Travelling in Himachal in June – 2007
Shimla >> Manali >> Rohtang >> Chandratal >> Ki/Kibber/Tabo >> Kalpa >> Shimla
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+ Next: Kalpa Village
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The journey beyond Nako was hardly exciting. It was a descending road all the way and landscape changed considerably after driving for a few hours. Mountains got smaller and a few trees started appearing here and there. Sun became bearable as we progressed. Once we left Spiti behind and drove into Kinnaur region, mountains became greener and apple orchards could be seen on the slopes. Prosperous villages with large houses that flourished by farms of exotic fruits and vegetables could be seen on the top of the hills. Sutlej grew wider as we descended but never lost steam. A few things worthy of mention.
* Roaring Spiti meets an equally wild Sutlej coming down from river. Together, they become a force that deserve fear and respect. Our road followed Sutlej for many many hours from here on and she doesn’t loose her energy one bit all through the journey.
Confluence of Spiti and Sutlej
* It is too fearsome and fast for boats. At places far from bridges, people crossed the river in manually operated cable cars. What do they call them?
* Mountain walls were no longer loose sediments but were solid and rocky. Fear of landslides here would be lot less than Spiti but not completely alleviated.
* The road cut from near vertical rock cliffs at places. A narrow groove in the rock, a couple of hundred meters above the river forms the road just wide enough for two small vehicles to pass.
* Sun mellowed down as we descended and reached tree line. It was pleasant weather in Rekong Peo and Kalpa village. But we no longer had clear deep blue skies that were characteristic of Spiti. It was cloudy or hazy most of the time.
* The road to Sangla and Chitkul were blocked by a landslide. Another disappointment after missing out Dhankar Monastery. Just the way people told me that Dhankar is one of the most beautiful places in Spiti, I had to hear ravings on Sangla and Chitkul that were supposed to be prettiest region in Kinnaur. Murphy’s law was working.
* There is a large hydro-electric project under construction beyond Rekong Peo. They have drilled large tunnels all over the mountains, probably to pass water. In one such place where a dam was already commissioned, water gushed out from a tunnel in full force into Sutlej.
* Unlike deserted and forbidding Spiti, Kinnaur’s weather is much pleasant and favourable to horticulture. In effect, population density is also much higher. You never have to worry about getting lost anywhere.
* Landscape becomes prettier again and the slopes are filled with dense deodar forests once the road leaves Sutlej valley and climbs up towards Shimla.
Continued at Kalpa Village
Travelling in Himachal in June – 2007
Shimla >> Manali >> Rohtang >> Chandratal >> Ki/Kibber/Tabo >> Kalpa >> Shimla
+ Previous: Tabo Monastery and Nako Village
+ Next: Highlights of Kinnaur
+ Go to beginning of the story or index page
The guesthouse we stayed in Nako was run by a mother and her daughter. A bus load of tourists who had arrived on the day had taken up most of the places available in the town. There weren’t any rooms available at this guesthouse too, but the women of the house had offered a room inside their house, and we took it happily.
The mother and daughter made an interesting company. They would talk in a sing song pahadi manner and go on an on without pausing for a break, and without even putting a fullstops between sentences. ‘Today we went to the fields.. we irrigated the potatoes.. we brought some firewood.. it is very hot these days.. afternoons are very sunny.. tomorrow I have to go to Puh town..,’ the mother would go on and on.
It was hardly a few minutes of talking and she had told us everything about them without us asking anything. They had a potato field in the village where the mother and daughter worked. They had built a small building with a few guesthouses and a couple of shops in front of the bus stop. The bus stop saw only handful of buses every day, but it was at the center of the village and was the hangout for most people. And the daughter, who had studied till 9th class, spent her mornings hours teaching at the government primary school. They had little time to relax and kept hurrying from place to place, trying to address something or the other.
And then they had very little trust in people. The daughter came to our room sometime around 9pm, a few hours after we checked in, and asked that we pay the rent right away. ‘What’s the hurry, we will pay in the morning when we are leaving,’ said our driver Mangal. She gave an embarrassed smile and said ‘It is all the same, paying in the morning or now,’ and waited for the money. We cleared the bills quickly, not wanting to upset her. Mangal asked her to take a seat and chat for a while, but she hurried away saying that there is lot of work to do.
Next morning, we asked the daughter to make some mint tea for us. We then headed out to a nearby mountain pass for a short trek while Mangal stayed back. It was nearly 9am when we came back and were greeted by a laughing Mangal.
‘What happened?’ I asked out of curiosity.
‘It’s the daughter,’ he said, ‘The mother has gone to Puh town. The daughter kept asking me to pay for the mint tea we had in the morning. I told her to wait till you folks return, but she was worried that we might run away without paying for it.’
Funnier things were yet to come. We had a quick talk between us and decided to check out and continue on the road after freshening up. I went for a bath little later, and was disturbed by knocks on the bathroom door. It was the daughter again. It was time for her to head to school, but since our room was in the house, she could not leave us behind and go to work.
‘I am getting late,’ she kept shouting and banged the door once in a while! This was getting too much for me and I decided to ignore her, all the while listening to her shout. She almost pounced on me when I came out and hurled some more ‘I am already late, I will be in trouble now’ dialogues. Others were already driven away to the jeep when I was in the bathroom, and she was doing everything possible to throw me out as quickly as possible. She was not the kind who could be calmed down easily – she even followed me to the room and kept telling me to hurry up. It was hard for me not to laugh, but I managed a concerned look and asked her to wait for me to change.
When I eventually checked out, which I did as quickly as possible, she locked the house and swiftly ran towards the school. I was beginning to feel sorry for her at the end; she had simply taken up too many things beyond what she could handle.
Continued at Highlights of Kinnaur
List of posts on Manali and around
* Discovering Manali
* Images – Beyond Manali – I
* Images – Beyond Manali – II
* Images – Beyond Manali – III
* Exploring Solang Nala
* Rohtang Pass