone told me there are only 25 families there. About 5 there was ceremony at the temple. It was rainy a bit but very interesting, with a big crowd of the local people. They are called Kinnearis and both men and women wear a distinctive pillbox hat of gray or brown felt with a green flap, with red or orange embroidery, around about 2/3 of the hat. A bare chested old man led the ceremony holding a dull old sword against his chest. Men held two palanquins, each with a furry mound on top. I was told each was a god, one male and one female. The two gods bobbed up and down, and I was told it was the gods themselves making the movements, not the men holding the palanquins. The paraded around a bit, accompanied by drums and cymbals and brass clarinet-type instruments. It was fun to watch. Once one of the gods approached us and the Kinneari women next to me scattered. At the end of the ceremony the gods were locked into separate temple buildings. I was told they come out only once a year.
It was sunny the next morning and I walked through the village and then up the valley about an hour along and above the Baspa to an army camp, where I was not permitted to go farther. There were good views of snow and ice covered peaks along the way. Back at Chitkul, it had clouded up and was raining a bit as I left on the bus down the valley about 2. The bus filled up at Sangla and we were very crowded as we descended the narrow canyon below Sangla. I had a seat overlooking the edge of the narrow cliffside road and it seemed like I could look straight down a thousand feet to the river as we got within inches of the edge of the road. Maybe the scariest road I've been on, with the possible exception of the Carretera de la Muerte in Bolivia, especially when you have to pass a bus or truck coming the other way. We safely reached the Sutlej and continued up it, crossed it, and then zigzagged up the mountainside to the fairly large city of Reckong Peo at maybe 7700 feet a little before 6. From there I caught another bus at 7, just as it got dark, another 7 miles or so further up the mountainside to the little village of Kalpa at about 9000 feet. I found a good hotel and had a good dinner.
The next morning I could look out from the balcony of my hotel toward the snow and ice covered mountains to the east, on the other side of the Sutlej, one of which is Kinnear Kailash at over 6000 meters (about 20,000 feet). The uppermost peaks were obscured by clouds. I walked around the village and visited the Tibetan and Hindu temples. There were apple and apricot trees and a shed full of goats, and great views down to the hidden Sutlej and across to the mountains. About 11 I went down to Reckong Peo to get my Inner Line Permit, enabling me to travel further near the Tibet border. It took about 4 hours to get, and in the meanwhile I had a good lunch and looked around town a bit. From one spot I could see the muddy Sutlej far below. It was cloudy and a little rainy back at Kalpa, but just before dusk the clouds broke open and a rainbow appeared to the east rising from the golden Tibetan temple on a knoll across from my hotel to the peaks to the east. After dark the peaks cleared and you could see the jagged rim below a rising almost full moon.
I'd planned to leave the next day, but it rained almost all day, from about 9 to 5, so I decided not to attempt the treacherous road ahead in the heavy rain. It was a cold rain, too. Late in the afternoon, after the rain stopped, I walked to the Hindu temple and saw a ceremony somewhat like the one I had seen in Chitkul, although with only one furry god on a palanquin. It left on a procession on a narrow lane out of town and I followed it. At one point a woman came out of her house and offered those of us following what tasted like plum wine and milk. She poured both the wine and the milk (separately) directly into our cupped hands. It was getting dark so I let the procession go on and returned to town.
The peaks were clearing the next morning and I had some good views of them before heading down to Reckong Peo to catch the 12:30 bus to Nako, up the Spiti Valley. I got a good seat on the crowded bus, but after leaving we spent about 45 minutes in a bus repair area while they refueled and made repairs. We zigzagged down to the Sutlej and followed it further upriver as the canyon became increasingly drier. We crossed it where the gray Spiti flowed into the brown Sutlej, with the two rivers taking a while to mix. Only a few miles, maybe 5, from this junction the Sutlej enters India from Tibet. In 1994 I had been in a couple of towns on the Sutlej in Tibet, Toling and Tsaparang, with the ruins of ancient Buddhist civilizations, including wall paintings. We went up the narrow and very dry canyon of the Spiti, with great view of the barren mountains rising above the narrow canyon of the gray river. We must have been a thousand or more feet above the river at times, though we did make an hour detour from the road to Spiti to descend to and cross the river to get to the village of Leo. We arrived at Nako at 7 and found trucks getting ready to take burlap bags of newly harvested peas to market. The bags were everywhere. I met the two Israelis I had met in Sarahan, and later in Chitkul and Kalpa, and they led me in the dark to a nice hotel where I got a meal of peas, potatoes an chapattis.
