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...Into the hills and into the rain.

This is India, and this is the monsoon, but for some reason we were still surprised to be setting out in wet weather. Things improved along the way which was handy, as the second half of our journey was winding mountain roads.

We arrived in Shimla later than expected and took still longer to find any suitable accomodation. The hotel-touts here were viciously competitive and seemed to have no qualms about backstabbing each other to get our business. In the end we found somewhere ourselves.

Shimla is the former 'summer capital' of the Raj and probably one of the most enduring monuments to 'Britishness' in India. The town is centred on a high ridge, atop which is a very English church, next to a very English library building, just above a mall road...etc There wasn't much here before the brits decided that the plains were too hot and that this would make a fine retreat over the warmer months. They choose well - the setting is gorgeous in every direction and the temperature was nicely warm through the day and refreshingly cool at night. So far so good.

We didn't really have any plans for Shimla other than as a jumping off point to our mountain roadtrip and this is pretty much what we got. We basked in the sun, ate ice cream and wandered around the mall. On the second day we got the usual Indian run-around trying to sort out a travel permit required for some of our destinations. It went something like this:

"Upstairs, 2nd floor, on the right."
"It's the next office, just down the hall."
"It's in the next building - you have to go back up to the street and down the next alley to get there."
"Upstairs."
"Not here. Go down stairs, outside and down the stairs."

Against all odds, We did eventually locate the right office, only to be told that permits are only issued to groups of 4 or more, and with a tour guide. Grrr. No matter - we knew we could get the permit further down the road (which turned out to be another laughable process, but that comes later on). We gave up and went 'home'.

We left after two nights, having left any unnecessary baggage with the hotel - with the prospect of appauling roads and high altitudes ahead, we were keen to shed as much weight as possible. This also made a bit of room for all the cash we had to take out, as there aren't any ATMs along the route. 'The route' being the Hindustan-Tibet Highway. That's right, as in China we'd be travelling up to and along the Tibetan border, this time in the uber-remote west.

Anyway, we set out on a fine-ish morning and spent half of the day basking in the general gloriousness of this part of the country. 'Spectacular' fits the bill pretty well here. Our first stop was at the village of Sarahan. Sarahan lies pretty high up on the slopes of the Kinnaur Valley and is (apparently) well known for it's apples. Indeed, as we left the highway and followed the bendy road up to the village, we passed through nothing but orchards full of apple trees. Unfortunately the fruit didn't quite look ready...

Sarahan is 'dominated' (in a benign sort of way) by it's Bhimakali temple, which we didn't think was much to look at but includes a reasonably priced guesthouse. We made this our base for the 2 nights of our stay. Incidently - they used to perform human sacrifices here until the 1700s. Now it's been toned down a bit and there is an annual slaughter of various animals in it's place. This probably seems like a fair compromise - except possibly to the goats, chickens and buffaloes... Here we met a group of 11 middle aged europeans on an organized motorbike tour. Their arrangement put our own efforts into perspective - they had a guide, a mechanic and a truck to carry their luggage. They were well equipped with riding leathers too, which was handy as after 2 days they'd already had a couple of spills on the wet roads. Ouch. As their trip was on a rather tighter schedule than ours, we bid them farewell and heard them rumbling off the next morning down the hill.

For us - a relaxing day in the village. Everything is cheap here even by Indian standards, so we saw no need to rush things.

We'd planned to visit the Sangla Valley next (everything is valleys up here. Other than the mountains that seperate them, valleys are all there is) but were running low on fuel and the next station was a few km beyond the Sangla turnoff. We made it to the petrol pump but the road had been of such horrendous quality we decided that we could face a return journey. We continued up the highway.

The next obvious stop along the highway was Rekong Peo, where we could also pick up the 'inner line permits' we'd failed to aquire back in Shimla. A better bet for tranquility was the village of Kalpa, a few miles above town. Kalpa is indeed tranquil (except for the buddhist mixtape that blares out of the monastery loudspeakers at 6am every day), having only one real road, and couple of tiny stores and Dhabas (local eateries) to go with the monastery, guesthouses and farms. It's also situated 2/3 up the valley wall directly across from a range of 5-6000m snowclad peaks. We spent a few hours hiking along the road to the next village - a walk of startling precipices and steep slopes of pine forest, very slowly being deforested by locals equipped with handsaws and much patience, who understandably enjoy having a roof over their heads.

