A 1,200-year-old Dhankar, Spiti Valley |
We were attempting to
cross the Rohtang Pass and had found a lift with a local driver and his
wife. We had been crawling up the road for hours and, at a particularly
muddy patch, had had to get out to lighten the load. We eventually
found our van, the wife, who had also had to pick her way through the mud and cloud, had
somehow arrived minutes before us, despite her advanced age and the fact
that she was suffering from typhoid. We lowland folk are simply not
built for such altitude (the road we were on would cross a pass nearly
as high as Europe's highest peak.) Because
of the mist and rain and the quagmired roads, what should have been a
three-hour journey took us ten. When we eventually reached the summit we
watched Indian tourists in hired fur coats taking bleak pictures of
each other in the mist. We warmed ourselves in a chai shop constructed
from stone and canvas. With the chaiwallah hunched over the flame and
the mist drifting smoke-like under the low canopy, we could have been in
another time, another world. The following days would be equally
unworldly but the roads to be taken would make the Rohtang Pass seem
like a Sunday drive.
This was our 'road'. The men are reorganising the boulders so our bus could cross this rather watery stretch. |
We were headed for the
Spiti Valley in the State of Himachal Pradesh, a place more Tibetan than
Indian, where arid landscapes hide thousand-year-old monasteries in
their craggy contours. For the next stretch of the journey, we had
seats at the back of a rickety local bus. Bundles, limbs, and crinkly
old ladies pressed from all sides as we began the ascent of a craggy
mountain pass. The road was unsurfaced and narrow and the bus swung the
hairpins at a rattling speed, at times we were hurled half a foot out of
our seats. As we took the bends, the rear of the bus left the road and,
looking down, we could see nothing but a sickening drop to the rocks
below. There was no mist here, nothing to mask the certain death one
envisioned at every downward glance (or the occasional wrecked car many
fathoms beneath). After a few hours, we reached the top of the next
pass where Buddhist
prayer flags streamed around a stupa and we climbed down to calm our nerves,
ease our cramped limbs and rub colour back into our whitened knuckles.
Above, jagged 6000m peaks were plated with vast glaciers, and hung with
strings of meltwater that fell glittering down to the valley floor.
We
fell in with a group of fellow travellers, Israelis trailing dreadlocks
and crochet wool, a Spaniard on the run from his travel buddies, a
profoundly deaf French writer, a German-Mexican on a Buddhist
pilgrimage. We were all brought together by the narrow valley of snow
peaks and scree, and continued the journey as a motley crew. At Ki, we
saw an ancient monastery piled up on top of a hill and enjoyed a chai in
its darkened interior. Many of the monks had been there since their
mid-teens and would spend the remainder of their days amongst hypnotic
chants and curling incense smoke, gazing out at the wheeling eagles,
the icy peaks and the pink-faced foreigners huffing it up the hill.
In
the winter, the valley is completely inaccessible and the roofs of the
whitewashed houses were already being piled high with firewood and straw
for the animals. It must be a bleak existence for many and the alcohol
on the breaths of many locals seemed to testify to this. The most
difficult section of the journey involved walking up to a mountain lake.
We were over 4200m above sea-level and entering a strange zone of
airlessness. The sun was so strong that our skins were glowing pink in
minutes, the air so absent that we had to stop every twenty metres to
gasp back our breath. Others complained of headaches or rapid heart
rates. It is a truly inhuman environment. Still, we reached the top and
me and the Spaniard, let's call him Alan (for that is indeed his name),
ran and jumped into the lake. We'd forgotten that such excessive
activity wasn't wise at such altitude and were soon gasping and
spluttering. Once we stopped however, the sound drained from the
landscape and nothing, bar the faint rustle of water, could be heard,
just blissful silence. The one advantage of walking at altitude is that
it doesn't seem to effect me as much as it does others, so, for a short
but glorious time, I appear to be the fittest man around. It's a shame
we had not brought a football, for once I may not have been last to be
picked (even with the absence of one-legged Graham from school).
* Note: One-legged Graham does actually exist- one glorious sports day, I even managed to beat him into fifth place in the 100m.
Anyway,
I appear to be wittering on and on. In short, Spiti was quite wonderful
and I shall not forget those soaring landscapes, atmospheric
monasteries and thrill-ride buses. It was certainly a highlight of our increasingly epic
journey.
A rather beautiful Hindu temple in Sarahan - you can see the influence of nearby Tibet |
We slowly worked our way south,
greenery rushing up the valleys to meet us, while the monsoon once again
darkened our skies. In this soggy atmosphere of mist and rain we
eventually reached the city of Shimla. Shimla was built by the British
as their summer capital, nestled on a ridge that enjoys a similar
climate to our own damp isle. The architecture gazes dreamily back to a
romanticised Britain, half-timbered cottages still clinging to the
idealised notion of the motherland, churches with the illusion that they
are in Bury-St-Edmunds rather than clinging to a Himalayan foothill
surrounded by monkeys and turbaned Punjabis. We visited the wonderful
little Gaiety Theatre, the boards of which were once trodden by a young
Rudyard Kipling and Lord Baden-Powell. Again, we got the sense that
modern Indian history is also our history. Oddly enough, most Indians
talk with some affection for the days of the Britishers and feel it was
positive time no matter how much we try to convince them otherwise.
Well,
I think you've been reading for quite long enough now and, for the
moment, will leave you in that strange corner of the British Empire,
watching the church spires and scout huts disappear into the mist.
Nako, a typical Spiti village |