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Spiti ~ The Hidden Valley Part I
by Harish Kohli
http://www.awimaway.com
For almost a year, now, we had been planning to visit
Spiti; the hidden valley on the northern side of the main
Himalayan range. Spiti is home to around 10,000 people who
share with their Tibetan neighbours a common ethnicity,
language and culture. As it had recently opened to foreign
tourism, we were keen to visit the valley, study the local
culture, interact with a local school and trek across the
Bhaba Pass. The one condition to go was to earn their
cost. Bhaba Pass is a fine example of passes on the
Greater Himalayan range, which are gradual towards the
Tibetan plateau but fall steeply towards the southern side
of the range.
With a team of 10 students from a grammar school in
England, we embarked on my 2nd and my team's 1st journey to
one of my favourite valleys in India. Spiti Valley. We had
flown to Delhi and decided to take an overnight bus ride
from there into the dusty market town of Manali at the
foothills of the Himalayas. Beyond Manali, the road becomes
a series of switchbacks through a pine forest all the way
to Kunzum Pass. On the far side of the pass the Spiti
Valley soon opened up ~ a sliver of flat land lined on
either side; a continuation of serrated peaks, their
summits streaked by veins of lingering ice. Occasionally,
the triangular heads of snow-covered mountains reared above
these ramparts. The overwhelming colour was brown, in all
its variations, broken only by the inky cobalt of the sky
and the bottle green of the Spiti River.
>From Manali, we arrived at Kibber the next day. Kibber is a
1~ hr journey from Kaza, district headquarter and the
largest town in the valley. The single and rickety bus
service was packed to the roof. But the journey was made
interesting with beautiful landscapes and the local women
singing all through the way.
The villagers were hospitable to the students and me, just
like before. And it was amazing to see the two diverse
cultures of the world ~ the West and the East ~ work so
closely together. The students spoke no Hindi at all, while
students of the school at Kibber spoke little or no
English. And yet they introduced themselves, played games,
painted the school, danced and laughed together as if
language was never a barrier between them. Stewart, one of
my team members, was amazed by the simplicity and happiness
of the villagers and Jenny, expressed her pleasure at the
reception they received, noting 'how moved the villagers
were on seeing us work with them to paint their school. I
must have done a really good thing.' Unknowingly, though,
the local people had made a great impact on us as well. We
realised a slow process of transformation within us; the
realisation that things we believed to be necessities were
only luxuries and drove home the importance of simple
living after we experienced their lifestyle.
The day one of our tekking schedule from Kibber, took us
past the wondrously located Kee Gompa. This beautiful
temple, surrounded by terraces, was set above the road,
overlooking the Spiti River. So beautiful was the view that
it inspired us to go out on a photographic expedition. At
the end of the first day everyone was 'pooped'. The only
happy creature was the local village dog, a mastiff we
called 'Rab', who had decided to attach himself to our
group.
Day two heralded a new dawn and we experienced spiritual
awakening as we passed another monastery decorated in vivid
colours of red, yellow, gold and blue. There were monks in
red robes, Tibetan prayer flags like bunting in the breeze
and rows of traditional prayer wheels, turned slowly by
devotional Buddhists. After a lunch of vegetable dumplings,
we moved on to the camp above a village named Dungal. Rab
decided to sleep outside the girls' tent, as if protecting
them from intruders and no kind of enticement could induce
him to move away.
Day three took us through the small village of Dungal, on a
path that winds its way below a village gompa perched on a
ridge top. Bush wood collected through the summer for the
dreadful winter lined the flat-roofed houses like the 'wood
of life'. Small fields sown with barley and over a metre
high swayed in the strong, high-altitude sun. An old mother
in salwar-kameez (a local dress worn by women in India)
with a triangular shawl thrown over her shoulders stood
beside the path, holding her baby as if waiting for it to
ripen. Children played with home-made toys, wiping their
running noses with the sleeves of their torn jackets. Their
chapped cheeks, baked by the cold and the sun, looked like
roasted cakes. 'It is a hard place to live, man,' said
Graeme, pointing out too there were no men to be seen
anywhere.
Exhausted from the long strenuous day activities, we camped
alongside Dhankar Lake, an 800m x 150m of luxury at the top
of the world! Barely did we reach the site when Jenny and
Anna, sweating from the walk put on their costumes and
jumped in. The leader of the day decided to give the
following day as rest. For the team this was bliss.
On the fourth day, after having a breakfast of spicy masala
omelettes and hot buttered chapatis (Tashi who came along
with us was our cook) we decided to start phase two, the
crossing of the Bhaba Pass. The prospect of a minimum of
six hours hiking up from the base and two days across into
the Satluj valley meant that we would have to get our legs
and lungs into shape, and that in turn meant lots of
preparatory short walks.
This was an educational tour: a tour for the students and
by the students. They led the trek, kept accounts, pitched
their own tents, decided the day's menu and planned the
itinerary from Kibber to Dhankar monastery and into the Pin
valley to the base of Bhaba Pass.
Harish Kohli is a mountaineer, winner of the lifetime
achievement Award for http://www.awimaway.com
National Adventure and a travel author.
His book Across the Frozen Himalaya
is based on a real life incident of having survived
48 Degrees Celsius temperatures on the summit of
the Karakoram Pass for over 26 hours
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