Lahaul To Spiti - A Himalayan Journey

 "They should pay you a very high salary", I told the bus driver. "I get ₹7500 ($100) a month, just like any other city driver", he said. I was travelling by bus from Keylong to Kaza in the Indian Himalayas, bordering Tibet. It is one of the most treacherous roads in the world. Keylong is the main town in Lahaul Valley. Kaza is the main town in Spiti Valley. But it turned out to be no easy task to travel from Lahaul to Spiti, although they were part of the same district.

I was in Keylong. I decided to spend a few days there to acclimatise to the altitude. Keylong was at 10,500 feet and I was planning to go to Spiti Valley which was at a much higher altitude. Keylong was a pleasant, little town with the Bhaga River flowing through it. I walked on a path alongside the river and there were apple orchards all along. I walked for about two hours and I reached Kardang Gompa, the oldest Buddhist monastery in Lahaul Valley. The population in Keylong was mainly of Tibetan descent. The monastery was completely isolated on a hill top and there were three Tibetan nuns there. One of the nuns led me down a long corridor and opened a door. In the large room, there was a prayer wheel with exactly 1 million scrips of paper, each written with the sacred Buddhist prayer, "Om Mani Padme Hum" which roughly translates to, "Hail to the jewel of the lotus". 

The three nuns invited me upstairs to their living room. The room was carpeted with Tibetan rugs. They gave me a chair to sit on and they sat down on the floor. They asked me in Hindi, "Where are you from?". I said, "Bangalore". "Oh, that's so nice. Bangalore is so close to Bylakuppe", they said. Bylakuppe was the southern Indian headquarters of Dalai Lama and there was a large Tibetan settlement there. "We get one or two visitors every day. Some days we don't get any visitors", they said. They then offered me tea and biscuits. The tea was Tibetan butter tea and the biscuits were Parle-G glucose biscuits. I offered to pay for it, but they refused any money. 

They survive on funding from the Dalai Lama and on donations. I donated some money in the donation box while I was leaving. One of the nuns was planning to go to town to buy groceries and she was dropping me back to Keylong town, on her 50cc moped. She was unhappy with the Dalai Lama. She said, "Monks can marry. But nuns are not allowed to marry". She then continued, "He also said that a female Dalai Lama should be attractive". I had to get off her moped and walk behind her in uphill stretches of the road. It took one hour to reach Keylong. The road was designated by the History Channel as the "World's Deadliest Road" in 2010.

 There was talk in Keylong about snowfall near Rohtang Pass. Keylong is cut off from the rest of the world during winters. The roads get closed, sometimes as early as October and could open as late as May. This was in September and it seemed to be an unusually early snowfall. I was worried that I would get stuck in Keylong for the winter. The hotel owner's wife said, "Don't worry. You can stay with us. We will not charge you anything. You will have to eat, whatever we eat". I had never heard sweeter words in my travels. They had a small baby daughter and I used to play with her. "You can play with our daughter", she said. I set about earnestly, trying to find a way out of Keylong. I had read that there is a bus from Udaipur that passes through Keylong and goes to Kaza. I went to the bus station to check but they said that the bus no longer operates.

 I went to an open-air bar set in an apple orchard, surrounded by snow-clad peaks. There I met three Singaporean women - one Singapore Indian and two Singapore Chinese, all travelling together. They asked me, "Is the apple liquor safe?". I said, "I don't know. I haven't had it. It should be. Let's try". We all had apple liquor which was quite strong but nice. We got talking about Singapore, since I had lived for quite a few years there in the 1990s. The Singapore Indian woman asked, "Do you speak Tamil?". I said, "Yes, I do". She said, "I also speak Tamil", which was not surprising since most Singapore Indians are Tamil. We then discovered that between the four of us, we knew ten languages: English, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Malay, Mandarin Chinese, Hokkien and Teochew. They said, "Where are you headed to next?". I said, "I am trying to get out of Keylong. I want to go to Kaza". They then said, "Oh. Even we are thinking of going to Kaza. We know a cab driver who is ready to take us there tomorrow for ₹8000 ($107). You could join us. We can share the cost". 

