So we chucked the plan of taking an early morning bus, as soon as we got to know that there's a bus in the evening to reckang pio @18:30, my day started at 06.30 when the alarm woke me up, but I did went back to sleep, to be finally awake at 07:30. Jakhu 2temple was our only planned destination for the day, and we were finally en-route at approx 10:45, it wasn't a trek to be exact but yeah it wasn't any normal walk too. It took us nearly an hour and half to reach the top (yes, I am unhealthy :P and yes there are taxies / ropeway facility). The view was amazing, the Gigantic statute of Lord Hanumana is an engineering marvel. And like any hanuman temple, the Vaanar Sena was at its glorious peak here too, with a special liking for specs and goggles (you can't blame them, the sunlight does strain your eyes there), after the temple we went to a cafe known as the "Cafe under the tree", it does have an amazing ambience and a beautiful interior. We spent nearly an hour there just enjoying the view as well as the tea (if you are a tea lover, do try the Himanchal special), from there we went to a road that surely wasn't used to travel anymore, you could just lay down there and let the breeze do its wonders, and the earthly smell, that's amazing too. On the way back, we asked a localite about a place where you can have some nice food to eat and he suggested "central perk", the name was more than enough to intrigue curiosity in us, beware the place is nothing like the name, but it does have nice ambience and serves good food (we were hungry too :P), so yeah it did worked for us... From there we retired to the hotel where we have kept our luggage (we already checked out in the morning), went to the old isbt and then to the new one to catch the last bus to retang pio at 20:30, from where am writing this part.... Yeah you could see stars (just stopped for a tiny tini break on the way). And the bus ride is nothing but a freaking roller coaster (last seats yaar)..... Ciao for the night......
23:21.....
Against our pre occupied notions, we reached recong pio by 5.30 in the morning, the bus to kalpa was supposed to start by 7.00 clock in the morning. The first thing that caught our eyes were the snow covered mountains, it was just majestic, amazing, breath taking, and what not.... While waiting for the bus all I did was staring at the mountain peeks, (I also met a bunch of street dogs, including one named "hira", he was so obedient, so good, other than Gazing at mountains, playing with him was one of the good moment in my day, my stomach was still not to its full strength (try and stop yourself from gazing at stars, if you ever did love looking at stars, the journey from Shimla to peo is one of the best). Finally we reached kalpa by 7.45(missed the first bus :P) and roamed around to get us a good place to stay, which ended by 9.30 am at chini banglow, and the kumbhkaran in us was back in action, we slept till 15.30,it was so peaceful, then when we finally got back to senses, it was the time to feed ourselves, we went to a dhaba downhill and ate whatever we could think of (if you are on budget, try these dhabas instead of the restros, and the localised here are so open hearted and helpful (i literally went into the kitchen to see how he was making our food, later he also allowed us to use his kitchen to cook dinner ;)), after that I went to a Tibetan monistry, it was closed at that time (later when we went there, we got Toffee as prasad, yay!) I also am culprit of providing wrong info to a foreigner ( :( ), and that's pretty much how our day ended today (and yeah, last thing, we did taste some local wine here)......
The only thing which remains is me gazing at the stars, I hope I could find that strength within me to ho outside (hell I'm shivering, gotta take some medicines)
Ever been lost on a trek with no people around? That too on a mountain with no one around? The cell of the only person you knew on the mountain being discharged, and getting his call when you are still not able to locate your hotel or any other monuments that you saw. It was a crazy last 3 hours when I returned from the chaka peak to our room in kalpa, sliding down the mountain slopes, making sure your head doesn't hit anything, thinking in your mind about different situation that could happen, including your own death, making sure that you follow the stream, thinking about all the men vs wild episodes that you watched all this while (it wasn't that big a mountain but then who the hell could stop you from thinking ;)), climbing down the steps of step-farming, going to every hut you could see and then finding out that there's no one to help you. And then returning to the stream which would take you down. Earlier, as always we were late in starting our trek by at least 3 hours as instead of starting it early morning, we started around 10.30 for chaka, after I took some medicines for myself, we started the trek for chaka peak, me being myself tried dragging my group as slow as I could (what more could you expect from a 90 odd kilos unhealthy guy), but as we trekked upwards our desire to hold snow in our own hands grew stronger. We did get some but not in the quantity we wanted. When we finally stopped to relax and enjoy the views, we did get some snowfall.
We started from pio at 12.30 and reached Nako around 17:00 hours, we took a room near the Nako lake and did a small one hour trek to a nearby mountain. The view was beautiful and the lake looked even more awesome from that point, we stayed there till it was almost dark, the breeze was amazing (so many adjectives, but the point deserves nothing less). For the dinner, we went to a nearby hotel,"the lake view", the dinner was kinda good, considering the place, but their apple drink was amazing (it was made locally). We retired to our room around 22 .30 and watched a movie, just as I was going to bed to retire for the day, my friend asked me if I wanted to watch stars, crazy as I am, I said no, but being the guy he is, he forced me to get out of my blanket (trust me for guys who neither drink nor smoke, first 10 minutes was torture, but after that the stars worked their magic, so majestic, so beautiful, so breathtaking, (adjectives I know :P). We did gaze at this beautiful phenomenon for like an hour before we retired to our beds, but yeah, not before we saw some falling stars..