It was dry and sunny the next morning, very welcome after all the rain of the past three weeks. My hotel fronted the town's small lake and had a field of flowers between it and the lake. I walked up above the lake to some prayer flags, a slow walk at 12,000 feet elevation. I had a great view of the town and the valley of the Spiti maybe 2500 feet below. I walked further along some irrigation channels to the mountain stream where they originated. Along the way I found stones carved with prayers in Tibetan. This is a Tibetan region and is considered the trans-Himalayas. It is certainly dry and barren like Tibet and unlike the Kinnear Valley. Tibet is only a few miles away, though I imagine a difficult hike through and over the mountains. I hiked back into town and had breakfast with Kfr and Danna, the two Israelis. Kfr and I walked through the town, full of typical Tibetan style buildings and narrow lanes. At noon we waited for the bus to Tabo, but the bus driver decided not to come into town (Nako is about half a mile off the main road), so we missed it. Frustrated, we decided to hire a jeep taxi (for 2500 rupees, over $50) to take us on the two hour trip to Tabo upriver. It was a scenic journey as we descended on the narrow road down to the Sutlej. Tabo, at about 10,500 feet, is right on the river. We got rooms in the monastery hostal and looked around a bit. The 1000 year old mud brick monastery was locked, but we did walk up to some caves above town, with some great views of the town and relatively flat, but narrow valley of the Spiti, with towering brown mountains on all sides.
I got up before 6 the next morning in order to attend the 6 am prayer service at the new monastery. About 20 monks participated, with the older ones in front and the younger ones in back. They chanted and occasionally beat drums, clashed cymbals, rang handbells and blew those Tibetan clarinets. It was all quite pleasant and about 10 of us foreigners watched from the sides. About 7 a stout young monk left and then returned with a big kettle of tea, which he poured for all the other monks and then for us tourists into little glasses placed before the pillows on which we sat cross-legged. The younger monks occasionally chatted and joked with each other during the service and about 7:30 it ended abruptly and they all left. I looked around a little in the bright morning sunshine and then had breakfast with Kfr, Danna and another tourist. I never could find a monk with keys to let me into the old monastery, which was a disappointment, but the night before Danna had met an Englishmen named Phillip who agreed to give us a ride in his rented jeep (with a driver, from Shimla), so we left with him about 9:30. We traveled along the river about an hour and then zigzagged above it for maybe 5 miles to the town of Dankar with a monastery on a rocky ridge. There were great views from the monastery out over the town and the Spiti and over the junction of the blue-gray Pin River and the gray Spiti far below. From the town we made a steep climb in the thin air of 12,000 feet to a little lake above the village, with a huge flock of sheep and goats grazing on one end. The lake wasn't much but the views as we descended from it were marvelous.
After lunch at Dankar, we descended to the Spiti, continued up it, crossed it, and then went down it on the other side to the Pin and then followed the Pin River into the spectacular Pin Valley, with crumpled brown mountains lining the gray gravel bed of the river. We stopped at the monastery an Kangri, saw the old monastery and listened to chanting, drums, cymbals, bells and long 10 foot horns in the new monastery, with about 20 monks participating. Continuing up the Pin, the road got worse and worse and we arrived at the little village of Mudh just before dark. Again, trucks were loading burlap bags of freshly picked peas. Surprisingly, There were 30-40 tourists (90% Israeli) in Mudh, a village of 235, according to a sign at the village entrance. Nonetheless we found a decent place to stay and had an okay dinner. Mudh is at about 12,000 feet.
