Spiti — Part 4
Self discovery in an undiscovered land
A Day at Pin valley
The next day we woke up really late by Spiti standards. We got ready and had some breakfast before we decided to walk down, cross the river at the bottom of the village and move to the lush green stretch across. We had also been joined by one of Prateek’s seniors who had been travelling all alone and was a film direction student at FTII.
After battling with the river crossing, which required one to jump like the olympics especially given the amazing grip of my shoes, we had to cross a shaky bridge that ran over fast moving water. We decided to get some snaps lest they turn out to be our last.
Having crossed the bridge while holding our breath we started on an uphill climb. Nothing was tiring anymore after 3 days in Spiti. The scenery and landscape was what used to take our breath away.
The patch that we finally arrived upon lead to a trekking route across the Pin Valley National Park — a favourite of snow leopards, to Kasol eventually. Luckily we didn’t spot any feline. The scenery was absolutely mind blowing.
We just decided to lie down and breathe in the grass (not what you are thinking). Life here was slow as the wind fast. We probably just lay down for an hour simply staring at the beauty around us.
As I lay there thinking I told myself — “Thank god I listened to these guys instead of clinging on to my fears”. The trip to Mudh had been unexpectedly nice and the mantra of my trip and something that I decided to follow in life once in awhile was again:
Mann ka ho to accha, na ho to aur bhi accha
But this wasn’t the first time it had happened on this trip.
The Theft at Hill Hacks
Upon arriving at Ghoomakad for Hill Hacks, I had been greeted by Hari who assigned me a room on the ground floor. Except the next night a lady from Mumbai arrived and was assigned the exact same bed by someone else. What do we do now? The only option now was for one of us two to move to the room upstairs. Technically I had been the first one to have arrived and been assigned that bed so she should have moved upstairs. Plus there was no bed upstairs and you had to sleep on the floor in a sleeping bag! But she plainly refused saying she could neither climb up and down that often nor sleep in a bag. She was a nice lady. She wasn’t trying to play any tricks or make excuses especially about not being able to climb up and down. But I was pissed. Reluctantly I moved upstairs. Only a couple of days later — the night after the village fair got over there was a theft in Ghoomakad. Only one room had been ransacked. The one I had given up! A gang of robbers had somehow managed to sneak in and without waking up anyone left with laptops, cameras and bags. Hari lost cash worth 50,000 and that poor lady lost a laptop, camera and some other things. When I learnt that not only was I shocked but to admit it honestly also very relieved. Had I not moved upstairs (and we locked our room by the way) I would have lost my phone and Macbook for sure.
Mann ka ho to accha, na ho to aur bhi accha
The Couple from Noida
That evening we were joined by another couple on the dining table at that Israeli restaurant. Turned out they were a media executive and a nutritionist from Noida and were on a getaway. They were quite fascinated by all of us and we had a great conversation on taking that step forward where you live life the way you want to instead of heeding to modern day slavery. The cool thing was that they had their own car and Sidhartha asked if they could give them a lift from Kaza to Manali via Chandra Taal since our dates for leaving Kaza coincided. They said “Sure, of course. There’s a lot of space in the car” and we fixed up to meet in Kaza on the 12th of June. All this while we had been slightly reluctant if we were intruding into their privacy and whether they really wanted to take us along and we had asked them plainly about it. But the jovial couple happily smiled saying it wouldn’t be a problem at all.
Leaving for Dhankar
We woke up early the next morning to catch a glimpse of the beauty we had missed yesterday and also the only bus to Kaza.
But this was what we had missed by sleeping till late yesterday.
