Kaza and Spiti

There is no direct bus from Keylong in Lahaul to Kaza in Spiti, so I took a Manali-bound bus as far as Gramphu, the junction where the road to Spiti splits off. Split off to Spiti...ha. But when I got to the junction the people there told me I'd just missed the bus and that there was only one a day. I was kind of bummed but resigned myself to spending 23.5 hours at this junction "town" which consisted of 2 dhaba tents but a whole mountainside of green grass and little streams and waterfalls. Just then, another bus came along and I was saved. Well, maybe saved isn't the right word considering what came next. Probably the worst section of road I've ever been on in my life. The Sichuan TIbet Highway in China was pretty bad, but I think this takes the cake. For several hours the road rumbles along through a rock-strewn glacial valley. It's like driving across a dry river bed. And I'm sure it was considerably worse given that I boarded the bus mid-route and thus had only seats in the back row to choose from. On the bright side, I was the only one resigned to the back row, so I had the whole row to myself. At one point an exhausted Danish trekker girl got on the bus. She'd been trekking several days and was suffering from AMS. She rode to the next campsite. Then we started climbing Kunzum La at 4800 meters (16thousand something feet). At the top is a Buddhist temple and lots of prayer flags. The bus circumambulated the temple then stopped so the passengers could go inside and prey. As soon as we crossed the pass we were in Spiti, the rainshadow high desert of Himachal Pradesh, where the monsoon never reaches and the rains hardly ever fall. It is a land of extremes, and home to Tibetan Buddhists....who practice what has been called the most pure form of Tibetan Buddhism left in the world, unadulterated for centuries by Spiti's remoteness and, most importantly, protected from the wrath of China's genocide in Chinese Tibet (some of the most remote parts of which lie just north of Spiti). We joined the Spiti watershed which I would follow for the next several days from its source downstream and down 14000 feet in elevation. The early Spiti River Valley is a somewhat broad valley with the river scattered across a wide sunken valley in thousands of braids. Perched on the edge of the valley's cliffsides are narrow, planted fields and small villages, fed by glacial melt coming down from the steep mountains on either side of the valley.

A couple hours down the valley we came to Kaza, the administrative headquarters for Spiti. It's not a very nice town. It has kind of an industrial feel, and looks like a giant construction site. There are very few traditional buildings left. Ugly, modern, 3 and 4-storey concrete buildings have taken their place. And the place is crawling with guest houses....way too many, if you ask me. There were tourists there, but not enough to justify all those guest houses, and I saw no real reason why tourists would want to be there anyway. But I needed an inner line permit, and this was the best place to get one. It involved negotiating India's senseless (yet arcanely sensible) bureacracy. I had to make three separate trips across the creek from Old Kaza to New Kaza, where all the government buildings, identical in their green tin roofs, were located. The first trip involved merely finding the Assistant District Magistrate's Office, which I finally found at the end of a tree-lined boulevard feeling very out of place in this desert landscape. Then I was sent back to obtain photocopies of my passport. On the second trip, I turned in my application, and they told me to return in 4 hours. Finally, that afternoon, I got the prized piece of paper that would allow me to complete my journey on a road which would take me within 10 km of the Chinese border. The whole valley of Spiti was completely off-limits to foreigners until 1992, and the inner line permits, though much scaled back, still remain as a remnant of those earlier restrictions, a result of India's testy border situation with China (China occupies a sizeable chunk of India called Aksai Chin north of Spiti and east of Ladakh, and India occupies a large chunk of what China claims is Tibet in the state of Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India).

I next headed up the hill to the lovely village of Khibber. At 4250 meters (about 14000 feet), Khibber used to claim to be the highest village in the world. Now it only claims to be the highest village in the world that is electrified and connected by motorable road, and even that claim is debatable. Still, it's pretty damn high. Luckily, I didn't suffer AMS this time, having already adjusted to the altitude after my stint in Leh. The buildings in Khibber were nearly all traditional. There were a couple of modern guest houses, but I stayed in a traditional family house. A very cute baby goat became very friendly with us and followed us around. The kids of the village seemed programmed to demand "picture picture" whenever they saw you. They also knew how to say "chocolate chocolate" and they seemed to have a monopoly over the fossil trade.

Together with a couple English kids and an Israeli guy who doesn't like traveling with Israelis, we set off the next day to hike downhill to Ki Gompa (gompa is the Tibetan word for monastery). But first we had to climb uphill. Hiking uphill from 14000 feet is not the easiest thing in the world. Finally we reached the highest point where we looked out over Spiti valley for miles. From there it was a steep descent to the gompa on probably the most intense path I've ever been on. The path zigzagged down hundreds upon hundreds of switchbacks on a near-vertical rock face. Descending the rock face was actually the east part, though. At least the rock was solid beneath our feet. Then we entered the gravel section, where the trail seemed ready to give out under our feet at any moment. In places, the trail was on a 45-degree angle, and a misplaced step seemed it would have sent us plunging to our deaths. We treaded ever-so-carefully and slowly down the perilous slope. At one point a monk scampered down past us at full speed.

Eventually we arrived the the monastery, which is over 1000 years old. It is an assortment of whitewashed Tibetan buildings perched atop a small hillock overlooking the valley. Atop the hill is the temple complex. The monks and novices live in the buildings below. Most of the monks we saw were young boys - novices. Nearly every family in Tibet has at least one son in a monastery...usually the youngest (while the eldest inherits the land). We stayed in the dormitories at the monastery and ate our meals with the monks.

Next day I walked then hitchhiked back to Khibber, along with Eduardo, from Portugal. One final night in the village.

Then down to Kaza again to switch buses, and onward to Tabo. Tabo is home to one of the two best preserved collections of monastery paintings dating back 600 years. It's a quiet little village but draws people from all over the world because of its artistic value (the guestbook in the guest house showed the curator of the Asian Arts Museum in San Francisco). There are also caves on the hills above the town, in one of which, a monk meditated for 15 years.