I got up soon after 6 the next morning. The once a day bus out of town (to Kaza) left about 6:30 and I walked above the town an hour or so along a road that has been washed out in places, with good views of Mudh and the Pin Valley. People were already out in the pea plots picking peas. Cows were grazing on a very steep slope above the road. Back in Mudh, I had breakfast with Kfr, Danna and Phillip and then Phillip and I hiked down to the rocky course of the Pin, crossed it via a suspension bridge and then walked up the green table lands of the opposite bank an hour or so. We passed a very small village, maybe 5 houses, with people picking peas, a very small primary school, a cricket pitch with the limits delineated by whitish stones, a mani (I think they are called), which is a stone wall covered with flat stones with prayers carved onto them, until we reached a meadow with two very large, very hairy and very shy yaks. From there we turned back to Mudh. Kfr and Danna stayed behind, but Philip and I and two other Israelis left about 11:30, going back down the spectacular Pin Valley to the Spiti and then continuing along the Spiti to Kaza, the biggest city of the area, with maybe 5,000-6,000 people, I was told. From Spiti Phillip and I continued in his jeep up past the spectacularly situated monastery at Ki (on the top of a cone shaped mountain) through a canyon of a tributary of the Spiti to the village of Kibber, about 12 miles from Kaza. There, at 13,800 feet, we had lunch and then visited the town's monastery, with a very friendly young monk, who showed us the room and the bed where the Dalai Lama had slept in 1984, and then the town itself, full of wonderful Tibetan white buildings with large square outlined windows. Again, people were picking peas in the fields around the village. The village itself was very quiet as almost everyone was picking peas. From Kibber we drove back to Ki and visited the monastery there (at about 13,500 feet), with views over the Spiti and the pea and barley fields alongside the river. A sign said the new monastery hall was built with funds donated by Mrs. and Mr. Thomas Pritzker of Chicago. About 6 we met a 73 year old German man named Ernest, carrying a small backpack, a bag and an umbrella, who had just arrived on the bus from Kaza to spend the night at the monastery. We had quite a long talk with him. He had biked (on, he said, a bike with only one gear and carrying 88 pounds of stuff) with a friend from Germany to India in 1959, and then he had retraced his trip in 1984 on a moped that went at most 15 miles an hour. Quite an interesting, and very friendly, guy. Phillip and I spent the night at Kaza, though we didn't see much of the place as we arrived about dark and left early the next morning.
We left Kaza, at about 12,000 feet, the next morning at 8, driving up the narrowing Spiti. Some pea pickers along the road gave us hundreds of pea pods, and we spent the day munching those very sweet peas. By far, the best peas I've ever had. We reached the town of Losar, the last town of the Spiti Valley, at about 13,000 feet, about 10, and at about noon we reached the Kunzum La (Pass) at almost 15,000 feet. On the pass were three white painted chortens with hundreds of prayer flags fluttering all around them. Beyond were three or four snow and ice covered peaks, with glaciers, a great sight with the chortens and prayer flags in front. Five red robed monks were praying in front of one of the chortens and another man poured butter into little cups near the chortens. There were also offerings on plates of grains and seeds and spices and butter sculptures.
We zigzagged down the Kunzum La over a thousand feet, through maybe 20 switchbacks, and the took a very narrow side road off the main road up the Chandra River far below for maybe 8 or 9 miles to where the road ended near the Chandra Tal (which means "Moon Lake"). After a hearty meal of rice and dhal (lentils) we hiked an hour or so to the turquoise lake, set against very steep, barren brown mountains, with snow and ice covered peaks in the distance. You could clearly make out glaciers on the peaks. The lake, at almost 14,000 feet, is a little more than half a mile long, and we walked around it, taking maybe two hours. Parts of the lake bank are quite grassy and parts quite rocky. It was a beautiful day and we were in shirt sleaves. Birds flew by, the wind blew, and sun sparkled off the lake. We were there alone except for two local people. After a four hour hike, we returned to the jeep about 5:30, expecting to spend the night in one of the tents where we were parked. But instead we took off down the way we had come to the main road and then a little farther to where the road crossed the Chandra River and there we stopped a little after 6 at a desolate little spot named Battal, with about 6 buildings. There was a stonewalled little restaurant with a canvas or plastic roof where we had dinner (rice and dhal). Surprisingly, there were 14 tourists there that night. Soon after we arrived eight Israelis arrived on motorcycles and four other tourists were there when we arrived. Phillip and I slept on the floor in a sort of quonset-type hut made of white plastic. It was actually fairly comfortable. The others slept in other buildings made of stone. We were at about 13,000 feet and it took me till after midnight to fall asleep, despite going to bed soon after 9. The night sky there was full of stars, with the Milky Way among them.
