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.
No comments:
Post a Comment