The next day. Time to get these bloody permits. We arrived mid-morning, walked right into the 'tourist office cum shopping arcade' (so says the sign anyway). We filled out some forms, gave them some passport copies and thought we were in for a pretty painless bit of paperwork... Wrong. Having done our bit, we were required to follow someone to another building, where every tourist in town seemed to be queing for the same thing (Ok so that's only about 15 people, but still...) Nothing seemed to be moving so we arranged to meet the guy in 30 minutes. 25 minutes later we walked back in to an empty office. Brilliant. But the guy wasn't here with our paperwork. We sat outside to wait, just as a group of 10 more tourists turned up and got in ahead of us. We went to find this guy, who was standing around his office chatting to friends.
"No problem, they have your paperwork already." Sigh. Back to the other office and back in line. We waited for a bit and had our pictures taken. The next instruction?
"Wait more outside." This we did, for about an hour. There was much banter about Indian efficiency going around the group but this did little to console us when someone finally emerged and said:
"Go away for half an hour. The superintendent (or whoever he was)is in a meeting." We gave dispairing chuckles and went. We stayed away for an hour. We returned. Now the superintendent was having lunch. Never mind the 30ish people now waiting for the stupid bit of paper. Having taken his leisurely break, the superintendent finally returned and we were called into his office (one by one, no exceptions) where we were stood in front of his big desk (you know what they say about men with big desks...) and had our name and passport number read out while he looked us up and down before finally signing the permit form. Job done. Well almost. They wouldn't hand it over yet until everyone had gone through this. Then one of the underlings walked out with a sheaf of papers and handed them out one by one. It was possibly the most inefficient piece of beaurocracy we've encountered - and we've been to China. Well done India, you're number 1!

Over the course of this ordeal, the previously fine day had turned grey and we had a rather soggy ride back up to our village.

The next night passed without event and we set off early the next morning, bound for the lovely sounding town of Pooh. We arrived at Pooh in pretty good time and decided that - unsurprisingly - Pooh looked a bit crap. We continued along the gorge on good roads and bad, pausing ocassionally to snap some pics and give the bike a rest. For the last hour or so we were passing through some incredibly desolate scenery - according to our guidebook this is 'one of the most sparsely populated regions on earth'. We believed it. A chill wind howled through the gorge, blowing the patches of tundra that sprout between the boulders and, well, making us a bit cold.

We arrived in the early afternoon at Nako, which lies at 3800m, clinging to the side of the valley in an oasis of green. There is quite a famous lake here as well, but it's more of a pond really - like you'd find in a park. Nako was nice. We could lie in bed and look out across the valley - over the 1500-ish metre drop to the swift moving river below to the rich, earthy shades of the opposite wall and up to the soaring snowy peaks thrusting upwards to some immense height. We trekked up to a small rocky pinnacle above the village one day and spent some time just sitting in the midday sun contemplating our incredible surroundings.

The next stage of our journey took us along a high road and over 4000m for the first time on our bike. We putted up the final incline in 1st gear only to find that a short stretch of road had been completely washed away. In it's place was a raging torrent of meltwater which was fortunately only ankle (possibly mid-shin actually) deep. A few minutes and one wet (and very cold) foot later, Ben had the bike across while Karnit enjoyed the no less demanding task of hopping across the widely spaced stones that made the only dry way across. We moved on.

The landscape in this part of the valley is barren and windswept and on both sides the rock is scarred by the frequent landslides that have turned the river into a murky grey torrent. There are very few vehicles on the road and human habitation is widely spaced. For most of the time we might as well have been the only people on earth. It's strange that even in this far flung corner of India, we encountered roadworks. Strange but true. Several times we had to wait while huge rock piles were cleared off the road - this patchy ribbon of broken bitumen is being widened by the BRO (That'd be the Border Roads Organization who also paint such useful messages as BRO Cares and simply Thanks along the way. In one case we helped out with the rock haulage - at least for as long as it took to create a gap wide enough for our bike! We also left the permit zone on this journey, having spent only a few days inside. Having completed our paperwork, the officers kindly endowed us with a big pile of raw peas and a few miniature apricots, all of which was stuffed into K's jacket pockets as munch for the remainder of the ride.

The monastery village of Tabo was the next obvious stop and stop we did, having covered a whole 55km over about 3 hours.

Ahh, Tabo. Not so much a village as location. It is undeniably stunning, sitting in it's own irrigated oasis at the bottom of a wide, wind-scarred valley almost devoid of natural vegetation. The only thing is, there isn't much to do as a tourist, unless a serious amount of chilling is on the agenda. We spend just one night here, walked up to some caves the next morning and made our exit. We did have a nice Thali here, having been lured by the sign that (probably rightly) advertised the 'best thali in town'.

The road along the valley from here was extremely dusty and at each stop we'd discover fresh piles of the stuff over everything, including us. Still, what the route lacked in atmospheric purity it made up for in sheer exhilirating scenery. Again and again we thought 'it can't get any better than this' only to be proved wrong as we rounded the next bend. The village of Dankar (and former capital of some people called the 'nonos', apparently) is perched on an outcrop almost 1000m above the valley floor - 'it doesn't get any better than this'. That sentiment was our first impression and we were partly right - our time there didn't get better.

The guesthouse turned out to be a shoddily run affair in the hands of a couple of young trendies from Shimla who were more interested in getting stoned with their mates than actually running anything. The electricity was out (they claimed that the whole village was affected, despite the fact that we could see lights on in other houses) but we guessed that they just didn't bother to pay the bill. For showers, they promised us a bucket of hot water at 2pm. It arrived at about 6 after much nagging. We could order a tomato-cheese sandwich but there were no tomatoes and no bread. Dankar did have it's charms though - the location being it's biggest draw. Still, time to move on.

F L I C K R !

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