We got up the next morning a little before 7, had a very good omelet and a potato parantha for breakfast, and set off about 7:30, following the Chandra, a tributary of the Chenab, one of the major tributaries of the Indus. (The rivers of Himachal Pradesh, the Chenab, the Beas, the Ravi and the Sutlej, all flow eventually into the Indus basin and so are, I imagine, partly responsible for the terrible flooding in Pakistan in August.) This valley is called the Lahaul Valley. We passed through a particularly rocky stretch, with many boulders the size of trucks, and larger. At one point there were three waterfalls cascading down the almost vertical cliffs hundreds of feet, probably more than a thousand feet. We stopped for tea at the little village of Chattru, where we crossed the Chandra, and about 11 or 11:30, I think, we reached the road leading to the Rohtang La and Manali. The road was very bad, but fairly wide, as we zigzagged up about 8 miles and 2000 feet to the top of the pass. At one spot we had to wait 20 minutes or so while two bulldozers worked on the road, moving dirt and big boulders. It was cloudy on the way to the pass, at about 13,000 feet, and on the Manali side it was fogged in. We zigzagged down on that very bumpy road and I couldn't identify just where I had been stopped by a landslide 19 days earlier. We passed through Marhi and somewhere below, maybe at about 10,000 feet, we got below the clouds and had good views of the green, rocky, tree covered mountain slopes. Soon it was quite sunny with great views of the mountain greenery, quite a change from the high altitude desert of Spiti. We reached Manali about 2 and checked into the same nice hotel I had stayed in before and had a good lunch in the sun in the restaurant in the apple orchard where I had had so many meals in the rain before. We went back there for dinner, too. At the hotel I was surprised to find Kfr and Danna. They had come all the way from Mudh, via Kaza, the day before. I went to bed about 10 and slept very well. It felt good to be back at 6500 feet.
The next morning (today) it was fogged in when I got up soon after 6. I washed my very dirty clothes (the water was almost as brown as the Sutlej) and enjoyed seeing the cedars again in the fog from my hotel balcony. Phillip and I had a long breakfast in the apple orchard and the sun dissipated the fog about 10. I had lunch there at about 1 and it's been sunny and warm this afternoon.
I plan to spend another day here and then head to Leh via Keylong. The road is open again and I'm looking forward to it.
It rained all morning the day I left Shimla (August 20) on another rickety bus from another chaotic bus station and it rained for the 2 to 2 1/2 hours it took for us to ascend to Narankot at about 9000 feet. All I could see was rain and fog and big brown puddles on the road. From Narankot we descended rapidly to the valley of the Sutlej River 6000 feet below. The rain stopped and the clouds parted and there were some great views down the terraced green slopes to the frothy, surging brown Sutlej below. The brown water almost looked thick. We followed the Sutlej, at times maybe 1000 feet above it, though at other times we were right alongside it. I got off after a six hour journey from Shimla at Jeori and jumped on the bus heading up the mountainside to Sarahan. The bus was full and I was bracing myself for standing on the journey when I noticed people were on the roof of the bus. I climbed up and traveled with 2 Israelis and about 20 Indians up there. We had to dodge branches and electrical wires, but the views were great. It took us a little over an hour to zigzag up the mountainside and we reached Sarahan, at 9000 feet, about 3500 feet above the river, a little after 6 and checked into the fairly comfortable monastery guesthouse. I went inside the monastery, after depositing my shoes, camera and leather products outside and donning the required orange hat. Inside were two 2-3 story towers of alternating timber beam and stone layers (supposedly resistant to earthquakes). Not much was going on. I had a terrible dinner of vegetable (cabbage) momos (a Tibetan dumpling) in a dark cafe and a bucket bath, but with hot water, in the guesthouse.