Our next stop was going to be a day trip to Dhankar monastery and then come spend the night at Kaza. Our 2 day trip had been extended by another and Prateek realised he just had to leave. His college had started and soon the practicals would start too. Remember that he had arrived almost 2 or 3 days before me. All of us especially me and Sidhartha were busy trying to convince him to hold on but he wouldn’t listen. His plan was to leave through the Reckong Peo route (which I had taken while coming) to complete the circuit. He had arrived from the Manali side via a shared taxi. When you come from Pin valley, you cross the Spiti river to arrive back on NH505 after crossing a bridge. That’s where we got down as Dhankar lies to the south and while Kaza to the north. There’s a bus from Kaza to Peo that leaves in the morning — the only one, and we had to catch it. The cool thing about such small places is the willingness of people to help. It also stems from the fact that there’s literally just one bus from point A to B and if you miss it then you’re just stuck. The bus conductor called up the conductor of that bus and informed about us so that they would wait up in case we got late. We got down and stretched a bit. The bus from Mudh had left at 6:30 in the morning and all of us were still quite sleepy.
Prateek leaves us
We lazily stretched waiting for the bus from Kaza to arrive. When it did everyone tied their luggage to bars on the roof while I carried my suitcase with me. It was turning quite cumbersome now. There was a last ditch effort from our side to convince Prateek to hold on but he ended up buying a full ticket to Peo and we unfortunately had to say goodbye to him as Dhankar arrived.
Dhankar
Dhankar used to be the capital of Spiti until Kaza out developed it. Today Kaza is the most or rather the only modern town in the whole valley. There’s not much you’d miss there if you came from the rest of India. But Dhankar has almost frozen in time. It’s still a tiny old village with old buildings and a crumbling monastery. It is also supposed to have a beautiful lake. But I already had my doubts about “beautiful lakes” from Nako and the absence of internet had made it impossible to look up a picture. Chandra Taal on the other hand was a much larger and magnificent lake with overnight camps being held as it is 10–12KM away from the nearest village and off the route to Manali. Dhankar also lies almost 12KM uphill from the highway. There was no way we could walk that much with our luggage and thus we decided to wait at the gate of the village for a ride to arrive. If I haven’t told you about the pains of hitchhiking here then let me reiterate. Don’t depend on it unless you have no specific agendas to meet and loads of time on hand. I think we ended up waiting for close to an hour before a taxi arrived. It had been hired by a Bengali couple from Gurgaon. Sidhartha asked if they could take us to Dhankar. It was an SUV with two passengers and one driver. Surely it had enough space for us. The driver happily agreed and then said
Har admi ka 100 rupay lagega
I’ll charge ₹100 per person
Seriously? You’re going up there anyway and we have no other way. Plus there’s ample space! The Bengali couple kept quite. Sidhartha tried to talk him down.
Aap to bade businessman ban gaye ho
You’ve become a big businessman
But this guy had the leverage and he was ruthless. So much for the simplicity of Spiti. Most people are still very simple but with the onset of tourism some people have sharpened their money making skills.
But what could we do? Wait another couple of hours for not paying a 100 bucks. This was the only vehicle to cross us in the past hour or so and we could not take a chance as we had to catch the evening bus to Kaza.
Dhankar New Monastery Guest House
Just as you enter Dhankar you see the new monastery. A new monastery has been built alongside all the old monasteries in Spiti which are roughly usually more than 900 years old. Dhankar is slightly special in the sense that it’s monastery is actually crumbling. It has been declared one of the 100 most endangered sites in the world by World Monuments Fund. A small non profit initiative called the Dhankar Initiative is now trying to mobilise funds for repairing and restoring it. The old monastery is the on the other end of the village — a rather small village with just 68 families residing. There are only a handful of home stays and I believe most families resort to either farming or labour at the drilling sites. The lake is a few kilometers further and thus the driver left us there to move ahead.
We went up for a quick breakfast but decided to instead eat at the monastery or somewhere in the village after looking at the rather expensive menu (by Spiti standards). As we walked across tiny Dhankar I could not help but notice the absolutely stunning landscape around and also the fact that it was being drilled continuously to create wider and wider roads.
Dhankar Monastery
Dhankar monastery is quite small and atop a cliff. It makes you wonder if people here are scared of anything at all. What if the hill crumbles? For centuries that had never been a problem although the monastery had suffered some damage in an earthquake in 1975. Remember this was a cold desert. Rains are supposed to be scant. But for the past couple of years the problem had been aggravated by unforeseen rainfall. Leo was right — climate change is real.
