‘Some places you fall in love with, coz they gave you an experience of a lifetime, and with some places you fall in love even before you had a chance to visit them’. This is pretty much my story with the tale of ‘Spiti’, a desert mountain valley located high in the Himalayas, a name that translates into ‘The Middle Land’ – The land between Tibet and India. Closed to the world for almost 30 years, opening its doors to some of the most daring wanderers only in 1992, my colleague and friend – Aastha, is one of the few people I know who has witnessed the unknown beauty of Spiti, and introduced me to a place which is haunting my mind since forever, almost like calling me to visit…
Left in isolation over generations, the place till date has managed to preserve the rarest of aspects of the Buddhist culture with some of oldest Buddhist monasteries and temples in the world still standing alive here. Looking at Aastha’s images made me get a glimpse of this world that remains intact inside our larger world, and sharing her experience in her very own words through this post, makes me go a step closer to my desire of exploring this familiar-unfamiliar land…
