It is not easy to convince myself that people actually live in these places. My GPS continuously recorded altitudes above 13,000 feet. We did not sight even one tree despite walking for hours together. The sun happily burned every inch of unprotected skin, peeling away flakes of epidermis. Oxygen levels were so low that climbing even a hundred feet felt like a day long arduous task. At times we climbed over 15,000 feet, where the thinning air laughed at our struggling bodies. Winter temperatures apparently fall twenty below zero or even lower. For the people of Spiti Valley, this was everyday life.
Before we started the long walk from Komic to Dhemul, Tenzin Lama, a monk at Komic monastery (altitude – 14,700 feet) said it takes about two hours. “We normally start after lunch,” he mentioned casually, “and walking slow and easy, we reach Dhemul (altitude – 14,200 feet)well before dark.” He was trying to assure us that there is absolutely no need to hurry, or worry about the walk. While he talked, he was making Maggi and tea for all of us – an early lunch before we begin the long walk.
We had an amazing variety of estimates on the time it takes to reach Dhemul. Tenzin’s was the shortest, and he made it appear like a child’s play. The man who suggested us to make this walk had estimated five to six hours. The guide who accompanied us — Thekpa — was more cautious. He was watching over us and had assessed our strengths better. He thought we will require about eight hours.
Lama Tenzin offered us tea and maggi before we embarked on the trek
It was eleven in the morning when we began conversations at Tenzing’s cozy little room at Komic Monastery. He was a cheerful chap who never seemed to stop talking, occasionally offering weird poses for our trigger happy group. When someone aimed the camera at him making tea, he would stand on one leg, other leg dangling in the air and his hands mimicking someone pouring tea from a kettle into a cup. The gang loved him instantly.
The good times lasted only as long as we were having Maggi with Tenzin. The struggle for oxygen began soon after we left Komic. On ascents, no matter how gentle it was, every step seemed like an attempt to carry a big ball of steel tied to the shoes. Descents were much bearable, but much of our way that day was a gradual climb. The views however, were something that justified the effort. Whenever we paused and looked back, Komic village appeared like a bunch of match boxes against a gigantic line of mountains that challenged the sky.
Komic was a small dot on the landscape. The snow-capped Chau Chau Kang Nilda Peak dominated the views.
With very little precipitation in the previous winter, many of the peaks far behind the village were unusually bare and brown. The tall Chau Chau Kang Nilda rose much higher than its neighbours and wore a shiny white that was worth the envy of its counterparts. On the opposite site, the mountains plunged steeply for more than two thousand feet into the valley of Spiti River, rising again to form another chain of snow-capped peaks. But most importantly, ahead lay a path that seemed to keep going upwards forever!
It must be about two hour’s of uphill journey before a short descent made a kind appearance. After the descent was a plateau-like area, full of a variety of thorny plants that had carpeted the earth. Thekpa, our guide, said that all those plants will begin flowering after the first rains in August and the earth turns purple with the efflorescence. The plants were so numerous and widespread in the plateau, it would be worthwhile coming here again to fill that scene in the eyes.
From the highest point of the trek, Dhemul Village appeared like a small spot trapped in the mountains.
After a short break and a short eat at the end of the plateau, it was time for a long and final ascent. It was nearly 5pm when we reached the highest point of the trek at 15,700 feet. Beyond the pass, we could see Dhemul village as a small spot trapped in the mountains. Now, it was a steep descent that we estimated to be a twenty minutes walk. The ever-cautious Thekpa suggested an hour. It turned out, he was right.
So near, yet so far. We thought it takes 20 minutes to get to the village. Our guide Thekpa suggested an hour. He was right!
We reached Dhemul at 6pm, a walk that took us a total of seven hours that included an hour of careless gallivanting off the path. Thekpa’s estimates turned out to be more reasonable than Tenzing’s.
Dhemul, much like Komic, was a village that appeared out of nowhere. It is amazing how people sustain in these villages, high up in the mountains and faraway from every other place. A hundred years ago when they weren’t touched by modernity, they lived an almost self-sustained life with the help of their flock of animals and subsistence farming. Sheep and yak provided them with milk, butter and meat while the barley fields gave them cereals. The fields are usually spread very close to the village and the villages are usually located next to a perennial stream that never dries up. Perhaps only salt and spices had to come from outside, may be from a long southern route via Kinnaur Valley. Their houses too, were built with locally available materials. The walls were of mud, while the roof was held in place with poles of willow that were grown all around the village. Every village in Spiti has a similar ecosystem, which looks like a verdant escape in the otherwise desert landscape.