The village is perched up 12KM (by road) from NH505 and surrounded by 7 mountains and floats in mid air. Right across you can see Pin valley. The roads are poor and narrow. Everywhere I walked I was a little scared to slide off and fall down.
Alas we reached the top. But before heading to the monastery we touched base with what appeared to be a residential quarter for the head monk. It was locked but we decided to do a parikrama. It was amazing how this person lived. His house was just a single room built right at the edge of the cliff on the topmost hill of Dhankar. It had a single toilet and a kitchen right across the entrance and around his room was a small verandah made out of stone. If you stand on that narrow corridor right off the cliff, this is what you see:
This isn’t for the weak hearted but it makes you wonder how amazing this monk’s evening chill time must be. Remember that this hill top is crumbling and there’s no way to predict which would be your last day alive.
Buddhism Sucks
I love Buddhism. I’m agnostic but of all religions I adore Buddhism the most. I don’t plan on converting or anything but I love it’s simple principles and intention. It’s probably the only religion that arose out of the need to end human suffering. Most other religions were either ways of civilisation or efforts to bring together nomadic tribes under a uniform civil law. Buddhism in it’s essence is very simple — eradicate worldly desires to end suffering and do not cause any sort of harm to other creatures. Basically just chill and let others chill. It’s not even right to call it a religion. It’s more of a philosophy — teachings to lead life in a certain manner that is not painful to oneself and others whether physically, mentally, emotionally or financially. Over centuries it has become a religion — a cult — a set of rituals.
The reason I’m telling you all this is because today I got to see all the downsides of what buddhism has become over years and how capitalism and materialism has started drenching into the fabric of even one of the most remotest of regions in the world. We already had faced the driver and I hope you remember the local who had asked for a 100 bucks from Rubina when she hitchhiked from Key to Kaza. Now we saw a sign inside the monastery that said that women were not allowed to go on the rooftop. Why? I expect that from Hinduism, Christianity and Islam. But I don’t adore them. I adore Buddhism and I certainly don’t expect that from them. Buddhism still I believe is overall far more liberal and respectful of the fair sex. You’ll learn one very interesting fact in this regard very soon.
This sign really really put me off. I was pissed. Very pissed. I asked Sid and Ruby if we could leave now. I just wanted to get out of that place and run away. I was disillusioned with the very place and thing I had thought could incite enlightenment. That’s when I realised along with my stay at Key Gompa that while we seek enlightenment in places and religion, it only lies within. That’s what Vipassana had preached to me a year back but it was only now that I had experienced and thus truly understood it. You don’t need to go to Spiti to get enlightened. Surely it can inspire you but you can achieve whatever state of mind you wish sitting right here in Gurgaon. It was liberating and I felt light.
By this time it was close to 1 o’clock and all of us were hungry. We hadn’t eaten anything since morning and started looking for places to eat. The monastery refused to serve us food and the couple of restaurants in the village were either closed or said it would take more than an hour to prepare food. We decided to walk back to the guest house to eat some expensive food. On our way back this peculiar sign board cracked me up.
After a quick lunch of poorly cooked Shakshouka we decided to walk down. Walking down is easier right? Not so much if you take the shortcuts of rocky slopes full of rolling stones while wearing shoes with zero grip and a suitcase in your hand. Let’s just say I managed.
