Bachelorette Trip to Spiti, Cold Mountain Desert

Packed up this huge ass bag for 8 days vacay, we three met up at ISBT kashmere gate. Took the next ac bus to Chandigarh, and we reached chandigarh around 11pm, the innova we booked for our trip was waiting for us on isbt chandigarh bus station. We didnt have umpteen days in hand hence cab was our best bet. We decided to check out the glorious nick bakers for dinner (which wasnt upto our expectations) and our excursion started at the night itself, three girls on their way to Kalpa, our first stop, via shimla.

When we reached Shimla by the dawn and stopped by for nature's call, our car failed to start. the driver called a couple of guys to push the car from back and somehow we were able to resume our journey. It scared us a bit but after getting assured from him that this is not the car's usual behavior, we kicked all negative thoughts out of window and happily started chit chatting. Roads are in pretty bad condition for some patch, its a long long way from shimla to reckong peo and the narrow roads & dust were not really helping.

Karcham is the place that divides the road into two ways, one leading to chitkul and other one to Kalpa, nako and the rest of spiti valley. It was around 3pm when we reached karcham, there was just one local transport 4-wd standing still, other than our car. there is this bridge above hydroelectric plant on Sutlej River and the force of water is a sight worth stopping for.

We reached Reckong Peo in the evening and treated ourselves to roadside sweet corn and a little chit chat with locals in the village.

Little Heaven, Kalpa

Our sojourn for the night was a wooden house in Kalpa, another 10kms from Reckong Peo and we were really eager to see if it was just like it looked in airbnb photos. Walking towards the wooden house, we three were constantly grinning and looking at each other every minute, realising what a treat Kalpa is. The way leading to the house was oh-so-gorgeous. Stepping inside we instantly fell in love with the small details, the view of Kinner Kailash range, those little things which typically represent the mountains arranged in an artistic way inside the house, how that wood blended with the colors spread around the house, topped with the glass windows to give us unobstructed nature scenery.

Nako village

Nako is a tiny village you can walk around in a couple of hours, absorbing the architecture & the traditional atmosphere. It was quite dark for any sight seeing and we were going to wait for tomorrow to visit Nako lake & the monastery. We savoured momos & dal rice at the first dhaba in nako, Lovon Guesthouse & dhaba. The guy running the dhaba was quite generous and gave us a polybag full of plums he plucked from the trees in his farm.

At the night, we approached every other shopkeeper to know if we could make a call back home. And all we heard was, no network in this village since two days. It was quite disappointing to hear that, all three of us were scared of our parent's wrath.

After having parathe at Lovon, we started walking towards Nako Lake. It was a 5 minutes downhill walk to reach the lake and when we reached there, it was so quiet with no other soul to be found around us. The whole village reflecting in water, we sat under a tree and while i was busy capturing the best of Nako, my friends were busy taking some off time with self.

Nako Gompa was another 600m from Lovon and it was such a beauty. Sitting peacefully around the temple, we pondered over how simple life is, in this desert. Just one man was sitting inside the temple, doing his prayers. Relentless sound of the bell on prayer wheel and the voices of kids playing their own kind of game was all we could hear around us. Blowing wind and we three just stood in the dust and wind, without a worry in our minds, enjoying an hour of solace.

Enroute Tabo

We left for Tabo around 10 30am and on our way, passing through villages of Sumdo, Lapcha we got down from car to pluck some apricots from trees planted in local houses. We were two hours into our journey when our car broke down. Just like a daily ritual. Thankfully we were in some village(cant recall the name), not on the barren deserted highway. The car got stuck in a huge puddle and we girls helped the driver in every possible way to start it. Exhausted, we went to locals and found out a mechanic in that village who rescued us from another wasted day.

Afternoon we finally reached Tabo monastery which was 64 kms from Nako Gompa and thanks to a souvenir shop owner inside the monastery, we were able to call our families after 2 days of no network. Tabo Gompa was established in the year 996 and its architecture and sacred artwork is exquisite and rare.

We also visited Dhankar monastery but it was so damn sunny that i didnt feel like taking out my camera at all. Dhankar gompa is one of the 100 most endangered sites in the world. A nonprofit group, Dhangkar Initiative, is attempting to organize its conservation. A small number of people visit this monastery but its quite an interesting monastery from the inside. Dhang means cliff, and kar means fort. Hence Dhangkar means fort on a cliff. Dhankar Monastery was built as a fort monastery on the Central Tibetan pattern. The complex is built on a 300 metre high spur overlooking the confluence of the Spiti and Pin Rivers – one of the world’s most spectacular settings for a Gompa. Its an old monastery built using mud, stone and wood. you need to lower your heads to pass from one door to another and its mostly dark inside. the only light inside the gompa is the natural light from the windows.