A starry night at Lalung Village
Today, many of these villages are connected by road. A road is perhaps the most important thing that changes the lives of people forever. People still rely a great deal on their yak, sheep and barley fields. But they now have access to comfortable clothing that comes from outside, get to sleep in more comfortable mattresses, cook with LPG, eat rice and wheat besides barley and buy vegetables that they would never have access to earlier. Electricity poles too have made their way to many villages. Power supply is limited and erratic and is often backed by solar panels, but more often than not, people can cook their dinner under a bulb watching television. A more recent phenomenon – direct to home television – has invaded the homes rapidly, thanks to the receivers given away by Prasar Bharati.
Despite all these modern comforts having arrived in Spiti, I still can’t stop wondering how people ever lived here. The extreme weathers and limited resources still governs their frugal and efficient lifestyle. In the last two decades, Spiti’s Villages have routinely broken several records, such as the highest village in the world with permanent habitation, highest village with motor roads, highest village with access to electricity, highest fuel pump in the world, highest village with a post office and so on. While we get to hear about some of these statistics at every turn, not every one of them may be necessarily true.
Perhaps these harsh conditions of living have made Spitians understand human sufferings better than anyone else, and be of assistance to everyone in need. At the village, after we had comfortably settled in, I realized that we did not know where our guide was staying. An attempt to look for Thekpa alerted the entire village and the news spread quickly to wherever Thekpa was, who came to meet us. The moment someone got to know, several villagers had gone looking out for him, taking up the task as a personal mission. Later that night, the kind lady of the house took out the best vegetables in the house (aubergines, at 14,000 feet) to make our dinner. The villagers took care of us like a bunch of old relatives who were visiting after a long time.
These girls posed for a picture at Lalung Village.
The next morning, we were scheduled to make another long walk – this time thankfully downhill all the way – to Lalung Village (altitude – 12,300 feet). But the news had arrived that the annual festival at the monastery in Ki Village is scheduled on the same day. We changed our plans and boarded a vehicle to Ki, spent the day at the festival and took the road to Lalung Village in the evening.
We got lucky two weeks ago, when I was leading a tour in Spiti Valley with a group of photography enthusiasts. The monastery at Ki Village had decided to celebrate their annual festival on the dates that coincided our visit. Unlike in Ladakh, where festivals are planned well in advance and you can work your visit around them, monasteries in Spiti plan the festivals at a short notice. We had the good fortune to be there at the right time. Some images from the fest.
Click on the images to see them larger.
A monk rehearses for the cham dances on the evening before the festival at the monastery premises. One of the key elements of the monastic festival is the cham dance, in which the monks perform a series of dances wearing very exotic-looking costumes. Some of the dances also involve monks performing with mask symbolizing the guardian deities that can look demonic.
The festivities happen at a quadrangle next to the monastery, where the monks dance to the tune of drums, cymbals and an aerophone called Gyaling. Entry of important persons or characters is emphasized with a long vuvuzela-like instrument that make a similar sound, called dung-chen. The festival usually attracts a large number of people from nearby villages. For reasons that I did not understand, the audience were largely women, with very few men around. I rang up a few local men whom I knew and weren’t at the festival, and asked them why they weren’t around. Everyone seemed to be busy with some work or other.
The cham dances in progress.
The audience, gripped by the dances.
While the performance is in progress, these masked men, usually young brat-monks, do the job of crowd-control, holding a stick in hand and reprimanding any one who gets too close to the performers.
The congregation also offers an opportunity for vendors who line up their wares on the road leading to the monastery.
Here is a short video I made, which gives you a glimpse of the dances.
Chatting with a very dominating Mangal Singh in a chai-shop in Manali, we were quickly convinced to let go of our plans of Ladakh and traverse the highlands of Lahaul & Spiti instead. Those were the days much before the famed movie ‘three idiots’ came out. Ladakh was not a rage as it now is, and people would ask you ‘where is it’ when you said ‘Ladakh’. But frequent travellers who pushed the limits of comfort knew much about its glorious landscapes and endless lakes. One summer, we decided it was time we traversed the Manali-Leh highway and experience what the heavens looked like. Until Mangal Singh came along and changed our plans. Thankfully so.
Chandar River is our constant companion for a good part of our journey into Lahaul & Spiti. I would call it grandest of all rivers. Not because it’s big or it’s fast, but it has chosen to flow in a valley of unparallelled beauty.