Sanjeev and that weird Nepali guy
We touched NH505 somewhere around 4 in the afternoon. The bus was still an hour away so we decided to try and hitchhike again. Of course without paying any money as we’d rather catch the bus. Suddenly we saw a truck driving towards us. It was clear that this was some sort of Army or military truck and these people are almost always helpful so we started waving and surely enough they stopped. We threw our luggage behind and jumped on by climbing the huge tires. The back was loaded with ration and groceries and there was hardly any place to stand. Also accompanying us were two guys — a 40 something beared Bengali called Sanjeev and a dark Nepali guy who looked like a native. Sanjeev had a bottle of whiskey in his hand that he was consuming neat and boy was he high. I soon learnt that he actually lived quite close to me in Gurgaon. Accompanying him was this Nepali guy who had been living in Kaza for close to 30 years now. This was one weird man (but very nice and helpful as we later found out). He started telling me about how his uncle has brought him here as a kid to work and how the dust had made him really dark. Yes he was a very dark Nepali — you don’t get to see that often do you? He also told me about this novel tradition in the valley where a woman can have multiple husbands. He seemed to particularly like it. He was sleazy in general. But what really caught my attention was how beautiful he found the surroundings. Every now and then he would point out to the mountains or the river and marvel at it’s beauty quite vocally which left me wondering how can someone who has lived her all his life — 3 decades for that matter still marvel at the same beauty with such splendid glow in his eyes. On our way we gave lift to an old lady who seemed like a farmer. She was quite heathy and was having a difficult time climbing the truck. The Nepali guy helped her out.
Theek ho na? Uthane mein mushkil ho rahi thi. Aap bahut mote ho.
Are you fine? Lifting you was difficult because you are very fat
I was horrified. How can you say something like that to an old lady? Siddharth probably saw the look on my face and quickly pointed out to me that in this part of the region they don’t mind such things. If you’re fat you’ll be called fat. It’s not an insult. Just a fact. And for that matter of fact no one here can actually be deemed unfit thanks to the harsh terrain, healthy food and daily lifetstyle.
Stay at Kaza
It turned out the truck belonged to the Border Roads Organisation. They dropped us at their base camp just as you enter Kaza. We started walking down. By this time — and Sanjeev probably doesn’t know this — all of us were feeling a little weird about Sanjeev because he was as high as our altitude and we were praying that he parts ways but no! He kept following us and so did the Nepali guy who was trying to get us a cheap hotel. Me, Sidhartha and Rubina kept looking at each other making gestures wondering how to get rid of Sanjeev. Eventually we settled upon a hotel deep into the main road that led to the bus stop. We got a really nice room with two beds for just 600 bucks. Sanjeev was going to be with us for the night and there was nothing we could do about it. We didn’t know him well and we weren’t judging him as a person but he was just drinking way too much. By this time he had went out and bought another couple of whiskeys that he was consuming almost alone. Alcohol makes people unpredictable and we had an unpredictable stranger with us in our room for an entire night.
Rubina was particularly happy with the cheap clean room we had managed to score and the quality of the sheets. Now the decision was whether I should come along with them to Chandra taal or head back to Manali. By this time we had figured out that the couple weren’t willing to accomodate more than 2 people based on our last minute conversation with them before leaving Mudh. I had turned greedy by then and wanted to visit Chandra taal but then I had already overstayed and wasn’t too keen on intruding on someone’s privacy either. I thought it best to leave but with a very heavy heart. And of course I wanted to go via Manali to complete the circuit and see that route (which I had heard was far more beautiful than the Peo one). Taxis for Manali leave early morning around 6:30AM from the Kaza bus stop. One needs to reserve their seat the day before. Just then Sanjeev returned with his receipt of reservation. Damn I said. I also needed one. He asked me to rush pointing that the seats were about to get full. “But don’t worry. If you don’t find one we can share it. Tu meri godi mein beth jaana”. I dashed out and ran breathless across the town to the taxi union.
The guys managing the seating seemed high. They said the last seat was gone just 5 minutes before I arrived. “You don’t understand, my friend is leaving tomorrow and we need to leave together” I said. Very reluctantly he agreed to note down my name and asked me to arrive by 6AM. I went back disappointed. What am I going to do? Firstly I didn’t want to go back. Now I probably would neither be able to go to Manali nor Chandra taal tomorrow. Spending another day in Kaza was the last thing I wanted to do. “Don’t worry yaar. I’ll make sure you get onto the car. We’ll share my seat” said Sanjeev to me. Suddenly the fear of an unpredictable drunk man was being overshadowed by a warm, sweet Bengali.
