The view from the Key monsastery terrace. And **YES** — I shot it myself on an iPhone 5S

Spiti — Part 1

Self discovery in an undiscovered land

Yakin nahi ho raha ki main pahuch gaya
I still can’t believe I’m here

I said sipping on hot, watery Maggi. Negi, a monk in his late twenties with a funky beard, looked at me:

Himmat karo to sab ho jata hain. Thodi der lag sakti hain par ho jata hain.
If one has the courage to try, no dream is too distant. It may take a while but eventually you reach there.

I felt all my mental blocks dissolving away. Everything that was holding me back was gone! How simpler could it be? All you had to do is try. Like all great truths of life this was so simple to fathom and yet so difficult to realise.

I had arrived late into the evening, well past dinner which takes place at 6PM. Initially I was denied a bed and asked to spend the night at an adjacent hotel. But I hadn’t travelled 700Km to stay in a hotel and I made that very clear to them. “I’ll sleep on the floor but I’ll only stay here” I told them trying to be both respectful and adamant. They smiled and went up to check. “We’re sorry but there has been some confusion. There is indeed a vacant bed for you to occupy” they said smiling. And thus I got shelter at the Key Monastery — the most spectacular one I’ve ever seen with my own eyes or otherwise. A random photograph of it had drawn me to the place around two or three years back. Since then I’d mostly forgotten about it, neither remembering the location nor the name but only a mesmerising picture and a dream to visit someday — until I saw it again.

Getting there — the journey so far

Hill Hacks

How I actually ended up at that dreamy monastery is a story in itself. I had arrived at Rakkar village near Dharamsala for a 5 day unconference called Hill Hacks. I won’t spend a lot of time telling you about my Hill Hacks experience this time. It was slightly disappointing barring a few odd talks like How to be a monkey and others like the one on Kangra wildlife by an impeccable wildlife officer D.S. Dhadwal. Most people there had come in groups and chose to remain so. Maybe it wasn’t that bad afterall. I got to see 2 really great movies — Citizenfour and Waking Life, especially Waking Life. Each dialogue is a piece of art and stands on it’s own. The food was delicious and the music enchanting with Shiv Kailasho ke wasi refusing to desert my mind.

The final evening was gala night and a bunch of us put up an impromptu play with me enacting Sachin Tendulkar on a flight full of weird, funny characters. I must say I nailed it ;)

I’ll just end it by sharing tons of beautiful pics of Ghoomakad — the hackerspace where we were putting up.

Somehow the road to Hill Hacks is always uphill

But the scenery along the way was completely worth it

A local village fair. Nothing like I’d ever seen before. (L) Local pehelwans wrestling with people betting on them. (R) Just behind the small *akkhada* one could see a Ferris wheel

You can walk on the Rakkar road for hours enjoying the view

And I discovered this gem lying around waiting to be read

Norbulingka Institute

I’d heard a lot about the Norbulingka institute from everyone. It’s a Tibetan art centre for preserving the Tibetan culture in wake of the Chinese invasion. I decided to walk down the road and pay a visit. Most days at Hill Hacks were quite boring.

The gardens were meticoulously maintained by gardners working all day long

No matter how hot — this pond always had fresh chilled water flowing in from the mountains. It only rained on the last day.

This hand made oven gave birth to amazing wood burnt pizzas

The most amazing Kulfi of my life — made out of hand ground spices and pure milk

Phinnu — our taxi driver singing his heart out at the evening mehfil

Most days were uncharacteristically hot with temperatures reaching up to 30ºC. The place was not equipped with any fans and the walls were thick to fight the cold winter. That played on us badly here. Guys when Dharamshala is too hot, you know climate change is a real thing.

Christian, a guy from Michigan had spent the last couple of months learning Indian classical music and his pronunciation was impeccable. Have a look.

Shiv Naam Tera…

A longer cut of above — I can be seen trying to figure out the lyrics

Christian recites another Himachali bhajan

Abhinav plants the seed

On the 3rd night I got a message from Abhinav:

Sure. It doesn’t sound that crazy at all. I could easily extend my stay for a day or two and chill a bit, I thought. What I had in my mind was more of McLeod Ganj or maybe Triund and a couple of nice wood burnt pizzas. Abhinav instead suggested a bit of detour — Kinnaur valley. So I fired up my laptop for a quick search and was instantly hooked to it’s beauty. I remembered Kalpa from a Google Ad during elections. Suddenly from somewhere I stumbled upon Spiti valley and then I saw that image again and a bulb went off. Suddenly we were headed to Spiti.

So I quickly started researching about how to reach Gompa and stumbled upon a couple of travel blogs. A particular one that caught my eye was from a Mumbai chick Nidhi Thakur. So I shot an email to her and received a reply the very next day. Guess what? She was living in the same village — Rakkar. While we didn’t meet, it was a weird coincidence that I feel like sharing with you.

So you see. My plan for Spiti was on — a spontaneous one but I had lovely company.

I had also emailed dad about my sudden plan. His response was heart warming.