Sarahan and Rampur

26 August

Jacqui woke up ill with stomach cramps and clearly had a bug. We agreed that even if it was painful we would need to make the dash for Sarahan, where she could rest in peace, rather than in the flea-bitten noisy fumey rubbish dump that we were sleeping in, in Jeori.
 She sat, morose with head down, on a bench, while we waited in the heat for a bus, then flopped into a seat, focussing hard on survival until the destination. It was a thankfully short ordeal, and she survived the journey - mostly asleep, as was Tamsin from the effects of the travel sickness pills, while Fia spent most of the journey fascinated by a giant locust that had found himself in the bus with us. We left Jacqui in a heap of our rucksacks at the side of the road in Sarahan, whilst the three of us raced around town looking at the accomodation options. The choice was easy - we found a wonderful room inside the Hindu temple.

 Large, with a bathroom and a secondary annexe room where the girls would sleep on mattresses, and with an austere feel to it but spotlessly clean, and the key factor being that we were inside the temple - stepping out of our door onto a balcony adorned with sculpted wood, and overlooking the courtyard of the temple complex.
 Jacqui slumped lifelessly onto the bed, and we decided we would stay at least 2 nights, and long enough for Jacqui to recover.
 Fia, Tamsin and I went for an exploratory walk around the village. The renowned Bhimakali temple in which we were staying, dominated and formed the central heart, hemmed by a few streets lined with rudimentary stores and eateries, and with a backdrop of the green hills on one side and the view down the valley on the other. We stopped at a very basic restaurant and ate momos and rice, followed by an ice cream, before we headed back to the temple and launched into a maths lesson, and diary writing, sitting at the convenient table in our room.
  Jacqui summoned her energy to join us for dinner at a fairly sad restaurant, but after two spoons of tomato soup she regretted the decision, and headed back to the room to be horizontal and close to the bathroom.
 It was wonderful to be in the ascetic midst of this sacred site, but we all missed Jacqui and it made for a subdued day.

27 August
 At around 4-5 in the morning (we can't remember exactly) the recorded music, piped out of a loadspeaker from one of the temple towers, started. A singer accompanied by a band churned out non-stop, presumably religious, songs. It reverberated around our room such that it seemed that they were there with us - the musicians with their sitar, flutes and drums at the end of our bed, and the moustachioed singer in his loose fitting shirt and large beaded necklace, enthusiastically delivering his musical sermon directly at us, one foot up on our bed. I was impressed to see Jacqui getting out of bed at one point to join the worship, but in fact she was just going to close the window, muttering some words that were probably inappropriate for our environment, and then adopted a posture of worship that was unfamiliar to me - lying with her face down and a pillow over her head.
  Jacqui showed some improvement and had some first traces of hunger. She wanted however nothing but toast, and having curiously been told the previous night that toast was "out of season", we headed for the the one smartish hotel of the village. The waiter must have been slightly bemused when we delivered our all important question to him "do you have toast?", before even setting foot through the door, with all four of us waiting anxiously for his reply as if it was life and death, and sighing in satisfied relief when he answered positively, before we all piled in and ordered an enormous breakfast of fruit, cornflakes, eggs, and mountains of toast.