The next morning I walked around the village, with some great views of the monastery, including from a pheasant reserve (57 pheasants, 5 species, I was told) above the village. It begin to rain about the time we left on the bus to Jeori about 12:30, this time inside the bus. From Jeori I caught a bus, and had a good seat, up the Sutlej. It was another scenic trip on a rickety bus, and with a friendly English-speaking seatmate. There are a lot of hydroelectric projects along the river, though, so parts were like a construction site and very muddy. At the town of Tarpi I changed busses and soon after we turned away from the Sutlej, at about 6000 feet and made a steep ascent up the Baspa Valley to the southeast. We climbed about 3000 feet over about 10 miles, taking over an hour on a very narrow road on the edge of the cliffs above the Baspa River. There were great views, with the river eventually 1000 feet or more below us. The valley widened a bit just before we reached Sangla at about 6. I got a hotel and looked around the ugly center of town. It was cloudy and a little rainy, and I had another crummy dinner of vegetable momos.
It was sunny the next morning, though, and I enjoyed walking down from the road through town to the Baspa River maybe 300 feet below through the old town of stone and timber houses with several temples with fine wooden carving. Doors, lintels and balconies of homes also had fine carvings. The lanes were narrow, with no vehicles, and there were apple and apricot trees, and apricots drying here and there. Some men were repairing a temple. An old man invited me into the courtyard of his home and we talked a little.
It had clouded up and was starting to rain when I left about 12:30 on the bus further up the valley to Chitkul, another beautiful trips along the rocky slopes and through pines and firs and maybe cedars and junipers. (I'm not really sure about my trees.) The valley is wider here than on the ascent to Sangla, so the road was not so precarious, though it still took us an hour and a half to go 15 miles. In Chitkul, at about 11,200 feet, I found a not very good hotel and looked around in the rain. While there are trees on the opposite bank of the Baspa, which is well below the village, there are almost none on the Chitkul side. It is rocky and barren, though the village is pleasant with stone and timber houses and temples, narrow lanes and grassy spaces between the houses. Someone told me there are only 25 families there. About 5 there was ceremony at the temple. It was rainy a bit but very interesting, with a big crowd of the local people. They are called Kinnearis and both men and women wear a distinctive pillbox hat of gray or brown felt with a green flap, with red or orange embroidery, around about 2/3 of the hat. A bare chested old man led the ceremony holding a dull old sword against his chest. Men held two palanquins, each with a furry mound on top. I was told each was a god, one male and one female. The two gods bobbed up and down, and I was told it was the gods themselves making the movements, not the men holding the palanquins. The paraded around a bit, accompanied by drums and cymbals and brass clarinet-type instruments. It was fun to watch. Once one of the gods approached us and the Kinneari women next to me scattered. At the end of the ceremony the gods were locked into separate temple buildings. I was told they come out only once a year.
It was sunny the next morning and I walked through the village and then up the valley about an hour along and above the Baspa to an army camp, where I was not permitted to go farther. There were good views of snow and ice covered peaks along the way. Back at Chitkul, it had clouded up and was raining a bit as I left on the bus down the valley about 2. The bus filled up at Sangla and we were very crowded as we descended the narrow canyon below Sangla. I had a seat overlooking the edge of the narrow cliffside road and it seemed like I could look straight down a thousand feet to the river as we got within inches of the edge of the road. Maybe the scariest road I've been on, with the possible exception of the Carretera de la Muerte in Bolivia, especially when you have to pass a bus or truck coming the other way. We safely reached the Sutlej and continued up it, crossed it, and then zigzagged up the mountainside to the fairly large city of Reckong Peo at maybe 7700 feet a little before 6. From there I caught another bus at 7, just as it got dark, another 7 miles or so further up the mountainside to the little village of Kalpa at about 9000 feet. I found a good hotel and had a good dinner.
The next morning I could look out from the balcony of my hotel toward the snow and ice covered mountains to the east, on the other side of the Sutlej, one of which is Kinnear Kailash at over 6000 meters (about 20,000 feet). The uppermost peaks were obscured by clouds. I walked around the village and visited the Tibetan and Hindu temples. There were apple and apricot trees and a shed full of goats, and great views down to the hidden Sutlej and across to the mountains. About 11 I went down to Reckong Peo to get my Inner Line Permit, enabling me to travel further near the Tibet border. It took about 4 hours to get, and in the meanwhile I had a good lunch and looked around town a bit. From one spot I could see the muddy Sutlej far below. It was cloudy and a little rainy back at Kalpa, but just before dusk the clouds broke open and a rainbow appeared to the east rising from the golden Tibetan temple on a knoll across from my hotel to the peaks to the east. After dark the peaks cleared and you could see the jagged rim below a rising almost full moon.
