Mountains, mountains, everywhere, and only Spitian beer to drink

Editor's Pick Award

Our Editors awarded this travel blog entry for providing relevant information that may be useful and inspiring for other travelers.

We finally decided that it would be a good idea to actually do something rather than sit on our butts and watch the world go by. We booked a jeep safari or 'trek' into the mountains and together with Tim, Traci and their friend Jamie, we set off in search of Yak and other mythical animals!

20th - We started from Manali and heading north up to the Rohtang Pass, then east at Grampoo and into the Chandra River Valley  underneath the Khuzum Pass, through Losar and on to Kaza for the first three nights.

The Rhotang pass is a bit of a tourist hotspot for the domestic tourists from the plains. They come for a day trip from Manali, rent bright orange ski suits, full length fur jackets and wellies (how these work with the skis i have no idea). You then see them going crazy in the snow and ice, which some of them have never seen and drive like idiots on the way home. We saw cow road kill on the way....well not so much dead, more writhing in agony....i couldn't work out if hitting a cow is against the hindu religion....or is it only if they throw it on a BBQ afterwards? The scenery is amazing in this part and i wont bore you with a constant barrage of altitudes, but during the journey we reached close to 5000m. With the altitude, the forces of india hitting nepal and tibet, the glaciers, the rivers, freezing and thawing, the landscape was dramatic to say the least. Losar is a police checkpoint....what for wasn't really explained, but a guard spent forever taking our details before we allowed to carry on the rest of our journey. Doing anything at Losar was difficult, especially breathing. When i woke on our first morning at Kaza, i was gasping for air. It takes awhile to get used to, and i never really fully acclimatized. 

21st - Day trip from Kaza north to Kye Monastery and Kibber

Kye Monastery is perched high on a big rock. Its the monastery they use for the postcards and is seen as an important one due to the Dalai Lama opening the new prayer hall. We were really lucky when we arrived, as the monks were in the prayer room and the sounds of them chanting and the bells being rung as the giant prayer wheel spins was amazing. The view from the top was spectacular and i made a friend in the form of a young monk. He had become a little interested and a little bemused at my yellow 'Live Strong' charity band, and when i offered it to him, he backed away bowing. I later saw him wearing the band, testing it with his teeth and a big smile on his face. This band has already been round the world when i gave it to Cathy to take to Oz, so we will see what other adventures it has. In return i was given a yellow prayer band that i have round my wrist now. Kibber is the worlds highest village....with a road....and electricity...on a wednesday....if you squint your eyes (there is a lot of contention as to what title it now holds, but either way, its bloody high and has some very friendly villagers who found us highly amusing. The kids were fascinated with our cameras, and Tim has some great video footage of me showing this kid a picture of himself on the LCD screen on my digital camera. it was a fine line between awe and freaking out!

22nd - Day trip from Kaza to Hikkim and Langza

Elly unfortunately hadn't been feeling well due to the altitude, and we had both decided it was a good opportunity to sit this one out. Elly relaxed as best she could and i ate. Later in the day i made a run into town. Its funny in this part of the world, a town is really a village. and when showed a place we would be stopping for chai on a map of the country, i expected it to be a major town. However, it turned out to be a stone shack with 3 old guys and a yak! On my wander into town i managed to walk through peoples gardens to their amusement rather than annoyance. There aren't really paths or roads in Kaza except for the main one and it was easy to wander onto someones land. I stumbled across an innocuous looking building, that on closer inspection had a toothless monk spinning a giant prayer wheel. But with no signs, roads or space for anything else other than that 9 foot prayer wheel, it seemed to be totally for his own amusement! I decided to get some beers for the guys return and carried 10 bottles out off the only shop i could find. I left the shop owner with an empty fridge and a smile on his face. It took me 30 minutes to walk the 100 yards uphill back to the guesthouse, and a further 2 beers before my heart stopped pounding and i caught my breath.

23rd - Leave Kaza and travel towards Tabo through the Pin Valley (home of the snow leopard!) taking in Kungri and Dhankar Monasteries along the way and staying over night at Tabo

No snow leopard and no ibex....no surprise really, as it took a team of BBC wildlife cameramen 2 months living and sleeping in a bird hide in the bloody Pin Valley for them to get a blurry shot of a snow leopard chasing an ibex, or was it a local dog chasing his own tail....anyway, we didn't see any wildlife, but that didn't stop the Pin Valley from being one of the most amazing things i have ever seen, and Dhankar Monastry was one of the highlights of the journey.

Perched on the edge of a cliff face is Dhankar monastery. An unbelievable sight as you drive to it. The landscape around it is like nothing i've ever seen. Tall columns of rock, left behind after the wind and rain have slowly worn the surrounding rock. The monastery has some amazing paintings and hundreds and hundreds of ancient writings, teachings of Buddhism. The view from the top is breathtaking as is the view from the toilet...a hole in the mud wall looks out over the valley below. Once again i find myself with a hole in the ground and an amazing view! Sometimes thats how India comes across.....an amazing hole.

24th - Visit Tabo Monastery and then travel back along the Pin Valley through Kaza and staying overnight at Losar

Tabo turned out to be more lush than i had imagined. We drove into green irrigated fields and trees similar to the Eucalyptus. Set in the bottom of the valley, our guesthouse had 360 degree views of the mountains. We sat under an old parachute in the gardens, drinking beer - it was the most peaceful India had ever been. After another early start, we took a short ride to Tabo Monastery. Famed in the buddhist world for being the Dalai Lamas desired place for retirement, and internationally as a UNESCO world heritage site, the monastery has some of the oldest buddhist paintings on its walls. The monks kindly led us on a tour, with our driver Ramesh, giving us an obviously abridged translation. Your not allowed to take photos once inside as, the flash will ruin the paintings, but it seems that over 800 hundred years of pilgrims, water and earthquakes had already taken its toll. However, on the most part, the floor to ceiling and in most rooms covered ceiling paintings were still so bright and detailed.

We took the drive back to Losar and once again felt the altitude as we lugged our bags up a rickety set of steps to our room. Ramesh our driver was in the eating area (i'd like to call it a restaurant, but it was more like someones house), so we joined him, and taught him how to play some card games. They decided to place a bet on one of the games, the loser (in losar) was to buy a bottle of locally produced Spitian beer. With the loser decided the beer was ordered and it arrived in an old water bottle, half cloudy the other like puddle water. The bottle was shaken and placed infront of us. I took a glass and tasted/smelled something not that dissimilar to feet. However, stronger than the 8.25% Himsburg 8000 we were drinking, it seemed a little rude of us not to finish it.

25th - Travel back to Manali via the Khuzum Pass and then a road too small to be on the map that takes you to the blue dot north of the Khuzum Pass which is in fact Chandertal Lake!

With more than 50% of us suffering from hang overs and feeling decidedly queasy, we set off for our journey home via Chandertal lake. The lake is about 4000 odd meters above sea level, and apparently no fish. So when i produced a small fishing kit including telescopic rod and reel from my bag, the locals thought i was crazy. Of course i didn't catch anything, but it was still so much fun.

During the winter this is all out of bounds, cut off from the rest of India, by the snow and ice. Getting over the Rhotang pass would be impossible, yet it is amazing to think that all these villages survive, and infact probably enjoy it, when the visitors aren't there to wander around their peaceful mountain shangri las. Infact the weather can turn so quickly that the army flies tourists out every year when the roads become impassable, and the nearest airport keeps a spare seat on every flight incase someone needs to be flown out, suffering from altitude sickness. As it turns out i think Elly was very lucky, and if you could see the roads, we were all lucky to have got home in one piece.