 We had laundry to do, and for only the second time, could not find someone willing to do it for us. I managed to enthuse the girls about the task, and using a bucket in the bathroom and a bar of soap they set about the messy, wet and fun business. When all was washed, in an approximate sort of way, it came to finding somewhere to hang them out. Being in a building of religious sensitivity, I went to ask the temple keeper, who told me I could use the railings around the temple courtyard. I looked around me at this 600 year old sacrosanct establishment, with its trail of pilgrims and worshippers filing through to cleanse their souls, and admit feeling a little uneasy about his proposal. Nevertheless, I rallied the girls who duly jointly carried the heavy bucket of wet clothes and started hanging them over the railings around the courtyard. A little while later they brought the bucket to me with some clothes still in the bottom.
 "What's this?" I said.
 "We are NOT hanging out knickers.....it's EMBARRASSING" said Tamsin, the union spokesperson.
  Sensing a solidarity resistance starting to build, I knew I had to be firm and act quickly to stamp it out.
 "Don't be ridiculous! Everyone wears underwear. Just get on with it". It worked and the girls reluctantly shuffled back to the railings with the bucket, while I quickly sidled off inside, on the pretext of checking how Mummy was.
 And so it was that the worshippers at the revered BhimaKali temple, who rang the bell to summon the gods on their entry, removed their shoes and diligently washed their hands and feet before kneeling before the steps, clasping hands together then bowing to kiss the ground, were, on this day, likely to be distracted by the gentle flapping in the breeze of Jacqui's knickers in the corner of their eyes.            
 Jacqui was able to summon enough energy by the afternoon to join us on the visit inside the Temple. It had stricter rules than any other we had seen - all having to wear head scarves, and remove any leather articles or clothing. The temple has two main and historic towers - one, which we could enter, containing a consecration to Kali on the higher floor, covered with a silver canopy. We paid our respects and were acknowledged and blessed by the attendant, who administered the small handful of puffed rice pieces, some holy water and using his thumb, stamped a bright red bindi on our foreheads.
 Legend has it that the rulers at the time of the princely states were descendants of Pradyuman (incarnation of cupid and son of Lord Krishna), who suceeded King Banasur when he had his head chopped off and buried at the front gate in a battle against Lord Krishna. The temple was bult by these descendents and dedicated to mothergoddess Bhimakali (a local version of Kali). Below the consecration of Bhimakali is one of Parvati, the consort of Shiva, and in fact the mother of Ganesh, the unfortunate elephant headed God.    
  To the side is the very old looking (before Christ according to some unreliable looking sources) Sikhara temple dedicated to Lord Narsingh,where human sacrifices were made up until 18'th century, and theoreticaly the practice still continues today with animals, or at least every couple of hundred years, with the last being in 1904 when 600 goats were given in an 11 day festival.

 Jacqui retired back to bed after her fragile exertion, while the girls and myself went walking around the surrounding hills  where we had lovely views of the temple from up above. We came across a man and two older ladies carrying baskets of apples that they had collected from the orchards further up and they offered us some. We gladly accepted and then unintentionally found ourselves walking alongside them back towards Sarahan and we started to make the simplest of conversation.
 The large baskets were strapped onto their backs and I was intrigued to know how heavy they were, so when they stopped for a break I offered to carry one. They all giggled, but I went ahead and walked a while with it until the old lady, who clearly felt uncomfortable with me carrying her load, either because she felt it was her work, or because she thought I would run away with it, took it back.        

28 August
  I was waking earlier in the morning than the other three and inspired by our spiritually cleansing environment, as well as a large floor space in our room, had taken to doing some Pilates exercises in the morning before the others woke up. This morning, the inspiration spread, and first Jacqui, followed by Fia and Tamsin enacted a series of Yoga exercises in the form of the five Tibetan rights that Jacqui had learnt once from an Indian guru while we lived in Dubai. It all started well, but the concentration and the poses were not to last and it ended up in a heap of legs and laughter.
  We breakfasted again at the HPTDC hotel (a state run hotel, we found out), counting on our supply of toast and eggs, but the waiter, by now getting to know us, cunningly waited until we were all seated and settled before he delivered the shattering news - they had no toast. We knew we had nowhere else to go, and that if this hotel was out of toast, then there was no toast available in the Sarahan district. It was a heavy blow, but we had to accept that we may have been partially responsible after our excessive consumption the previous morning, and we switched our order to chapatis.
 Jacqui was on her way to recovery, and joined us for a thali lunch before taking the girls for a french lesson for the afternoon.
  That evening, as with every other evening we had stayed there, Sarahan had provided a side show, that from our temple guest room, with views both into and out of the temple complex, we had excellent seats. There was a community of stray dogs, who cruised the town, normally in one large group. They were not at all aggressive to people, but often when they wandered inside the temple, the temple keeper chased them out by throwing sticks, to a cacophany of great yelping and whining. Any outsider to the community that appeared, even in the distance, provoked a territorial defence bark from the first dog to see him, which immediately sparked a community barking session from all the others, wherever they were - most without any idea what they were barking at. It could last for ages and they considered it a 24 hour duty.
  But territorial defence was only the supporting act - the main show was copulation. This was not just a two dog show - the build-up involved a group of frenzied males, moving in herd formation, sniffing wildly and shunting each other to get to the front, where a female would be sauntering along, head held high as if she were the only dog in town, and apparently oblivious to this testosterone turmoil scrummaging along in her wake. Of course, only one male would get past the auditions and play the main role in the final act alongside the female star - but the rest of the cast was not discouraged and would hang around  at different distances watching intently, daring an occasional sniff, patrolling for foreign dogs, as the two key players would stand motionless, locked back to back, tongues hanging out and grinning inanely.
  Tamsin and Fia watched the whole show whenever they could, both leaping up from a maths lesson whenever they heard the give-away barks or whining down below, as if it was the end of school bell.