I'd planned to leave the next day, but it rained almost all day, from about 9 to 5, so I decided not to attempt the treacherous road ahead in the heavy rain. It was a cold rain, too. Late in the afternoon, after the rain stopped, I walked to the Hindu temple and saw a ceremony somewhat like the one I had seen in Chitkul, although with only one furry god on a palanquin. It left on a procession on a narrow lane out of town and I followed it. At one point a woman came out of her house and offered those of us following what tasted like plum wine and milk. She poured both the wine and the milk (separately) directly into our cupped hands. It was getting dark so I let the procession go on and returned to town.
The peaks were clearing the next morning and I had some good views of them before heading down to Reckong Peo to catch the 12:30 bus to Nako, up the Spiti Valley. I got a good seat on the crowded bus, but after leaving we spent about 45 minutes in a bus repair area while they refueled and made repairs. We zigzagged down to the Sutlej and followed it further upriver as the canyon became increasingly drier. We crossed it where the gray Spiti flowed into the brown Sutlej, with the two rivers taking a while to mix. Only a few miles, maybe 5, from this junction the Sutlej enters India from Tibet. In 1994 I had been in a couple of towns on the Sutlej in Tibet, Toling and Tsaparang, with the ruins of ancient Buddhist civilizations, including wall paintings. We went up the narrow and very dry canyon of the Spiti, with great view of the barren mountains rising above the narrow canyon of the gray river. We must have been a thousand or more feet above the river at times, though we did make an hour detour from the road to Spiti to descend to and cross the river to get to the village of Leo. We arrived at Nako at 7 and found trucks getting ready to take burlap bags of newly harvested peas to market. The bags were everywhere. I met the two Israelis I had met in Sarahan, and later in Chitkul and Kalpa, and they led me in the dark to a nice hotel where I got a meal of peas, potatoes an chapattis.
It was dry and sunny the next morning, very welcome after all the rain of the past three weeks. My hotel fronted the town's small lake and had a field of flowers between it and the lake. I walked up above the lake to some prayer flags, a slow walk at 12,000 feet elevation. I had a great view of the town and the valley of the Spiti maybe 2500 feet below. I walked further along some irrigation channels to the mountain stream where they originated. Along the way I found stones carved with prayers in Tibetan. This is a Tibetan region and is considered the trans-Himalayas. It is certainly dry and barren like Tibet and unlike the Kinnear Valley. Tibet is only a few miles away, though I imagine a difficult hike through and over the mountains. I hiked back into town and had breakfast with Kfr and Danna, the two Israelis. Kfr and I walked through the town, full of typical Tibetan style buildings and narrow lanes. At noon we waited for the bus to Tabo, but the bus driver decided not to come into town (Nako is about half a mile off the main road), so we missed it. Frustrated, we decided to hire a jeep taxi (for 2500 rupees, over $50) to take us on the two hour trip to Tabo upriver. It was a scenic journey as we descended on the narrow road down to the Sutlej. Tabo, at about 10,500 feet, is right on the river. We got rooms in the monastery hostal and looked around a bit. The 1000 year old mud brick monastery was locked, but we did walk up to some caves above town, with some great views of the town and relatively flat, but narrow valley of the Spiti, with towering brown mountains on all sides.
I got up before 6 the next morning in order to attend the 6 am prayer service at the new monastery. About 20 monks participated, with the older ones in front and the younger ones in back. They chanted and occasionally beat drums, clashed cymbals, rang handbells and blew those Tibetan clarinets. It was all quite pleasant and about 10 of us foreigners watched from the sides. About 7 a stout young monk left and then returned with a big kettle of tea, which he poured for all the other monks and then for us tourists into little glasses placed before the pillows on which we sat cross-legged. The younger monks occasionally chatted and joked with each other during the service and about 7:30 it ended abruptly and they all left. I looked around a little in the bright morning sunshine and then had breakfast with Kfr, Danna and another tourist. I never could find a monk with keys to let me into the old monastery, which was a disappointment, but the night before Danna had met an Englishmen named Phillip who agreed to give us a ride in his rented jeep (with a driver, from Shimla), so we left with him about 9:30. We traveled along the river about an hour and then zigzagged above it for maybe 5 miles to the town of Dankar with a monastery on a rocky ridge. There were great views from the monastery out over the town and the Spiti and over the junction of the blue-gray Pin River and the gray Spiti far below. From the town we made a steep climb in the thin air of 12,000 feet to a little lake above the village, with a huge flock of sheep and goats grazing on one end. The lake wasn't much but the views as we descended from it were marvelous.