So, we reached the last destination of our current trip today. We reached kaza by 17:30 after we took a bus from Nako earlier this morning around 12:00 hours. The sad part being we didn't explore anything today in the morning. The route from Nako to Kaza was scary at first (for the first timers), bumpy to the highest level and to add on, even the closed windows of the bus couldn't stop the dust from entering the bus, we were drenched in dust when we got down at kaza bus station. After searching for a while, we got ourselves a nice deal in hotel "spiti Valley" with the kaza monastery just being some 10 meters away and a hanuman temple too.... That temple could be a nice view point for sunrise, (at least let's hope so). So after we settled in the hotel, I went for the temple, the view was a bit better from up there. Let's see if we could get off from our aalaspana tomorrow, and go and see some sight seeing tomorrow.
Yesternight we were told that we might be able to get some snowfall today, here in kaza only, but that didn't turned out to be the case. We booked a taxy for the day so that we could cover whatever we can in kaza. Our first destination was kimber village, and as we were about to reach the destination, the heavens smiled at us in form of beautiful white snowflakes, so finally it happened, we saw snowfall for the first time in our life, a surreal experience, we jumped, we danced, we sang and were a kid again. From the village our next destination was kee monastery, built in 15th century, it's one of the must visit places when in kaza. The snow was still falling, and we didn't miss a single chance to play with it. After kee we again went to kimber to have our lunch, from where we went to “Langza"village which was divided in Langza 1 & Langza 2. We went to Lanza 2,it was a scenic beauty, 3 shades of mountains and in the middle of it a colorful statue of Gautam Buddha. You could spend some nice quality time there, just by sitting and admiring the view. Our next destination was komic, world's highest motorable road at some 4500 meters, on the way we ate ice by plucking it off the mountains, kids, I told you, for people like me, who don't get to see ice, it's better to let the child in you come forward for a little while than to behave sober and regret later. There's nothing in the village other than a road sign saying "world's highest village with motorable road" giving stats, from there we went to a nearby place just to lay on the ice, write on it and play with it. Our next stoppage was a post office in hikkim Village, claimed to be the highest one, we purchased and posted postcards to ourselves and purchased few more with pictures of nearby places. It was 18:30 by that time and we decided to return to our place by making imaginary images on the snow and watching the sun set behind the mountains.
It was the last day of our touring expedition as from tomorrow we would be starting our journey back home. One thing that's for sure is, if one has to cover the whole of spiti then he should have at least 15 days time just for the valley.
We started for Pin Valley from our hotel at around 11 in the morning, and soon enough the car was gliding through the rocky roads beside the spiti River. The green River probably not in its full flow but luring us towards itself, and we did went to it's shore, not once but twice, firstly when for the first time, we got a chance to move into the pin valley and secondly when we crossed a hanging bridge at Tailing where we removed our shoes, and were standing in the river bare foot, feeling its chilliness. After standing in the water for nearly 15-20 minutes and enjoying the views, we resumed our trip to the "Mudh Village", as per our driver it was the last village of the pin valley, after which there was nothing but cold desert for over 150 kms. It took us another 2 hours to reach there, and it was so calming, the snow covered mountains, the frozen lakes, fresh snow. It was all so beautiful, maybe the guy who compared Kashmir with heaven never visited Spiti Valley. We went to a small shop there, which was made in their home only, we ate our all time favourite Maggie and I prepared "salty tea", after that we played with 2 calves who were barely 10 days older. After that we went to the frozen lake and started playing with the snow, sliding, rolling, letting the kids in us get better of ourselves to make the most of our last day. We left Mudh at 17:00 hours with a silent promise to ourselves to come back to the place atleast once more.
At last we were able to wake up early to catch a bus at time, maybe because, lagi padi thi and if we missed it, we would have to shift our trains, one thing on which we all agreed was that we needed to stay more at kaza, and instead of Nako, we should have stayed in Tabo for a day. But since what's done is done, we took a bus at 7 am for pio. Our journey was quite pleasant actually, and mostly because of the local kabaddi teams who took the same bus as we did, we sang songs all the way down to Spillow. Once at pio we posted the postcards we brought from Hikkim, and then i played a bit with "hira", before we took a bus to shimla.
We reached shimla by 4, next we took a bus to Chandigarh, we all were tired like anything and slept through out the road. Then from Chandigarh we took a bus for Delhi isbt around 10:00 and reached Delhi by 15:00 hours where we ate the famous dhuaandhaar naan at kake di hatti before calling it an end to our trip.
"Hotel Sita Palace" the final destination for Day 1 of our first unplanned trip. What a dinner we guys had, a cuppa noodles duplicate "wai-wai", (not that bad actually ) and one tetra pack of mother dairy chhachh. May the real reason of going on unplanned trip is the one has on not knowing things well in advance. We roamed around for like more than 2 hours on the streets of Shimla with local brokers in search of a good room, but as they say , "laut k buddhu ghar ko aaye", we booked a room through ibibo. Earlier I reached Delhi @10:15 (ANVT) and we took a bus from Kashmiri Gate ISBT @ 11:55, my travel buddy being hum self made the bus wait for extra 15 mins. Promising me that he won't change , we took our seats and were on our way to Shimla, the queen of hills. We reached the nee bus stand by 21:15 and old by 21:35. Our remaining day as told earlier went in hotel searching.....
