Here There Be Rocks

There's a certain tension when you really don't want to miss the bus. And I do mean the bus, since there is exactly one bus that heads north into the Spiti valley. Perhaps there is only one bus because sending more would be foolhardy; the highway through Upper Kinnaur to Spiti is, according to several sources, "possibly the most dangerous road in India." Well, no kidding.

At first the passage did not seem particularly intimidating. I am, after all, something of a Himalayan road veteran now. We passed through much of the Kinnaur valley with ease, following the Sutlej river all the way up to where the Spiti meets it right by the Chinese border, and then turned into the Hanglang valley. You can actually tell you're getting close to China because the spelling of geographical features on road signs ceases to distinguish between the letters L and R. I kid you not.

In the Hanglang valley, if I may continue to overuse the phrase, shit got real. The Hanglang valley road is narrow. Well, they're all narrow up here, but I mean really narrow, as in so narrow the conductor should use a plumb line to help the driver determine how far the wheels are from rolling off a 6000-foot cliff. The bus crawled as it scrambled over rocks that sent the bus slowly rocking to and fro like an ungainly man-of-war, to the great concern of all those on the side of the bus who could see the valley floor. Eventually at one particularly deadly-looking spot the bus actually stopped after the passengers spotted a cascade of falling rocks ahead. We could hear the dull thuds of fist-sized stones bouncing off the highway, and rather ominously could not hear them coming to their distance resting places far below. When it seemed the danger had passed the driver crept the machine forwards, rocking even more disconcertingly on the freshly 'repaved' track.

We didn't see the rocks start falling again; we just heard bangs and crashes of increasing volume on the roof of the bus. The driver tried to skid onwards, but the intensity of the bombardment was knocking the bus off from its smooth course. The left tires edged ever so slightly off the precipice and back onto the road as the lurching can recoiled from the pummeling stones. I can tell you this much: the total oxygen intake of the passengers on that bus fell to zero for about two minutes. It was with a great feeling of relief that I got off in Kinnaur's last town, Nako.

Stretching my limbs and feeling the ground to make sure the entire village wasn't at risk of sliding into the Hanglang valley, I took a look around at my surroundings. Nako is very high up and commands utterly spectacular views of the valley around. It was a serious departure from the scenery before. This area doesn't even look like it belongs in India. It would fit much better in somewhere like Tajikistan, or possibly Mars. The Hanglang valley has a great many features, but none of these are grass or trees. Actually, it really only has a great many features if you count 'snow' as one and each individual rock as all the others. The village itself, as its location would suggest, is a small and humble affair that casually mixes the clothing and speech of Kinnaur, the houses and religion of Spiti, and the climate of a Siberian quarry.

There was a wee shortage of places to stay in the village. In the end, I came to share one of two double rooms that I rented with a frustrated and odd-numbered trio of Israelis. Israelis are to figure prominently in my recollections of the Spiti area.

It cannot be said that Nako is the most modernized place in the world. Aside from the standard erratic electricity supply and a high density of angry donkeys, Nako doesn't have, say, cell phone service. Now, I don't think everywhere in the world needs cell phone service, but it would certainly help when the place also doesn't have regular phone service. A shopkeeper informed me that I was welcome to use a phone if I liked, but it could only be used for local calls within Nako village. I paused and looked around at the extent of Nako village, which takes about a minute and a half to cross if you don't take any wrong turns or find a cow blocking the alley. I suppose having local phones is useful for communicating across the village without having to strain your voice over the incessant protestations of unwillingly-confined goats.

Nako does however have honest-to-God, imported Tabasco sauce. Who would have known.

Another interesting feature of Nako is that it happens to be extremely close to Chinese-occupied Tibet. In fact, if Nako were at the same approximate position on the other side of the mountain it's nestled on, its people would be too busy being oppressed to celebrate the fact that their village would probably have working telephones. From Nako it is a mere two-kilometer climb up to the crest of Leo Pargial mountain where India and China meet at its climax, not that anyone ever does this, first of all because it is extremely steep and cold, and secondly because the number of Tibetans sneaking into China can be assumed to be minimal. I don't know what it looks like on the other side, but I've come to imagine China as a snowier version of Frodo Baggins's first glimpse of Mordor, a hellish wasteland of conical-hatted slaves marching and tilling rice paddies amidst storm-shadowed boulders and lava flows laced with MSG. I was tempted to bundle up and go for a stroll to relieve myself most satisfyingly upon the Middle Kingdom, but I happened to be stoned and wasn't about to go up that 6800 meter motherfucker without having some french fries first.

I did however see something that demanded my urgent attention. I will give my long-time followers an arbitrary paragraph break to guess what I had to deal with near (hint hint) the end of Indian territory...

... I spotted, once again, the Last Cow In India. It was standing near a Buddhist prayer mound on a fairly steep slope of loose rocks below the glistening white peak of Leo Pargial. It was young, perhaps in its early adolescence. It was also a hairy little bastard... and it was utterly fucked. It couldn't outpace my scramble up the rocks and slipped trying to flee, leaving it helpless in my path. A one-two-three of gleeful pimp slaps later and the devil calf was shamefacedly slinking away, slipping on more stones as it focused on the still-present slapping danger and its inner self-doubts rather than its footing. THERE'S NOWHERE IN THIS COUNTRY WHERE YOU CAN ESCAPE FROM ME, COWS.

I returned hurriedly to the village, mostly because I was in shirtsleeves and suddenly found myself getting snowed on again. I popped into Nako's ancient little monastery, an eminently missable maroon mud structure on the outside with incredibly old and incredibly faded, exquisite Buddhist painting within. I returned to the guesthouse to find a distinctively cannabis-like aroma in the air and all three Israelis sitting where I left them, knitting indeterminate forms out of wool. "So I visited the monastery...it's very nice" I offered. "Oh, there's a monastery?" they replied. You see, Israeli backpackers, who are essentially a louder, more irritating form of pseudo-hippie, never actually do anything in the places they go besides sit around smoking hashish, occasionally knitting or walking as far as the balcony, sometimes getting very drunk, and asking cafe owners if they serve shakshuka. "Is it still cold out?" they asked. "It fucking snowed" I answered.

"Oh, it snowed?"

The after-effects of conscription, my friends. We need peace on Earth, man. No more armies, no more war. One love.