After lunch at Dankar, we descended to the Spiti, continued up it, crossed it, and then went down it on the other side to the Pin and then followed the Pin River into the spectacular Pin Valley, with crumpled brown mountains lining the gray gravel bed of the river. We stopped at the monastery an Kangri, saw the old monastery and listened to chanting, drums, cymbals, bells and long 10 foot horns in the new monastery, with about 20 monks participating. Continuing up the Pin, the road got worse and worse and we arrived at the little village of Mudh just before dark. Again, trucks were loading burlap bags of freshly picked peas. Surprisingly, There were 30-40 tourists (90% Israeli) in Mudh, a village of 235, according to a sign at the village entrance. Nonetheless we found a decent place to stay and had an okay dinner. Mudh is at about 12,000 feet.
I got up soon after 6 the next morning. The once a day bus out of town (to Kaza) left about 6:30 and I walked above the town an hour or so along a road that has been washed out in places, with good views of Mudh and the Pin Valley. People were already out in the pea plots picking peas. Cows were grazing on a very steep slope above the road. Back in Mudh, I had breakfast with Kfr, Danna and Phillip and then Phillip and I hiked down to the rocky course of the Pin, crossed it via a suspension bridge and then walked up the green table lands of the opposite bank an hour or so. We passed a very small village, maybe 5 houses, with people picking peas, a very small primary school, a cricket pitch with the limits delineated by whitish stones, a mani (I think they are called), which is a stone wall covered with flat stones with prayers carved onto them, until we reached a meadow with two very large, very hairy and very shy yaks. From there we turned back to Mudh. Kfr and Danna stayed behind, but Philip and I and two other Israelis left about 11:30, going back down the spectacular Pin Valley to the Spiti and then continuing along the Spiti to Kaza, the biggest city of the area, with maybe 5,000-6,000 people, I was told. From Spiti Phillip and I continued in his jeep up past the spectacularly situated monastery at Ki (on the top of a cone shaped mountain) through a canyon of a tributary of the Spiti to the village of Kibber, about 12 miles from Kaza. There, at 13,800 feet, we had lunch and then visited the town's monastery, with a very friendly young monk, who showed us the room and the bed where the Dalai Lama had slept in 1984, and then the town itself, full of wonderful Tibetan white buildings with large square outlined windows. Again, people were picking peas in the fields around the village. The village itself was very quiet as almost everyone was picking peas. From Kibber we drove back to Ki and visited the monastery there (at about 13,500 feet), with views over the Spiti and the pea and barley fields alongside the river. A sign said the new monastery hall was built with funds donated by Mrs. and Mr. Thomas Pritzker of Chicago. About 6 we met a 73 year old German man named Ernest, carrying a small backpack, a bag and an umbrella, who had just arrived on the bus from Kaza to spend the night at the monastery. We had quite a long talk with him. He had biked (on, he said, a bike with only one gear and carrying 88 pounds of stuff) with a friend from Germany to India in 1959, and then he had retraced his trip in 1984 on a moped that went at most 15 miles an hour. Quite an interesting, and very friendly, guy. Phillip and I spent the night at Kaza, though we didn't see much of the place as we arrived about dark and left early the next morning.
We left Kaza, at about 12,000 feet, the next morning at 8, driving up the narrowing Spiti. Some pea pickers along the road gave us hundreds of pea pods, and we spent the day munching those very sweet peas. By far, the best peas I've ever had. We reached the town of Losar, the last town of the Spiti Valley, at about 13,000 feet, about 10, and at about noon we reached the Kunzum La (Pass) at almost 15,000 feet. On the pass were three white painted chortens with hundreds of prayer flags fluttering all around them. Beyond were three or four snow and ice covered peaks, with glaciers, a great sight with the chortens and prayer flags in front. Five red robed monks were praying in front of one of the chortens and another man poured butter into little cups near the chortens. There were also offerings on plates of grains and seeds and spices and butter sculptures.
