Day 3 Kalpa-Recong Peo -Ribba btidge -Spillow- Kinnaur Valley – Pooh- Hangram valley-Nako lake – Spiti valley- Tabo
We started the morning on the terrace of our Kalpa retreat hotel, just soaking in the beauty of the range of snow peaked mountains, glistening through the night, just outside our balcony.
I got up very early to have some amazing me time with the fresh cold mountain air on the terrace when most of my friends were probably asleep.
In fact they did join me an hour later for an amazing session of gratitude meditation on the terrace, we were really appreciative of this day and place and opportuniy to be one with nature and with majestic mountains at 360degrees around us.
After a hot buffet breakfast and another briefing and warnings by our tour guide we were again ready for another long road trip.
At Recong Peo, we halted for sometime and I saw a big Golden Buddha statue at the top of the city in the distance.
We got excited seeing the beautiful scenery of the Sutlej river next to us and just had to stop at the Ribba bridge for a photo opportunity. I moved away from the group and again had to indulge in some humble me time against the giant magnificence of the mighty mountains and the river that surrounded us., along with a trickle of a waterfall.
We were slowly driving out of crowded towns into the natural mountain roads.
I saw a board ‘Sentinels of Tripeak’…it was another army outpost and I could imagine what effort must have gone for our brave army personnel to scale and guard the nearby peaks.
Probably the last place where we really got a clean toilet, before we went into the wilderness was at a place called Spillow. This was also the last place where our mobile internet data and our mobile phones were working.
Once on the road again, suddenly we realised that we were on our own, with no connectivity to the outer world…this is a very unique feeling because we then happen to be fully involved in the existing scenery and in each other with no distractions from the phones!
We were now at the Kinnaur Valley and the greenery around us was slowly reducing. We laughed at the name of the next town that we passed through, it was called Pooh.
Suddenly we saw another amazing sight at the Hangram valley. This was when our muddy brown coloured Sutlej river was joined by the fresh blue coloured crystal clear waters of the Spiti river. This is another sight that we could never forget.
We then stayed at the edge of the road, to make way for almost 13 trucks of the first army convoy that passed us. I just had to salute in respect to the handsome looking men in uniform!
By now there were different shades of brown in the mountains and there were amazing designs on the rocks, and huge
designs on the giant facades of the hills.
We started having fun using our imagination and picturing figures like hearts or faces on the mountain sides.
Suddenly we came across acres and acres of vast open stretches of land below us Our vehicle just had to stop to soak in the expanse around us. We had some fun clickng some double images in panoramic mode of the huge open rugged terrain around us.
Our next stop was at the Nako lake. It was quite an effort for my cold heavy body to walk in the scorching sun upto that place and again to go down so many steps to finally reach the small lake, It was beautiful but looked less like a small lake and more like a big pond.
A few friends in our group who had never touched snow in their lives went berserk here, making hand marks and writing names of loved ones on the marginal snow at the sides.
We instead, jumped up in the air in excitement to get some nice pictures against the backdrop of the Nako lake. And we had a nice interaction with a local lady tending to her big heavy buffaloes.
Lunch was at a dhaba like place with a homely feel, but we slowly started getting tired of the predictable Roti sabji and dal chawal and bare toilets
As we drove out of the Nako village, we realized that we were on top of the mountains with the sun shining brightly on one side and the moon shining coyly on the other.
We saw our first sight of a small frozen waterfall and realized that the temperatures must be below 0 degrees and we had no google to give us ready-made answers.
We were now on the Chango road, sometimes going up the mountains and sometimes going down the mountains. In fact in the last three days we realized that Lunch time was on the top of the mountain and Tea time was down in the valley.
We made jokes of what the mountain shapes reminded us of, whether an Ant hill, or an elephant foot, or a face, it all depended on the imagination of the observer.
We noticed that the water of the Spiti river was absolutely fresh, we could actually see the stones below it
I had dreamt two days ago of Cherry blossom trees and suddenly we saw rows and rows of beautiful mauve coloured trees. These were not the Japanese Cherry blossoms but our very own Indian apricot trees also called gurmani in the local language. We just had to stop for a photo of them. We were lucky to also see some tough yaks ploughing the local land.
Finally we arrived at the Police check point for entering the Spiti valley. We saw the Parshu river which originates from China. In fact there was high security presence in this area because we were very close to the Indian border with China.
Our drivers suddenly stopped to pick up a cream coloured local dried plant which he claimed was used as an effective medicine to heal broken bones. In these days we would run to a hospital but I. The olden days of no emergency medical facilities in Spiti people would boil this local dried Pipjhul plant and trust that they would be healed.
The scenery around me reminded me so much of our visit to the Grand canyon in the US, only this seemed have much more variety with the views becoming more and more spectacular with every turn of our bus.
We passed a board saying that we were at
Hurling village with a population of only 225. Which is less that the number of people saying in our apartment.
There were small monasteries with Spinning wheels that were typical of the Buddhist culture. We saw our first roundabout filled with stones in the centre. Later I came to know that each of the stones were inscribed with holy chants.
We passed a relatively new big residential school at Tabo, where most of the present children from the Spiti valley stay and study. Our local driver said he did not go to school because in his time there were hardly any schools in the untouched Spiti valley.
After almost 10 hours of being on the road, we finally reached our Tabo home stay.
We freshened ourselves in half a bucket of ice cold water and went running to see the Old monastery before the sunset. It was established in the year 996 and had many mud stupas around it containing holy relics. This looked more majestic that the colourfully painted new monastery nearby.
The best part about our home stay was the service attitude and the sincere hospitality of our resident caretaker Dolma.
There was a cozy common room with mattresses and cushions around, with a welcome fireplace in the centre used to boil water or even cook food.
After tea and some theplas we had some crazy laughing games around the warm fireplace,
One of us went inside to supervise the making of kitchdi which we enjoyed with the tasty local thupka soup.
In spite of the cold, cough, tiredness, digestion, aches, pains and other health issues by the different group members, we had survived another tough road journey from Kalpa at 9700 feet upto Tabo 10522 ft.
We were slowing getting acclimatized to the mountain heights…or so I thought as I snuggled under 3 comforters into the welcome bed.
So in 2018, do notice these simple smiling moments. Have a smiling year!
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