4:00 a.m: The alarm starts buzzing. With one closed eye, i pressed the snooze button.
4:10 a.m: this time I shut down the alarm again and thought it's still early, 10 more minutes of sleep and I'll definitely get up.
4:40 a.m how those 10 minutes of actual sleep got converted in half an hour.
I got ready in a hurry, woke up my friend and ran off to the bus stand, luckily got the tickets for Tabo. Finally boarded the bus and the journey to the beautiful Spiti Valley started.
The route is scenic and dangerous at the same time. A salute to the HRTC drivers for keeping everyone safe.
We were enjoying the journey but fate has something else waiting for us.
7:30 a.m. The bus stops at Spillow, a small picturesque town for breakfast.
7:50 a.m the bus starts again and starts moving towards Spiti only to stop after five minutes. The driver said it's a landslide and it will take a couple of hours to clear the boulders from the road.
10 in the morning and the boulders aren't clear yet. The driver said that the bus won't be going any further and it will return back as they received their orders. The landslide was still happening. In spite of the hard work of the workmen and the JCB, the boulders kept falling from above. Now we were officially stuck.
We decided to have lunch and then check again.
No sigh of relief even after a couple of hours. The police at the duty told it will take another couple of hours. So we decided to explore Spillow. I never got the spelling of the place right - Spilo, Spelo, Spello, etc ????. We walked around the small town and went to the river bank. It was a sunny day. River Sutlej was flowing in full glory. After two busy days, this was the chance to re-energize ourselves. After spending a couple of hours at the riverbank, we went back to check whether the road was cleared only to find that out will take another hour.
Finally, at 6 in the evening, the road cleared and luckily we found a lone HRTC bus going to Tabo...
To be continued
#spiti #spitidiaries #hrtc #himachalpradesh #spello