We zigzagged down the Kunzum La over a thousand feet, through maybe 20 switchbacks, and the took a very narrow side road off the main road up the Chandra River far below for maybe 8 or 9 miles to where the road ended near the Chandra Tal (which means "Moon Lake"). After a hearty meal of rice and dhal (lentils) we hiked an hour or so to the turquoise lake, set against very steep, barren brown mountains, with snow and ice covered peaks in the distance. You could clearly make out glaciers on the peaks. The lake, at almost 14,000 feet, is a little more than half a mile long, and we walked around it, taking maybe two hours. Parts of the lake bank are quite grassy and parts quite rocky. It was a beautiful day and we were in shirt sleaves. Birds flew by, the wind blew, and sun sparkled off the lake. We were there alone except for two local people. After a four hour hike, we returned to the jeep about 5:30, expecting to spend the night in one of the tents where we were parked. But instead we took off down the way we had come to the main road and then a little farther to where the road crossed the Chandra River and there we stopped a little after 6 at a desolate little spot named Battal, with about 6 buildings. There was a stonewalled little restaurant with a canvas or plastic roof where we had dinner (rice and dhal). Surprisingly, there were 14 tourists there that night. Soon after we arrived eight Israelis arrived on motorcycles and four other tourists were there when we arrived. Phillip and I slept on the floor in a sort of quonset-type hut made of white plastic. It was actually fairly comfortable. The others slept in other buildings made of stone. We were at about 13,000 feet and it took me till after midnight to fall asleep, despite going to bed soon after 9. The night sky there was full of stars, with the Milky Way among them.
We got up the next morning a little before 7, had a very good omelet and a potato parantha for breakfast, and set off about 7:30, following the Chandra, a tributary of the Chenab, one of the major tributaries of the Indus. (The rivers of Himachal Pradesh, the Chenab, the Beas, the Ravi and the Sutlej, all flow eventually into the Indus basin and so are, I imagine, partly responsible for the terrible flooding in Pakistan in August.) This valley is called the Lahaul Valley. We passed through a particularly rocky stretch, with many boulders the size of trucks, and larger. At one point there were three waterfalls cascading down the almost vertical cliffs hundreds of feet, probably more than a thousand feet. We stopped for tea at the little village of Chattru, where we crossed the Chandra, and about 11 or 11:30, I think, we reached the road leading to the Rohtang La and Manali. The road was very bad, but fairly wide, as we zigzagged up about 8 miles and 2000 feet to the top of the pass. At one spot we had to wait 20 minutes or so while two bulldozers worked on the road, moving dirt and big boulders. It was cloudy on the way to the pass, at about 13,000 feet, and on the Manali side it was fogged in. We zigzagged down on that very bumpy road and I couldn't identify just where I had been stopped by a landslide 19 days earlier. We passed through Marhi and somewhere below, maybe at about 10,000 feet, we got below the clouds and had good views of the green, rocky, tree covered mountain slopes. Soon it was quite sunny with great views of the mountain greenery, quite a change from the high altitude desert of Spiti. We reached Manali about 2 and checked into the same nice hotel I had stayed in before and had a good lunch in the sun in the restaurant in the apple orchard where I had had so many meals in the rain before. We went back there for dinner, too. At the hotel I was surprised to find Kfr and Danna. They had come all the way from Mudh, via Kaza, the day before. I went to bed about 10 and slept very well. It felt good to be back at 6500 feet.
The next morning (today) it was fogged in when I got up soon after 6. I washed my very dirty clothes (the water was almost as brown as the Sutlej) and enjoyed seeing the cedars again in the fog from my hotel balcony. Phillip and I had a long breakfast in the apple orchard and the sun dissipated the fog about 10. I had lunch there at about 1 and it's been sunny and warm this afternoon.
I plan to spend another day here and then head to Leh via Keylong. The road is open again and I'm looking forward to it.
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