Another 22 kms and we will be reaching our next stopover, Kaza which is the largest township of Spiti valley. We made advance bookings with Hotel Deyzor and as per our plan, Kaza was going to be our base location while we explore villages of Langza, Komic, Hikkim, Losar, Kibber and Tashigong. There are hotels, homestays, hostels etc and then there is Deyzor. In a valley like Spiti, where even electricity is luxury, we got a feeling like home. You can lazily wander around the home, fiddle with innumerable artefacts, if you are interested in deep knowledge of the valley, there are research papers and study work preserved in a corner for the readers to make the most of it.

As per the plan, we left for the excursion early morning without wasting anytime in shower. 14 kms from main town of Kaza lies Key Gompa, which stands high in all its valour on top of a hill. At the height of 4100m, Key is the biggest Buddhist monastery in Spiti valley and a religious training centre for lamas. The walls of the monastery are decorated with beautiful paintings and murals, thangkas (a painted or embroidered Tibetan banner) & valuable manuscripts. Monks were pretty chilled out and were open to talk to the tourists. We saw a lot of monks preparing for their exam and debating over some topic. We were awed to see the monks trying to remember the learnt verses and putting a valid point in front of their teacher.

Leaving from Key Gompa, we passed by the village of Kibber. Just walked around the village for few minutes and took some photographs because we were getting late for our drive towards Tashigong.

Tashigong was never really a part of our initial plan. We got to hear the village name from our host at Deyzor and he adviced us to go explore the village. Tashigong was 15 kms as per our offline map guided us but it took us more than an hr to reach there. To reach Kaza, we have travelled through worst of roads but to reach Tashigong, there was no road. It was like we took innova for an offroading drive. It was just lots of sand and gravel to drive on, quite steep as well. Our driver was kinda scared and asked us if we should go back to kaza but we were determined to go to Tashigong. It has quite a bit of greenery unlike other parts of spiti. Those super wide landscapes left us awestruck. When you leave the roads and take the off-roads, more often than not, you end up discovering something so beautiful, magnificent and magical that it makes you want to pinch yourself. I felt the same when I came across this magnificent village of Tashigong. Guess, being at such a serene place, it makes your prayers heard much clearly. It’s the urge to explore the less explored, we wanted to hike to the hidden cave in tashigong where a monk lives in extreme spiti winters. The height of the cave is not yet measured, because of its remote location.

We couldn’t even look at our tanned faces in mirror when we reached our stay. After an hour of relaxing, we decided to roam around the kaza market. This was our first time seeing so many people on street, the hustle of city life, kaza market is a commercialized area. I got the opportunity to photograph kid monks here when they were out with their teacher in the market. The innocent happy faces, shy at first, but these little monks got friendly to the limelight in no time.

We had our dinner in a Punjabi restaurant, the food was lip smacking or probably we were starving for the simple homemade food since days. That night we slept like log and the next morning, after having breakfast at Deyzor, we left for Komic.

Hikkim is just 3 kms from Komic and we had planned to send each other postcards from the highest post office in the world. On reaching the village, there will be kids flocking you asking you to buy fossils as cheap as 20 rupees but they will be happy if you give them chocolates to eat. The people of the village were really friendly to have a conversation with. We walked to the post office and went inside to choose the postcards. Taking sweet time, writing to our loved ones, with big smiles, we left Hikkim to further visit Langza.

Langza is popularly known for hunting marine fossils and breathtaking view of Chau Chau Kang Nelda peak sitting on top of the village. Apart from the stunning landscape, the presence of a big, 1000 year old Lord Buddha statue in the meadow makes Langza as heavenly as one possibly can imagine. Although possession and collection of fossils are illegal in India, the locals in the village sell these collectibles to the travellers visiting their village. Driving around the village of Langza, you will be rewarded with magnificent view of snow capped mountains and panoramic landscape. When you reach near the statue on top of the hill, crazy chilling wind and green pastures will make you stay at foot of the statue for hours. Breathing in fresh air and silently talking to the mountains is my favorite memory from Langza.