29 August
Jacqui was better, and it was time to leave Sarahan and our wonderful temple home. As if the temple itself wanted to say goodbye to us, we woke to find a barely dressed sinewy Sadhu, with a knotted grey beard and ash-darkened skin hanging loosely off fragile bones, sitting cross-legged in front of a fire, chanting together with two other swamis and throwing seeds or other bits of food onto the fire. Sadhus have renounced everything in life - materials and family - and have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of worship. We stared at this quintessentially indian scene of spirituality before we were able to drag ourselves away and move on.
 We were heading to Mandi, as a stopover on our way to Dharamsala. We caught a bus to Rampur from Sarahan, nearly losing Jacqui on the the way when she took the opportunity of an extended bus stop to descend, but took so long hunting around the backs of buildings for a suitable place to go to the toilet, that Fia, Tamsin and I had to hold the driver from leaving, while 38 faces on the bus scanned in all directions looking for signs of her.
 The bus arrived at the bus station in Rampur at 12:30pm, but we discovered the next bus to Mandi was not until 4:30 pm, and also learnt (admittedly a little late) that the journey to Mandi would take 8 - 10 hours, meaning that we would be arriving and searching for somewhere to stay in the middle of the night.
 We decided to stay in Rampur the night - feeling a little ashamed of ourselves for failing to get to Rampur in time for an earlier bus, after having lingered and dawdled in the morning.

 We caught a local bus back up into the centre of this bustling, noisy town, and started hunting for guest houses. Rampur is of course not a tourist location (most tourists managing to avoid it by demonstrating a little more forward thinking and travel discipline than we were capable of), and we covered half of the main street of Rampur without seeing any sign of a guest house.

Fia then noticed a smiling security guard beckoning over to us. This was not an uncommon friendly gesture as many indians were curious and keen to help us, but we jumped on this one as we hoped he might be able to guide us in the right direction to find somewhere to stay. We asked about a guest house, but he had no English and pointed us towards his colleague sitting behind a table in a side room.
  "Hello, do you know where we can find a guest house?" we asked.
  "Shared bathroom" he said and pulled a key out of the drawer. We were a little confused until we realised that we must actually be in a guest house - there had been no sign on the door, and there was little other indication, but we followed him to the room. The place had an institutional feel to it, and there was a fairly unappealing shared bathroom with its row of dire cubicled "hole in the ground" toilets, but the room was spacious,  and he eventually agreed to bend the rules to give us an extra mattress for the girls, so we took it.
  We were by now hungry and we asked our new friend for a recommendation on somewhere to eat. He suggested the "canteen" just across the road.
  "Are there any other options?" we asked. "no..no.. no others" he replied, thoughtfully. We laughed a little to ourselves at the impossibility of Rampur having only one restaurant but anyway followed his directions up an outdoors concrete staircase, onto a rooftop where we squeezed into a tiny makeshift room, along with a handful of others crowded onto the only 3 tables, and ate our dahl and rice, the only choice available. What it lacked in choice it made up for in quality, and we ate as much as we could for 70 rupees (1 €) for us all.

  On our way back to the room seeing for the first time our "guest house" from the outside, everything became clear. Above the main entrance door, just to the left of the door through we had entered, was a red cross and underneath it was a sign saying "Rampur Geriatric hospital". We were staying in a room, completely unknowingly, in a geriatric hospital.

 We all took a little time to relax and read, but the e-books dropped and eyes submitted to the inevitable as Jacqui, Fia and Tamsin each in turn slipped into a travel weary siesta. I left them sleeping and went to explore the town which was much bigger than the one main road we had scouted, with a market coating the hillside down to the river at the bottom. It was an eruption of commercial activity compared to the sleepy villages that we had become accustomed to. Rather than a handful of outlets selling nothing more than the bare necessities, the Rampur bazaar streets offered everything - frying pans to flowers, creosote to coffins - and shelves were no longer garnished with a lonely 'out of date' and dusty packet, but were full to overflowing and bursting with variety. Temples or Hindu shrines were around every corner - now it was Budhism's turn to take the back seat.
  Later we all went for a stroll, checking information about the bus, ambling around the outside of the flamboyant timber and stone Padam Palace, built in 1925 for the then Maharaja, and taking a milky chai at the deserted Sutluj view hotel. We walked through the bazaar down to the river and a small temple beside it, where Fia and Tamsin took off ther shoes and entered to chat to a cross-legged resident sadhu, before working our way back up, collecting some fruit on the way for an early get away in the morning.

Locust, grasshopper - whatever, it was big!

