Travelling Again
PART-1
In the summer of 2000, I had travelled up to Spiti twice, with two different women. The fact that I had been up with Maria first would, six months later, result in my break up with my partner of seven years, Katja. I am still not sure if this was a good thing, or bad, but I do know that my life would have been completely different if me and Katja would have remained together, and to be honest, I would not like to have missed much of the last 18 years as they have turned out. This is what I was thinking, sitting in the car, driving up to Rohtang Pass once again, with Aloke and Suman in the back seat, Aloke counting water falls.

“That’s four MORE!”, he was shouting. We had left Manali at 5, and the morning light was beautiful, reflecting off the mossy slopes of the last green hills. Soggy, foggy clouds hung around. The road, since I had last been up this road three years ago, had definitely improved. Also, thanks to some serious reflection by the authorities about this fragile ecology, there were only a few tourist vehicles on the road, and all the stalls that used to line the serpentine road had disappeared, including the ones renting bunny clothing for the underdressed Indian tourist to stay warm on their ascent.
I had met Maria at Kathmandu airport on a day when all flights were in disarray because of extreme weather conditions, and me and her were put on a flight to Calcutta instead of Delhi, where we had landed up in the Ashok Airport Hotel bar talking about our relationships (I remember seeing the bollywood Star, Mithun Chakravarty, and a gang of brutish body-guards in the lobby). She was from a small town near Valencia and was due to get married, while I was on a tour for my German travel company and away from Katja. Both of us decided that night, very consciously, to spend some time together before we went back to our usual lives, and I invited her to come with me to Spiti, where I was heading. That’s how we got there, climbing up this very same wall of mountain. A month later, I was up the same road again, with Katja, my mother and Tini, my lesbian best friend.
I have been to this area a few times since, but I was thinking of those two trips. I was thinking of Maria and me at the back seat, cuddling up like only those who know they will soon part forever, and then me in a car with Katja and mom and Tini, playing loud music, under the shadow of domesticity and conflicts accumulated in time. While me and Maria did nor care for much apart from the few days we had together, me and Katja cared for too many things that had little to do with us. Katja and me had too much on the line, which cast a web of complexity on our travelling. Maria and me, we took everything as it was, and the awe of it overwhelmed us. Travelling is all about being overwhelmed.

We had left home at 9.30 the day before with Omkar in his little Maruti, the large suitcase tied up to the roof rack, well-wrapped in plastic sheet. The Mandi highway was blocked due to a landslide, so we took a beautiful, alternative route: up towards Barot, then turning right and driving along the edge of a long hill which separates the lower Barot Valley and Uhl river gorge on the one side from the valley leading down to Mandi City on the other. Sometime in the past, Gujjar tribes from the plains must have settled here, along this narrow comb of a mountain, well above the low-lands of Mandi and the plains further south, yet not venturing into the territory of the original inhabitants of the Uhl Valley. They had obviously brought their prize possessions with them, buffalos, and designed their lives and the landscape around these, with artificial ponds, grazing land etc. The houses they live in are different from those on both sides of their world, too, a hut-type architecture you usually see in some parts of Haryana and Rajasthan, with intelligent and aesthetic use of local, flat stones both for walls and roofs. Amazing, how these hills on the border between the plains of North India and the interiors of the Himalayas have accommodated different people over the times, giving them space to live their distinctive life-styles.



We decided not to drive down to Mandi to join the highway there but stay in the interior, on these narrow roads, for as long as possible. After a few hours, and having avoided the heavy traffic of the highway, we finally came out near Kullu, at a place called Bajoura. From there we were in Manali in two hours. In Manali, I couldn’t find the roads we had just travelled on Google Maps.







We stayed in Lahoul for a night, first driving down from Rohtang-la to Koksar and then on to the lower part of the Chandrabhaga River Valley, to Triloknath. Here, a ninth century Avolokiteshwera Temple occupies a dramatic cliff-top location, much like any other historic Buddhist Gompa, except that this temple is (still) accepted as a pilgrimage for both Buddhists and Hindus, and the people have no difficulty in seeing both Avolokiteshwara and Shiva in the beautifully crafted marble deity of the main sanctum. The once medieval township is, like in most of Lahoul these past years, either falling apart, or being re-done in a modern style that unfortunately pays no heed to traditional aesthetics. The fields around, which were once barren, are now green with vegetables: cauliflower, cabbage, peas. Jeeps and small trucks stand around, loading vegetables for the long ride to the markets in the plains. Posters of Monsanto seeds and fertilizers hang on walls, promising best yields even in the semi-desert soil.







It is clear, that even in these three years, the standard of living in Lahoul has risen further, mainly due to agriculture. When I was here first, there was hardly any agriculture apart from barley and potatos, but by now, lower Lahoul has become dominated by green landscapes. Jharkhandi and Nepali farm workers now work the fields, and the Lahouli’s are getting more affluent. Driving through the little villages and towns, though, I can acutely feel a decline of ‘soul’. People have build and moved into huge houses that are designed in some pseudo Swiss pattern, an architecture I hardly found attractive even in the Swiss Alps — though atleast the originals are charmingly painted and with wood balconies, while these are drab, grey affairs. Looking for a home-stay, we were led into one of these house and into a living room, which tried to maintain the characeristics of a traditional Lahouli living room, usually a welcoming, cosy, warm, carpeted room arranged around the traditional Lahouli ‘Chulla” (fire-oven). Here, the vastness of the room, the bare cement walls, the synthetic carpets, the neon lights, all had the exact opposite effect. I shuddered at the thought of spending a winter day in here! Lahoul’s winters are, of course, 8 months long!


Two final, and random, take-aways from lower Lahoul, before we move on to upper Lahoul and then, over the Kunzum-La, to Spiti. I had read somewhere a few months back that the old Mrikula Devi Temple of Udaipur was being renovated, so I made an anxious detour to see what was being done, and how. I found the wood-work and the main structure intact, though tilting towards one side dangerously, and work going on in the front part, the mandapa. Happily, the building was being restored in traditional style, with wood, stones and mud:


And secondly, I found this motorbike parked outside a camping site. This, clearly, is not the Dharma Swastik:

PART-2 follows, hopefully soon!
