Kalpa and Kinnaur

From Tabo took a bus to Nako, which is within the inner line and in Kinnaur district. Khibber is also a high village, way up a mountainside, and overlooking some even higher mountains. The old village, a maze of crooked streets and buildings made of stone, is charming. Next door to it is a massive construction site, where the new monastery is being built (ever village in Spiti has a monastery....for a district with only something like 15000 people, there are over 30 monasteries! basically, monasteries are just schools for monks, and monks make up a huge percent of the population here...both male and female....the female and male monks look almost identical, wearing the same red robes and sporting the same shaved heads). They are rushing to finish the construction by August, when the Dalai Lama is scheduled to come and consecrate it. Everyone in the village is piching in to help.

Kinnauris all wear funny, big, green felt hats.

My new English friends and I were the only people on the bus when it pulled out of Khibber and started screaming down the precipitous road on the side of the mountain as the river deep below us entered a trecherous ravine. Because it was paved, the driver must have felt that warranted driving at super fast speeds, even as we hugged curves with 1000s of feet of drop below us, and careened around 180-degree switchbacks. I was convinced he was insane and we would all die, but I didn't think that under those conditions it would be a good idea for me to lecture him on his driving. Nevertheless, we arrived safely at our destination 10 hours later, so I have to give him credit for that. We also passed through the inner line without ado (it all seemed a bit silly, but India think it's anything but, and keeps 1000s of troops stationed up there in the lonely high passes of the mountains all year. in face, we have India's military concerns to thank for the high quality road carved out of solid rock).

Gradually as we followed the river (the Spiti now having merged with the Sutlej) down, the gray and brown desert gave way to a few trees, and then more, and more, until the time we reached Reckong Peo, the administrative headquarters of Kinnaur, we were back in full-fledged forest, and it had been raining and everything was so green...such a change after nearly 2 weeks in the rainshadow deserts of the trans-Himalaya. I spent the night in a charming village called Kalpa overlooking the tallest mountain in Himachal Pradesh and surrounded by apple orchards.

There was more I could have seen in Kinnaur but I suddenly was feeling anxious. I decided that I'd been in the mountains long enough, and felt myself missing something more cosmopolitan, more busy. Heck, I missed internet. Went 10 days without it. I think that's a first for me. Spiti is the first place I've ever really been with no internet service whatsoever (to be fair, Kaza did have internet, but it was 9.6 kpbs, and it didn't work when I was there)