It was a very enticing offer. I had to get out of Keylong, I wanted to reach Kaza and they had a solution. It was just that I didn't want to travel in a private taxi. I wanted to travel using public transport. A private taxi envelopes you in a cocoon of comfort. That cocoon of comfort infantilises you, cuts you off from any interaction with people and also robs you of your power of observation. I typically eschew luxury when I travel. I told the Singaporean women that I would let them know by that evening, if I wanted to join them. They were staying in a hotel near mine. I went to the bus station again and met the manager. I told him, "I want to go to Kaza. I want to go by bus. Give me a solution". He said, "There is a bus that leaves Keylong at 4am. Get down at Gramphu. There is a bus from Kullu to Kaza. You should get that bus from Gramphu". I would reach Gramphu around 5:30am and the bus to Kaza would possibly arrive there sometime during the day. I decided that's what I would do.

The next day, I checked out of my hotel at 3:30am and got the 4am bus. I got down at Gramphu. There was almost nothing there. Gramphu was a pile of stones by the road, with a path leading up a small hillock. At the top of the hillock, there was a stone hut with a thatched roof selling tea. They are commonly known as a dhaba in northern India. Keylong in Lahaul Valley had been green and fertile. Spiti Valley was a high altitude, cold desert. Gramphu was completely barren, totally devoid of vegetation. I had entered Spiti. I went to the dhaba and ordered a tea. There was an old man, who said, "Are you going to Kaza?". I said, "Yes, Kaza. What time does the bus come?". "Some days the bus doesn't come. If the bus doesn't come, you can sleep here. I have Maggi noodles, omelettes, buns and tea", he said. "When it comes, it comes around 9am or 10am or even 11am", he said. It was bitterly cold and the old man had a nice fire going, so I settled in for a long wait.

Around 7am, a taxi came and stopped. Three foreigners stepped out - a Taiwanese woman, a Korean man and a man from Slovenia. They were all going to Kaza. So, we were now four people waiting for the bus to Kaza. The Taiwanese woman had never heard of Slovenia. "Is it near Poland?", she asked. The Slovenian said, "No. It's between Austria and Croatia". But she didn't get it. "It was part of Yugoslavia", I said. "Oh. I know Yugoslavia", she said. She then asked me, "How much did he charge you for the tea?". I said, "₹15 (20¢)". She then said, "He charged me ₹15 too. I don't trust Indians. They overcharge foreigners". The old man in the dhaba continued his dire proclamations, "Sometimes the bus doesn't stop. If it's full, then it won't stop. Two days ago, the bus did not stop". 

Around 9am, the old man announced, "The bus is coming!". How did he know? Was he clairvoyant? Then I saw that there was a window behind the cooking stove, through which you could see all the way to the top of Rohtang Pass. "Can you see the bus?", the old man asked. At first, I could see nothing. Then I saw it. A tiny moving red speck on the horizon right at the top of snow covered Rohtang Pass. "It will take 45 to 50 minutes to reach here", the old man said. We all went down to the pile of stones by the road and waited for the bus. The bus reached after one hour. The bus stopped and all four of us got a seat. I asked the ticket conductor, "When will we reach Kaza?". He said, "No idea. We will reach when we reach". I had a seat right in the front, just behind the driver. 

From Gramphu, the bus climbed steeply to Kunzum Pass, with a lot of sharp hairpin bends. It was one of the most treacherous roads I had seen in my life. The road was unpaved, it was just stones. It was just about wide enough for one bus. On one side there was a rock face and on the other side, it was a sheer drop of several thousand feet. In case you encounter another vehicle coming in the opposite direction, one of the vehicles would have to reverse in that petrifying road, until you reach a point where there was space for two vehicles to pass each other. It was invariably our bus driver who would reverse, since he was possibly the more experienced driver. He would reverse the bus, sometimes through hairpin bends. There used to be less than one inch between the tyre and nothingness. The average speed of the bus was perhaps 5 km/h (3 mph). I told the driver in Hindi, "They ought to pay you a very high salary". "I get ₹7500 ($100) a month, just like any other city driver", he said. "I drive this road every day. I will do this trip in the reverse direction, tomorrow morning", he said. 

I was seated next to a man and a woman from Manali, a big town. They were also going all the way to Kaza. He said, "I have just been transferred to Kaza. I am going there to join duty". He was a government employee. I said, "Wow! That's great. You can explore the whole of Spiti Valley". "Are you crazy?", he shouted at me, "This is a punishment posting. I had a fight with my boss, so he transferred me to Kaza". "Who wants to go to Kaza?", he muttered.  The woman asked me, "Why are you travelling alone?". I said, "I am happy travelling alone". "Where is your wife?", she asked. I said, "I am not married. I am divorced". She said, "Why didn't you marry again?". I was reminded of an interview of Neena Gupta, an Indian actress who said, "This (Indian) society doesn't respect you if you are not married".

