Day 6 Rangrik hills swirling- Lalung Tree and temple-Dhankar Monastery -Rangrik
We started early in the morning in the midst of the hill slopes, under colourful flags doing a Gratitude meditation, for every single aspect of our blessed lives. We also did some Pranayama breathing in the hope of getting some extra precious oxygen to our lungs. A new experience was that of swirling on the hill slopes non stop for 15 minutes being one with the powerful morning energy of Mother Nature.
There are some issues of adventure travel that have to be experienced to be understood, especially the ones dealing with the struggle of clean ourselves with half a bucket of warm water in intense cold weather.
Finally I discovered the pleasure of a new product called bath wipes, which is mostly used abroad for sick and old patients. It felt really clean after 4 days of living in shortage of water, to pamper the body, yet I was left with another irritating feeling of extreme dryness.
And the remedy for all our dry skin problems was my age old Boroline magic moisturizer for cold dry skin. Suddenly the whole group had become a fan of my Boroline for chapped lips, red noses, cuts, insect itches, plant rashes etc. I discovered a new pleasure of a ‘Boroline bath’, smearing the sticky Boroline on every pore of my skin to protect it very well from the harsh, dry and intensely cold weather.
A hot Puri bhaji and hot corn flakes became a welcome breakfast and we were ready to hit the road again.
Our driver gave a lift to local women who climbed up to the roof, and we insisted that woman with a small child join us inside.
We saw some family photos of each other, in this trip, I had made 9 new wonderful friends and there was so much to get to know about each other.
Our first stop was at Lalung village, where a stick planted by the head Lama became a flourishing tree, and a flourishing village.
We were discussing the horns of the ibex and suddenly our whole group went crazy, running around and trying to poke each others heads with 2 horns like an Ibex. These spontaneous moments of unplanned childishness gives laughter that will be remembered for years to come!!!
Got into the monastery alone and sat in a meditative mood by myself. Was lucky to get a blue stole as a blessing from the local Buddhist deity.
Enjoyed the happy faces of the village children, felt maybe this complete self expression of joy seems to be reduced among city children.
Time for another fall on the ice around us, and was saved again because of my extra weight. There is good in the seemingly bad too. Slipped on the icy slushy floor of a bare orchard, these trees will be filled with apples in a few months from now.
Smelled the animal aroma in the village, and realised that it would not be easy to live with the locals in their home stay along with their smelly animals.
Our roads in Spiti had to be manoeuvred only with our trusted expert drivers considering how narrow they were and the deep drop in the other side. After listening to the early morning Buddhist chanting, it was time to listen to filmy music in the vehicle. Our Group was on high spirits swirled to the Ghoomar song along the twists and turns of the narrow hilly roads. Suddenly we noticed that even our friendly Llama driver was swaying as he was driving on those dangerous looking roads, giving us all a momentary element of fear, and we warned him not to joke with us in the matter of safe driving in the hills.
Visited Dhankar monastery that is at the centre of eight spiritually energised hills. All felt an unexplained immense peace at the different places in the monastery. As I had said earlier, we do not go to SEE monasteries, we go to FEEL the different experiences of different monasteries!
As I sat alone in the meditative cave in the Dhankar monastery, I ft as if I was spinning around on another plane. It was a time for a release of pent up emotions that I didn’t event know were pent up within. The mountains do different strange things to different people and a return to simplicity of life is just what is required for stressed out city people like us!
We came back to the hotel. And within minutes the weather changed from sunny to cloudy to extreme windy by the time we finished lunch. It was moist winds and extreme cold that made it very difficult for us to walk the few metres from the restaurant to our hotel rooms!
Instead of expecting an outdoor bonfire musical evening experience, the weather changed drastically to a cloudy and super windy time. It was a pleasure to watch the snowfall on the nearby hills. From behind our windows. We even asked for the hotel staff to tape up the slight gaps between the windows to block the intense cold winds coming from them.
Sometimes we would see the hill ranges, sometimes they would be hidden in the falling white snow! If not for the gray gusts of winds, we could have got the snowfall outside our hotel rooms too!
It became a laughing time for us when the electricity went off because of the snow storm nearby! Without current, we all huddled in front of the lone gas heater with tea and pakodas and lots of homemade snacks and even more laughing.
At dinnertime, we called up home on the lone bsnl sim card to find out that we were surviving in the hills at temperatures of minus 11 degrees centigrade! And through the night the temperatures would drop to minus 15* which might feel like minus 18*. This was the coldest time ever that I had witnessed in my life, accompanied by the warmth of good company. I got to know that another couple that had come alone, got scared after the first day of intense mountain sickness and went back, while I got well with the extra good wishes of my group!!!
We ended the dinner time with a quiz time for the group, asking them questions about the first four days of our trip and laughing even more at the many things we saw in the last five days. Glad that I am documenting our experiences, there was so much of variety in this trip.
So in 2018, do notice these simple smiling moments. Have a smiling year!
Recent Comments