Sarahan and Rampur photo album
Click here.

Kalpa

Photo album Kalpa
https://picasaweb.google.com/116253494913081133936/Kalpa?authkey=Gv1sRgCJPj3eycie31jAE#5675528271959656754

24 August

We had different reports about the time that the bus would be passing through Nako, the earliest of which was 7:30 in the morning, so we ate our breakfast with our rucksacks packed next to us, keeping an eye on the road in case we saw the bus coming in the distance. We were heading for Kalpa - a small village off the main valley road - so we would have to get the bus to Rekong Peo (around 5,5 hours) and then another up the hill for half an hour. This was the bus journey from hell. We thought we may have been numbed by now to the dramatic winding roads carved into the side of the mountains, with vertical drops down to waiting angry rivers - but these took the drama to their extreme, and worse still, this time we were in the hands of a different driver, who managed to turn this into a real life roller coaster. We saw him as a bus driver - he saw himself as something different - something much more competitive, more heroic,..more hollywood. He was Indiana Jones, Sebastien Vettel...Freddy Krueger. As we kept a grip with both hands to keep ourselves on our seats, Jacqui and I glanced at the river 300m below us, and gave worried looks to each other, wondering how and if we would surive 5,5 hours of this frightening ordeal, and several times Jacqui mouthed the words 'he's going too fast' to me across the bus, with a face that said it all. Our anger built for this faceless figure sitting behind the steering wheel, upon whom our family's lives depended. From behind, his trilby hat, and the dark hair falling below it, left my imagination to paint a picture of the contorted sadistic face on the other side. But from the occasional angled views that I had of his face, when he opened his window and turned to empty his mouth of the paan-chewing induced spittal, I saw his face was not scarred and bloodied as I had imagined, though I fancied that I could detect the little sadistic smile as he smelt the fear of his passengers while toying with their lives. Despite being drugged on travel sickness tablets, Tamsin felt sick within the first 10 minutes, moved to a window, and recovered later, but several of our co-passengers were not so lucky. It was a truly frightening journey where forced rational reasoning ("He drives this route everyday", "the other passengers don't look frightened"), was unable to hold back recurrent thoughts about the worst that could happen. Every approaching twist in the road, it seemed as though our full length bus, with its bald tires could not possibly hold onto the road at the speed we were travelling - but hold on it did, precipitous turn by precipitous turn, over five and a half hours nightmare of painful white-knuckled clinging.

When we arrived at Rekong Peo, it was with a great sense of relief tinged with sickness that we felt firm ground under our feet. I unloaded our rucksacks from the roof of the bus, and as I descended, the driver passed by on his way to a chai-break - I felt like telling him to take his reckless driving and his bus and stuff it up his chapati, but the relief of having arrived overtook me, and it was a weak smile that came out. Rekong Peo was shockingly big and bustling for us after our weeks of peaceful Spitian budhist villages and despite seeing a public communal dining event, with rows of people seated on the ground in a large park, clearly as part of some sort of festival, we stayed in the bus stand, with our focus remaining on our more subdued destination, one more short bus ride away up into the the hills.

Kalpa, when we arrived an hour later, was reassuringly calm. It was more or less built around one street and had beautiful views of the snow capped Kinear Kailash, a range of mountains over 6000m of altitude, sitting on the border with Tibet. We made a little trek around before finding a room at great value - clean, large and with a view to die for.

Even sitting on the toilet, you could see Kinear Kailash through a small window - so close that you felt you could touch it. This particular mountain is amongst the most well known in India from its revered significance in both hindu and buddhist faiths. Shiva (one of the 3 Hindu gods of which all the other gods are representations) lived on this mountain, and time and time again we came across references to it in different mythological accounts represented in temples and sculptures, and we were able to make the connection: "that was the mountain that we could see from our toilet".
We had a very traditional bite to eat in a little shack and then wondered to the Buddhist Gompa - interesting, though our appreciation was in ignorance as we found very little information about it. As we had moved west and left the Spiti valley to enter into the Kinnaur district, we seemed to be in a religious transition zone - Buddhism was present but no longer the dominant tone, conceding first place to the more prevalent Hinduism. The small village of Kalpa, which has a particular mythological significance for Hindus as it is said to be the winter home of Shiva, attracts masses of visitors during the Durga puja festival (in October in 2011, which coincides with the harvest season for the renowned Kinnaur apple) and the Phulech festival, crowding out the handful of guest houses, which then remain fairly empty for the rest of the year. We were clearly in a quiet patch, eating in empty restaurants and with no apparent company in our guest house.

