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Published: June 22nd 2006
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Leaving Recong with old Poulet laden down and our fingers tightly crossed we headed off to Nako. A small village nestled in amongst the mountains on the Spiti trail. The next feasible stop for us.
Poulet, performed admirably at first. The temperature was exceedingly hot that day but initially the road was following the river and thus quite level. A few patches washed out by glacier thaw but all pretty manageable. Further on the road were diverted up a steep sand path… we had some trouble making up with Katie having to push as the bike struggled for traction… reaching the top we took a break and sat by the edge of the road… looking down gave us a spectacular view of where the road used to be… now nothing remained where a section of the road used to be… it was the first of many roads like this… The journey was long and hot and at the top of the pass Poulet seized for the first time, we took out the dice and played a quick game as Satans’ donkey looked on… slightly bored…
The scenery changed dramatically and became arid and barren… There were frequent stops for
Poulet to cool down and us to stretch our legs… As we neared Nako we became jovial and excited… Poulet had made it and we were nearly there… Hooray… And then going round a steep hairpin bend the front wheel slipped and the bike jerked to the left… Katie’s foot was jolted off of the peg and dragged along the tarmac… The outside off her left big toe was scraped… Fortunately she had developed a hard callous on the outside off her toe from wearing rubbish shoes so no bone protrusion just a little blood, lots of dirt and some swearwords when the iodine was applied (it really wasn’t that bad at all and healed quickly, and she really did have a horrible lump of hard skin that has now been removed!)… Since the incident Chris is considering a career move to motorcycling Chiropody (Che Guevara eat your heart out!)
So finally we limped into Nako. Found the only room left in town, a mere 150 rupees facing on to the fields and the Himalayas…We settled out on the balcony with a chai and a bag full of toffee éclairs and watched the sun setting behind the mountains and
sighed the contented sigh of the weary traveler finally at rest… After dark we headed up to the square and bumped into a large group of Indian teenage boys… One of which was carrying an old Givson (in India it is not Gibson, it is Givson, BUT is cheap and best sir….) acoustic guitar we joined them as they sat round a candle lit table (no electric) and Chris and Baby Che (not his name but him and his best mate were very western looking in dress, that kind of socialist student style of dress, hence the Che twins)…AND FINALLY, Chris got to play with someone who knew which way round to hold the guitar (this includes Katie!) Baby Che was actually good, and we made some good friends, they came back to our room and we talked about the inevitability of them having an arranged marriage and having to forget his impossible dream of musical success… When they’d left we sat talking about how their dreams were cut off from them so young and how they were inspired by the questionable ‘freedom’ that western ideals seem to perpetuate… in some ways it was sad to see talent go unfulfilled…10
minutes later there was a knock at our door and the chef was there, he asked if he could come in and talk for a while… geed up by beer and previous conversations we welcomed him in and had an interesting chat about the finer aspects of meditation and spiritual enlightenment… everyone was given food for thought and it was awesome to communicate so effectively in pigeon English… The only thing we found disturbing was the constant braying of a Donkey during the night... it can only be described as a sound of violation...
The next morning we were taking our breakfast out in the morning sun when a retired French couple, Marie France and Philippe passed us. We struck up a conversation and they joined us for chai. Again another thought provoking conversation with some lovely people.. Truly inspired us and opened up new ideas of thought to us… just what we needed, and it is nice to meet people who are young eternally in their attitudes and have such generous wisdoms to impart… They live in Thailand so hopefully our paths will cross again! We had planned to leave that morning and after a lovely breakfast we
loaded up the bike to go when Poulet started first time, Katie sensed trouble and sure enough the clutch cable was hanging on by a thread… AHHHHHHH! It needed replacing so we set about looking for a mechanic… Luckily we were fairly close to Yangtan (17km) so we jumped in a cab and purchased the only clutch cable for 100km… Unfortunately it was for a Honda moped! After half a days work and some shoddy makeshift repairs it fit and it worked!! However, it meant we had to find another room (which we did fairly easily) and wait till tomorrow to leave…
And what a pleasure it was to stay one more night. We went for a walk through the village and met some of the local kids, we both had our ingenuity tested by a little boy when he asked for help with his makeshift toy, saw a man riding a donkey with his feet dragging on the floor (could this be the nocturnal donkey invader?) and rested in the dust of a building site, nice!! Arriving back to our room we met our neighbors a lovely couple from Australia and America (Heather and Rodrigues) and had dinner
and laughs with them for 4 hours or so… A perfect way to spend the evening…
The next day we left early and things just didn’t go as planned and we needed to make some quick decisions about the shape of our trip……
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