A good friend from Delhi had connected me with the genial driver Mangal who made a living driving a Tata Sumo in the mountains. We sat with him on a pleasant summer morning at an un-touristed dhaba in Manali and excitedly explained our plans for Ladakh: “we will go here, do that, see this and blah!’ And Mangal, in his ever-smiling and gently pushy manner, shook his head. You shall not do so! That day, he was going to call shots, not his customers. He slowly explained, delivering a series of logical reasons about why we should drop our plan to Ladakh and go to Spiti instead. “Ladakh is too expensive; it is very tiring; it is monotonous after sometime; Spiti is far more beautiful; far more rugged; has a greater variety..” We were sold.
It turned out, as we discovered over the next few days, that Mangal knew how to talk to anyone and have his word accepted unquestioned. And it also turned out that everything he said about Spiti was true. For the next seven days we were at the able hands of Mangal, negotiating some of the remotest roads in Lahaul & Spiti and always ending our days happy.
An unlikely summer snowfall had us elated on our journey to Lahaul. It also held us back and made us wait for the roads to be cleared and waiting was a pleasure in this land of extraordinary landscapes.
Mangal was not the kind of person who would give up on anything; it was not just about convincing his clients to travel to where he preferred, but also in ensuring that we see the best of what the region had to offer. “The road to Chandratal is closed,” a driver who was travelling in the opposite direction told us. After sweet-talking him and sending him off, Mangal scoffed at those words and said, “he did not want to drive to Chadratal and is now lying to us, with his clients sitting behind him.” And sure enough, the road was open and we were led there comfortably, under the guidance of the able and focused Mangal.
But we had trouble waiting for us on the way back from Chandratal. A sleek-looking Ford Endevor was punctured and blocked the single-lane road that connected the lake with rest of the world. A passenger from the car was frantically waving at us, asking us to wait till the tyre is replaced. But there is no stopping Mangal. He drove right ahead and parked in front of the broken car; inspected it and figured out that the city-slickers will take ages to finish changing the tyres. He immediately assigned himself to the job. In the ten minutes that we spent admiring the valleys and the mountains by the road, the Ford was on its way to the lake and we were on our way ahead.
It is useless to make an attempt to describe Chandratal in words. A picture helps, to some extent. A good way to understand its beauty is to be there and see it. The best way is to camp there and see it as the sun goes down, under the stars and as the sun comes up. Nothing can beat it.
This journey to Lahaul & Spiti, under our commanding officer Mangal was so memorable that Mangal became our hero. We would cherish those days of being in Spiti, each time remembering Mangal for having made this happen. This was in the year 2006, when regular travel and photography was just unfolding as a popular pastime and a serious hobby.
I was back in Spiti again in 2011, guiding a bunch of photography enthusiasts who had seen my images from the last tour (more about this tour – Lahaul & Spiti, Heart of the Himalayas). We did not have Mangal this time, for the only reason that we opted for more modern and comfortable vehicles that came into existence since our last tour. This time, we had a local – Lara – who was simply ‘the man’ to rely on for anything that goes wrong during the tour. You have difficulty in fording a stream? No problem. Lara will lift you on his shoulders (really, he did it) and get you across. Your baggage is misplaced? No problem. Lara knows everyone in town and he has a clear idea on where to find it. The road to Pin Valley is closed? No problem. Lara knows a better place – ‘come to Langza and you will not want to go anywhere else’. And indeed we could not have asked for a better place than Langza to visit.
Sweet Pea fields, traditional houses, friendly people, snowy mountains and amazing views. Composition of a tiny village in Spiti Valley
Lara was the Mr.TroubleShooter who was always there for us, and mysteriously enough, he always seemed to be there to help everyone in the whole of Spiti. There wasn’t problem that he would not be able to solve. There was no person in Spiti whom he did not know. We got to witness this during the annual government-sponsored festival that coincided out visit to Spiti. At the festival ground, where everyone in the valley had turned up, it was impossible for Lara to take a step without someone greeting him and stopping him for a chat. And mysteriously enough, he had time for everyone.
Our guide at Spiti, Lara, is perhaps the most cheerful and easygoing person I have ever met. He was also probably the most resourceful person in all of Spiti Valley, and was needed by everyone all the time. Yet, he was always there whenever we needed his assistance.
On one of the days of our tour last year, Lara invited us to his village. He described his village as the ‘Switzerland of Spiti’ – a metaphor that is usually a suspect. I haven’t been to Switzerland, but the beauty of Lara’s Village did not need any supporting metaphors. The village surrounded by tall snowy mountains, grassy slopes and a sweet pea fields is a place we never felt like leaving.