25 August
We had a leisurely start to the day, with our barely opened eyes greeted by the glorious sight of Kinnear Kailash, carpeted with invitingly crystal-white virgin snow, itself enriched by the depth of the blue sky behind. Breakfast was at the Blue Lotus guest house next door - it looked closed before they turned the lights on at our arrival and everyone stumbled into their roles, but we never saw another guest there. We wondered through the village down to the Naryan Nagini temple complex (presumably where legend would have it that Shiva stayed during winter). It was an impressive complex with multiple temples dripping with elaborate wood carvings, and set on split levels down the hillside, but again, we struggled to find any information on the temple, and saw no-one else on our visit to whom we could consult. The village itself showed great historic character - houses, dilapidated but very much still in use for human or bovine habitation, were built from stone and timber, with large wooden balconies, in an alpine-like style and with elaborate but minimally maintained carvings in the wood panels. After lunch we waited for the bus that was due to arrive at 2:30 that would take us directly to Jeory, in time for us to get an onward bus to our next stopping point, Sarahan. But the direct bus never came, and we ended up on a bus at 3:15, taking us only to Rekong Peo where we waited, helped by a chai and chocolate bar, before we could get a bus to Jeory.

The girls climbed on to fight succesfully for two precious window seats, where we would get the vital air-flow, while I lugged the rucksacks onto the roof. The journey was just about bearable compared to the previous one, although the driver seemed to get progressively manic as time wore on since his last break, building up to a peak of speed just before we would stop and he would have a presumably calming cup of chai. Then we would start off gently again until the effects of his chai wore off a further time. The girls both went into a deep sleep - one of the side effects of the travel sickness tablets that are now becoming part of their regular diet on this stretch of our trip - and so the 3,5 hour journey passed quickly for them. This was our first experience of driving the mountain roads in the dark of night - worse if you think about it, but better if you don't as you're not visually exposed to the frightening sights of the precipitous roadside drops. Asking on the bus we realised we would arrive too late (8:30pm) for a bus up to Sarahan where we wanted to stay, so we resigned ourselves to a night in Jeori.

We knew nothing of Jeori before arriving, but it turned out to be a classic roadside town - activity centred around a widened area of the street, where buses manoevured, trucks belched large puffs of black smoke, loud horns were constantly blown, and bleary-eyed travellers stepped off buses to take the opportunity to have a bite to eat before continuing their 25 hour journeys through the night. The streets were dirty, and strewn with rubbish. We were down to below 2000m, so the air was thicker and sticky, and the lingering odours from heavy vehicles, decaying rubbish and urine mingled with those of the fried food from the eating houses feeding the constant passing traffic. For the first time in 4 weeks, you could feel mosquitos in the air.
We unloaded and walked into the first hotel we saw - it had a large busy restaurant, with whirring ceiling fans and crammed with weary travellers rushing their rice and dahl. Jacqui and Tamsin sat in the restaurant with the bags while Fia and I were led outside the hotel, down a concrete staircase with no sides to it, and under which was clearly used as a local dumping ground, into virtual darkness at the bottom, where the padlocked, bolted door was opened to reveal our room. It was a large dismal concrete cell.

The walls and ceilings had peeling, almost historic looking paint, were stained with damp patches and dotted with the remnants of squashed insects. The bed mattress gave away no indications of its original colour and was on the point of decay, and there was a couch in the room that resembled one you might see on a rubbish dump, with tears, worn patches, stains and ingrained dust. The toilet was of course indian style - thankfully - clean western sit-on toilets are an indulgent luxury, but dirty ones are worse than indian toilets where you avoid any contact. There was water seeping from undetermined places across the floor, and a persistent smell which pervaded into the room despite our efforts at keeping the door closed. There was a grill along the wall under the ceiling, ventilating us with the ground level fumes of the street ouside. The room cost 350Rs (5,30 euros) and he refused to move on the price, so I entered my usual routine of announcing that we would take a look around and would maybe come back.
"No udder otels", he told me straight - I walked out anyway, but was back 3 minutes later having regrettably confirmed his condemning statement with a few others, and we reluctantly hauled our bags down into the room, returning immediately to the restaurant to console ourselves.
We were indeed morally revived with what turned out to be a very tasty meal served with a restoratory beer, and a waiter, who was delighted to be serving visitors of such rare prominence, and then over the moon to be given a 10 Rps (0,15 euros) rupees tip.