The bus climbed slowly and steadily and reached Kunzum Pass at 15,000 feet, one of the highest motorable mountain passes in the world. There is a Hindu temple and a Buddhist stupa there. The bus did a respectful circumambulation of the temple and the stupa and came to a stop. A few passengers got out to stretch their legs and to take pictures. The altitude was affecting me. I wasn't feeling too well. I just wanted to sit and breathe. A couple of passengers threw up. "From here it is downhill all the way to Kaza. The altitude will reduce. You will feel better", said the driver. Soon after, the bus stopped for lunch in a shack. I had chicken momos (steamed Tibetan dumplings) and tea. The Taiwanese woman ate her momos with her own chopsticks.

A couple of hours later the bus tyre got punctured. The driver asked all the passengers to get down and slowly moved the bus to a spot where there was enough space for another vehicle to pass by. The three Singaporean women from Keylong came along in their taxi. Seeing me standing on the road, they stopped and said, "Do you want to join us? The bus could take a long time". I declined and said, "Thanks for the offer". There were several other tour groups, with the company names emblazoned in the side of their heated, 4WD Toyota Fortuners, that trundled by. The driver set out trying to replace the flat tyre. The jack did not work despite repeated attempts. The bus had four tyres at the back, two on each side. The outer tyre on the left was flat. The driver got a medium sized boulder and placed it in front of the left inner tyre. He started the bus and moved it forward so that the left inner tyre was over the boulder. With that improvised jack, he could now change the outer tyre. He fixed the flat tyre and we started our journey again. 

The bus reached a small village called Losar and stopped there. There was a checkpoint there. Spiti Valley is a restricted area and foreigners need to have an "Inner Line Permit" to enter. The driver told me, "There are 56 foreigners in the bus. If they take two minutes per person, it will take two hours". I decided to wander around the village. There was only one tiny shop in the village, run by an old woman. I asked her, "Do you have any bottled water?". She said, "No. But I have boiled water. That's what we drink". She filled up my empty bottle and did not take any money for it. I asked her, "Is there any place where I can get a hot tea?". "I can make one for you", she said. 

As she made tea over a wood fire, she said, "You city people come and stay for one or two hours and then go away. But we have to stay here". "There is no phone connection and we have electricity for only two hours a day", she said. During the long winter, the village is completely cut off from the rest of the world for 7 months every year. In case of a medical emergency, four people from the village physically carried the sick person to the nearest hospital which was in Kaza, a 14-hour walk. Meanwhile, they had checked the permits of all the foreigners and the driver had been right. It had taken two hours. We resumed our journey to Kaza.

The bus crossed the Spiti River and when it was about 5 km from Kaza, the driver pulled into a fuel station to fill up diesel. But there was no electricity. I asked the driver, "Won't the bus travel 5 km?". The driver said, "No. I have to fill up". The entire bus waited. The power came back after about one hour and we started our journey again. My Airtel phone connection was not functioning, but I had downloaded offline Google maps. I was checking directions to my hotel from Kaza bus station. One woman noticed that and said, "How are you doing that without a phone connection?". I said, "I have offline maps for Spiti Valley". She wanted to check directions to her hotel on my phone. Soon, quite a few people on the bus wanted to check directions to their hotel. My phone was passed around and they checked the directions. The driver finally pulled into Kaza bus station. It was past 7pm. I had started from Keylong at 4am. It had taken more than 15 hours to cover a distance of 180 km (110 miles). I thought of the driver who would be making the return trip, the next day. 

I walked to my hotel and I was panting. Kaza was at 12,500 feet and I was finding it difficult. The receptionist saw me breathless and said, "Do you smoke?". I said, "No. But I used to smoke for 40 years". I had substantially reduced lung capacity. She said, "Here in Spiti, we drink sea buckthorn tea for altitude problems. I will give you some. Have it and take rest". I think it's a mild narcotic like coca leaves in the Andean mountains of Peru and Bolivia. Or possibly I was just too exhausted. I had one cup of sea buckthorn tea in my room and went off to sleep. I had reached Kaza and was going to stay there for a while.

Have you ever been asked personal questions, while travelling? If so, in which country?

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