People like Lara and Mangal made our visits memorable. There were many such people along the way who assisted us selflesly all through the tour. At a remote place where we were stranded due to landslides, I gratefully recall the locals who fed us and ensured that we did not suffer in any way. I was surprised to see the staff of a government-run hotel (which was perhaps the best accommodation in Kaza) treat us like relatives coming home for a visit, and ensuring in every way that we were comfortable. It was much unlike what I expected at a place owned by a government. In another instance, a home-stay owner too, treated us much like guests coming home, giving us the warmest place in the kitchen and dining with us for the night. The lady of the house insisted that we eat well. The Spitians, perhaps being used to a tough life in arid mountainous terrain where temperatures dip twenty below zero, are well capable of understanding human sufferings and do everything in their might to reduce any discomfort to anyone who comes in their contact. The Buddhist principles of compassion echo similar sentiments, perhaps further motivating these happy and friendly people.
A kitchen in a government building, in a place out-of-nowhere in Lahaul & Spiti. The structure gave us shelter from an unexpected rain/snow fall.
Spiti’s Lakes and Mountains have a charm that, to me, surpasses everything else in the Himalayas within the reach of motor roads. If I were to choose the best of the best places in the Himalayas, I would vote for Zanskar Valley in winter and Kanchenjunga National Park in summer; both of them requiring at least a week’s walking to appreciate their beauty to the fullest. Out here in Spiti, which is very much within the reach of motor roads although they are not exactly the smoothest roads to drive on, the stark mountains, fast-flowing rivers, pristine lakes and beautiful people have often made me wonder why am I simply not settling down here instead of going back. I had in fact hatched plans to sit down and spend a few months idling in the slopes of Spiti several times in the past, but none of them has materialized so far.
And the philosophers said, ‘heaven is not up there, its right within you’. I wasn’t smart enough to find it in or around me, so I looked it up in Spiti.
Speaking of Spiti’s landscapes, Chandratal Lake comes to my mind more than any other place, where steeply rising slopes around it block all the wind, and make the lake surface perfectly still. The snow-clad mountains form a perfect reflection in the lake so well that, in a photograph, the lake surface itself is never seen, but only the reflection of the surrounding landscapes. It is so blue, it appears like a little piece of sky that has fallen on to earth.
The next place that comes to my mind is Dhankar Lake, much different from Chandratal and has its own charms to effuse. It has a slightly greenish tint much unlike Chandratal and the colours seem to vary depending on the direction of the sun. Unlike the emptiness of Chandratal, Dhankar Lake is frequented by shepherds, whose stock drinking from the lake have a stange, wellness-inducing effect.
Chau Chau Kang Nilda Peak standing high up, complements Ki Monastery built on a crag along the slopes. Or should we say Ki Monastery complements Shilla Peak? You decide.
The mountains themselves are so charming, I am flooded with a wish to be on the top of every peak that I see around me. The snow peaks are everywhere, forming a dramatic backdrop for the lakes, villages and the rivers. Our guide, Lara, goes on naming every peak that catches my attention along the way. The names are heard and forgotten but the images of the peaks remain etched in my mind. At each turn in the valley and at each new place I see, I know that I want to spend weeks, if not months and years, right at this place. It is not easy to keep moving on.
Despite frequent travels across the India (and brief stints near the icy mountains near the Arctic Circle) I can not think of too many places that can match the beauty, character and ruggedness of Lahaul and Spiti. Spiti’s stark mountain landscapes have their ways of surprising any visitors, with sudden dashes of greenery exposed amidst the barren landscapes, still reflections of blue lakes dotting the brown landscapes or in a people who are so easygoing that that they make you forget the toughness of the terrain.
Spiti’s landscapes are unimaginably beautiful and has largely remained unaffected to the onslaught of development. The valleys downstream from Spiti are overrun by hydroelectric projects, random construction and frenzied road building activity, but none of that in Spiti. Yet, it remains reachable to modern comforts like electricity, road access, telephones and even internet. Because Spiti is so faraway and remote, it is not overrun with bus loads of tour groups that relishes more on potato-wafers than the landscapes, and leave a polythene-evidence of their visit all along the way. There are no shouting crowds that disturb the peace of the highlands; there are no noisy people who demand that they be served cuisine from their homes; there are no touch-and-go tourists who prefer their photographs taken at location and move on instead of dwelling in the beauty of the surrounding. Like every other place with access to motor roads, it is probably a matter of time before Spiti’s fate follows that of more crowded places. But today, it has remained the place that I cherish to go back year after year.