Nako

Nako photo album
https://picasaweb.google.com/116253494913081133936/NakoAlbum?authkey=Gv1sRgCOu38LHdsqrCCQ#5672239600461570242
21 August
We left Tabo in the morning, having had a great breakfast seated on cushions on the floor in the very traditional Kunzum guest house, to catch the bus. We walked out of Tabo towards the main road that ran along the valley. There was a large clearing before the main road that looked distinctively like a bus stand, but as well as the few people that were waiting at this spot, there was also a group of ladies waiting on the main road, about 200m away. Not getting any conclusive answers from anyone about where the bus would stop, we stayed in our supposed bus park, but as our co-waiters gradually drifted away, leaving us alone there, we started to doubt and at the last minute rushed to the group of ladies waiting on the main road, minutes before a bus stopped there. It was relatively full - and as we were all hurriedly picking up our bags ready to load them onto the roof, the conductor advised us to wait a further 10 minutes to catch another bus where we would have a chance of a seat. Not having heard anything about a second bus, we were a little nervous as we let it depart, leaving us alone on the side of the road, but sure enough another bus came by. This one however didn't stop at the road, but turned towards Tabo and ended up in our previously supposed, but now doubted, bus stand. I sprinted the 200m to it to get it to wait, to the amusement of all on the bus, while Jacqui and the girls started to pick up our rucksacks in preparation, but my uncustomary display of athleticism was unecessary as at my panting arrival the driver made signs to indicate that we could stay where we were and they would come back and pick us up.
There were marginally less people on this bus, so that at least the girls got a seat, then Jacqui as well, an hour or so later. I managed to get a seat at one point, but gave it up once to a lady with a baby on her back and then a second time to a large lady that was on her way to sitting next to the girls, and certainly would have had them squashed up together. We were all at the back of the bus, so thrown around like a roller coaster again, but as we were not at window seats we were probably insulated from the most terrible sights of vertical drops. The mountainous route from Tabo to Rekong Peo, of which we were travelling a section this day, is described in the Lonely Planet as "the most dangerous in India", but it would be on a subsequent journey that we were to understand the full sense of this expression.

The journey was broken with a stop for breakfast at a roadside dhaba, where Tamsin availed of

a parantha, rolled, patted and cooked before us on the pavement.

We arrived at Nako, a small

mountain village at 3660m of altitude, at around 2:30. After a brief hunt around the few guesthouses to find the cheapest while Jacqui sat at the side of the road guarding our rucksacks, we celebrated our end-of journey relief with lunch sitting outside at a restaurant that offered an extensive optimistic and enticing menu, but with very little actually available. We heard that there was a lake so set off to find it, ending up navigating through the enchanting maze of the village's winding narrow alley-ways, each enclosed by the adjoining white stone walls of the time-worn houses, and at one point passing, as if laid on to complete our education, the group of three men sat on the ground, working assiduously with hammer and chisel, with a pile of uncut rocks on one side and a growing pile of white stone building slabs on the other. We found the lake, circumnavigated it idly before losing ourselves again in the ascending labyrinth, finally popping out the other side of the village at a road which we assumed was the other end of the road on which we had arrived. As we worked our way back along the quiet road we stopped for a chai, sitting outside Dr Shaksuka's small tea-shop, soaking in the silence and the majestic views over the mountainous interior of Himachal Pradesh. After a delicious dinner of momos, chow mein and spring rolls at a small spitian/Tibetan retaurant, we headed to bed.

2 August

We were up reasonably early with the intention of walking up the hills to the Buddhist stompas that we could see in the elevated distance, before catching a bus out of Nako. We had assumed that the only bus heading towards Rekong Peo, where we wanted to go, would be the bus from Kasa on which we had arrived at around 2:30 the previous day - but unfortunately forgot to check with the locals until the morning, and as I stepped out of the guest house, a bus came though the village (apparently from some other town). If we'd known we probably would have been up earlier to catch it, but as it happens we ended up staying in this beautiful mountain village for a further two days and nights, and did not regret a minute of it. We went back to Dr Shaksuka's for breakfast and the likeable owner (Dr Shaksuka himself?) was here this time, and we had a wonderful breakfast of fresh curd with the sweetest plums and bananas, followed by chapati and fried egg (chapati and honey for Fia) and lashings of chai. Some other travellers that also had breakfast here, mentioned to us that there was a festival on that day - we checked with the doctor (I assume he wasn't one, but for us he was now), and he confirmed that there was a one day festival being celebrated near the monastery. So we wandered up to investigate. There was already a buzz in the air outside the monastery and the beginnings of people arriving - all in beautiful traditional costume. We took the opportunity to visit the monastery - another that was established by the tireless Rinchen Zangpo around 1000 years ago, with a different construction to Tabo but similarly conjuring the images of its historic and ascetic past. A resident friendly monk opened up and showed us around the main chapels, with their ancient statues and murals. The gate to the ancient monastery opened onto a large communal area of the village, at the other end of which was the new monastery, positioned on a ledge such that when you looked at it, it was framed by nothing other than distant mountains and blue sky.
We fell in love with Nako. The beautiful old village, in whose winding stone walled streets we had strolled the previous day, the old monastery whispering its centuries old stories, the silence, the serenity of its inhabitants and the splendour of the barren snow-capped mountains in which it huddled.

