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.
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.
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 N
aryan 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.
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 N
aryan 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 roads
ide 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.
ide 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.
"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.
Kalpa posted. Enjoy x
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