A series of decorated Buddhist Prayer Flags welcome us and by looking at the Sign Board we were confirmed about our arrival to Kuzum Top. There is a temple of Kunzum Mata where we got down from our car and rejoiced in the beauty of dancing prayer flags and sky covered in clouds. Wind was persistently blowing and tangling our hair. After spending few minutes here, we started our descent towards Chandratal lake. The signboard said chandratal was 13km ahead, out of which around 12km was motorable.

Chandratal lake

If you were thinking that you have driven on the riskiest and toughest road wait until you start driving on this one. There is not much of a road here, there are just tyre tracks to follow. This was one of the most dangerous roads that I have come across. On the way, there are two streams you need to cross and the track is really narrow for cars. If there was a car coming towards us, it became a huge thing to worry about. After a lot of struggle, we reached the camping site where we paid advance for the tent and moved further towards the lake. From camp site to chandrataal lake is another 4 kms out of which 3kms can be covered on car/bikes.

These 3kms are just as miserable as the past 10kms we covered to reach the camping site. We felt a couple of times that our car might sleep anytime. After parking the car, we walked for a km to reach the lake.

The beauty of Chandratal lake justifies all the reasons of taking the pathetic road journey to reach here. The pristine blue water and the snowclad mountains surrounding the lake put such an impeccable nature show. We took half an hour to just sit near the lake and admire the goddess nature is. Sitting at 4300m, feelings extremely cold, chilly wind adding up, I was flying high deep inside. I was giggling like a child and didn’t want this time to end. I could sit there for hours without much movement and still be smiling. Even when I was taking hundreds of RAW photos here, nothing could match the beauty I was seeing with my naked eyes. We spent more than 4-5 hours sitting in the lap of nature, taking hundreds of landscape and gopro selfies, but nothing was more satisfactory that circumambulating the lake.

Next morning, we witnessed a beautiful sunrise sitting in our car. We said our goodbye to the orange hues hiding in the grey clouds as we slowly proceeded towards Batal. Stopped by at Chacha Chachi ka dabba for breakfast, as this place is a popular stop for travelers passing by, we wanted to follow the footsteps. Had crispy aalo onion parathas and couldn’t stop ourselves from ordering maggi, one more time. Filling our car with snacks, knowing we wont be stopping anytime soon before we reach manali.

When we finally reached Rohtang pass, we sank all the more in our seats and sighed in relief. We were elated to be back to smooth concrete roads, and further drive to Manali was a beauty. Amazing mountain views, unlike spiti, these were lush green.

In Manali, we booked one night stay at Himalayan chalet. The home was impeccable, sadly we were there just for half a day. We reached around --- and after taking good long much needed shower, we wore our best of clothes which we were saving for today, had a cup of peeping hot tea, and decided to go café hopping. We planned beforehand, to go walk around manali bazaar, have some street food and later treat ourselves to pizza in Café 1947.

Café 1947 is a treat to eyes, resting on the banks of Manalsu river, this quaint little café is highly recommended and a beautiful place to satisfy your taste buds. Its featured alot of times in best travel cafes, hence it was on our list too. They commonly have live music jams. You just need to pick your corner and you can dig in some amazing European cuisines. We lazily spent time hogging and later walked to the manali bazaar, treated ourselves to roadside icecream cones.

To end our cravings, we went to Johnsons café and had our coffees best suited with live music. The guy who was performing played gem of music on his acoustic and sung wonderful songs by Indian ocean and good ol’ silk route. After spending this long day travelling and finally tad bit of craving fulfillment, we slept like there’s no tomorrow.

Early morning, we bought huge basket of apples from Manali and without any delay, started our journey back home.

We reached Chandigarh, where we said our bye to the rickety innova and took an AC bus from Chandigarh ISBT to Delhi.

Got back to our abode the next morning with numerous memories & a tan my mom kept complaining about for the whole remaining month till the big day. I know a lot of you wont take such a huge risk one month prior to your wedding but i got no single regret. I knew through it all that tans may fade sooner or later, but the earning from the trip, those experiences i carry with me for years to come.

I have realized Spiti is nature’s revelation at its most sublime. Those mountains may seem rough & rugged, but if you spend time with them, you develop a sense of attachment to the desert, that will bring you back to Spiti, one more time, and then one more time, till then, you & I carry Spiti Valley in our hearts, stationed in niche.