The villagers continued to gather for the festival and as we stood in the centre absorbing this beauty, with the warm sun engulfing us, we acquiesced to the inevitable and dropped our plans for leaving Nako that day. The festival lasted all day long with increasingly large crowds of locals (from Nako but also from a number of villages in the surrounding areas) arriving, greeting each other then taking their places, men typically apart from ladies, either on the ground in front of a small stage at the front, or along a wall at a further distance. The ladies were all dressed in woollen waistcoats, with pyjama-type leg-ins, chunky beaded necklaces, their jet black single plaits of hair down the centre of their backs, elaborate ear-rings and all with their de-rigeur flat-topped Kinnaur (although technically we were in Spiti and not Kinnaur) felt hats, that created a sea of green and grey as you looked across the seated crowd.

We also watched the performance in front of us, while equally avidly watching the distinctive community surrounding us. I was particularly captured by a hypnotic rendition from a solo man, singing along with his sitar-like guitar, but the group traditional song and dance performances were also beguiling. Later, there was a dragon dance, with a line of dancers making a giant dragon twist and turn its way through the crowd, lurching towards people making them shriek with delight. There was no formal seating so we were able to move around, but wherever we drifted, Jacqui, and in particular Fia and Tamsin, would be beckoned over by a group of smiling welcoming ladies and invited to sit with them, where they would smile, share their dried apricots, cuddle and swap hats with the girls and try to make simple conversation with meaniningful hand signs and facial expressions compensating for incomprehensible words. It was neither the first nor the last time that Jacqui and I reflected on the way that Fia and Tamsin acted as an ice-breaking key into deeper interactions with the locals that we were meeting in our travels - even in less remote areas, travelling with two young children was, although at times limiting, a unique sight that prompted reactions and invitations. People wanted to talk to them, to know about them, to ask them their names, to shake hands, kiss and cuddle them and take photos of them, in a show of unguarded humanity that opened a door for dialogue and trust.
Lunch was served for everyone communal style with huge cauldrons of dahl and rice being cooked over fires with giant size utensils. I had earlier seen people giving monetary donations to the organisers, but when I offered, I was flatly refused with smiles and claps on the back, and though I didn't understand the words they were saying, the meaning was clear: "you are our guest - the pleasure is ours". So we too accepted our paper plates and our ladles of dahl and sat on the ground in the shade, eating with our fingers, then washing afterwards at a water pipe, along with everyone else. The gathering of this tight knit, serene and peaceful community, the warmth of the hospitality that overwhelmed us and the delight of the traditional entertainment engraved the day at the festival in Nako as one of our most vivid and moving memories.

Around mid-afternoon we finally pulled ourselves out of the revelry, still with the determied intention of not letting the day pass without having climbed up to the buddhist stompas that looked down to us from the mountainside. We set off on a clearly defined path up the mountainside, but as we got higher, the path became ambiguous before it finally gave up on us altogether, and we found ourselves scrambling and hopping across streams in order to pursue our direction to the stompas, still clearly visible above us. Meanwhile, clouds had been starting to build further down the valley, and in the distance we saw flashes of lightning as the weather too wanted to play its part in what was starting to look like a fairy tale "lost in the forest" scene. The clouds and lightning continued to approach us faster than it looked like we were approaching the stompas, but rather than us start to scramble our way back down, I was sure that we would be quicker to continue the climb up to the top where we would surely find the true path, enabling us to descend much more quickly. True to the script we were enveloped in dramatic thunder and lightning before we made it to the top, drenched and although not admitting it to the girls, a little nervous to have found ourselves up a mountain in a terrible thunderstorm, and trying to contain our own flinches at each ear-bursting crack of thunder lest that we revealed our feelings to the girls. We were at the stompas (which would have been impressive and interesting had we not been pre-occupied with our real life Rocky Horror show), and on top of the world, with an unwanted birds-eye view, not only of the scenery but of the full width of the thunderstorm, enabling us to see the now frequent bolts of lightning shoot from the sky and embed themselves into a mountainside in front of us.

My assumptions were wrong, and we found no signs of a path from the top, so had no option but to start srambling down, this time heading in the direction of Nako village that we could see in miniature in the distance. Luckily the storm started to subside, and although our descent was more challenging than our ascent, with some huge boulders that we had to navigate and climb over, the fear and drama was now past and we were able to start enjoying the thrill, and sheepishly laugh at the situation we had found ourselves in.

23 August

We were up early to catch the early bus to Rekong Peo. By 8:00, having eaten breakfast we were at the side of the road with our rucksacks in a pile, together with a group of punjabi watch sellers from Chandigarh, and various locals. By 9:00 however, we were still sitting there, and were all starting to conclude that there was a problem. None of the locals that we asked had any information and all seemed in the dark as much as we were, until a jeep arrived in the village and two locals stepped out who were able to enlighten us on the happenings up the valley. There was a bus srike - there would be no buses today. We could have tried to get a lift with a passing jeep or car, but in the end opted for yet another night in our beautuful Nako, rather than sitting there potentially for hours waiting, and still not being sure of getting a lift. In fact as the day passed, the explanation of the missing buses evolved - the strike theory was joined by news of a landslide around half way to Rekong Peo, but confusingly, by the end of the day, one bus had passed in each direction - so in any case we felt a little more confident for the following day. We checked into a different guest house than we had been staying - slightly more upmarket, and with some space in the room for us to do our school-work which we had opportunistically decided would be our main task for the day, and got stuck into a maths lesson while Jacqui did some clothes washing. It was the first time we couldn't find anybody willing to do the laundry for us, and our limited travelling wardrobe lasts us a few days only before we need to wash. Jacqui, unwisely revealed that, having been starved of any domestic tasks, had quite enjoyed the experience.
We had a lunch of momo's and chow mein up on the hotel balcony (this hotel ran an extremely good and thriving little restaurant), before heading off for another walk in the mountains - we had heard one or two vague indiciations that if we headed up to the stompas (not the same as the ones we had conquered the previous day) that were just about visible on a pass in the distance, you could then walk all the way along the ridge which circled the village, with views on the other side over to Tibet. It was around a 4 hour walk we were told. We headed off armed with waterproofs as rain clouds were around, albeit less threatening than the day before. It was a steep climb for the first hour up to the pass, on a beautiful rocky narrow path that clung around the contours of the face of the mountain. A rain cloud edged past us, so that for a while we had a strange combination of hot sunshine and sparse but large drops of rain. "I think we had better head back, we don't want to get caught in a thunderstorm again" said Fia, putting on her wise and responsible tone of voice and getting nods of approval from her sister, both cunningly trying to exploit their parents embarassment over bad walking decisions taken the previous day, in a vain hope of calling off this tiring expedition. Stopping for a quick snack at the top, we saw a young English couple whom we'd met in the village while they were hanging around waiting for a bus in the other direction. They had set out on the same walk as us but decided to turn back when it started raining.

We headed on the path they had come from - it was stunning - with views of what must have been the Tibetan snow capped peaks in front of us, as well as a few of the snaking roads clinging to the mountain sides. Somewhere down there was the old Hindu-Tibetan highway which had been used for trade to the east for centuries, and we thought also of the many Tibetans who had excaped from their homeland on foot, on a path much like ours, to take refuge in India, many in Dharamsala. After walking another hour or so, we started to conclude that our path was not approaching the ridge that we had hoped to walk along, and that if we continued we risked a premature entry into Tibet - so we left the path to head directly up the mountain to try to find the required path. After an hour of exhausting steep uphill, the ridge of the mountain, which had looked within touching distance from below, did not seem any closer, and we compromised for another half-path to get back to the original pass to get back to Nako.
It became competitive on the way down, and developed into a race - Tamsin and Daddy vs Fia and Mummy, and we were back down at Nako, panting, in around half an hour - and as it happens we were glad of the speed, because just as we arrived, the heavens opened for several hours of heavy rain.
We spoke to a couple from Barcelona who had also set out walking in the morning on the same route. They had spent the whole day - they had a great walk but had clearly not found this elusive path that had been referred to, and we came to the conclusion, after our two days of walking in the mountains around Nako, that the word "path" in local vocabulary represented something more akin to an attitude than something of a physical nature. In the evening over dinner, We learnt a new card game from Stefan and Stefanie - two germans that we had joined for dinner. We had worn thin our portfolio of two card games (three if you include "Snap") so were delighted.