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Published: June 21st 2006
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To travel into Spiti requires an ‘Inner Line Permit’ available at Recong Peo… So after the soldiers had push started our way out of Chitkul we headed there... We arrived in Recong 7 hours later with Poulet ailing and us exasperated at the stalling, the pushing, the fucking bike!! We immediately took her to the doctors… The guitar on the back caused a great deal of attention and a couple of ‘music teachers’ strolled up and engaged Chris in a conversation… difficult to have two conversations in pigeon English at once, but with Lucky the mechanic discussing Poulet and the brothers Grim pushing for a music date we had to manage… Poulet was fixed up and we headed off to find a room… we eventually stumbled on to a neat little room and bargained the owner down from 300 - 230 rupees… our view was again lovely… The vista of a bustling market with a back drop of the towering Mount Kailash was beautiful…
We stayed in Recong for 5 days and spent most of it at the mechanics, having Poulet cleaned out and looked after… Our main concern her loosing power… we also wandered around the market, buying unnecessary
items! Met an adventuring Swiss couple who bought us chai as they explained their trip, cycling to Ladak! Give us a motorbike any day! They were a lovely couple who shared some of our experiences of India and really lifted us. It is very easy to get weighed down by the negative here; constant harassment, mistreatment and the sometimes selective poor communication. Talking with them was a mutual exchange and one which didn’t try so hard to concentrate on the “spiritual” aspects of India but with the human interactions in India… The following day we went up to a small village called Kalpa. The village is beautiful and we ran into our Israeli stalker there and finally had a conversation and shared some chai, we also ran into an English dude there and he joined us…Good to get some English conversation.
That evening we were invited, well Chris was invited, to join the music teachers for a jam. When they came to pick us up our suspicions about their motives were first aroused… the keyboard player was wearing some conspicuously large heeled shoes! Musically, the night was a disappointment but a great source of hilarity… Katie settled into teaching
4 village kids some simple card games and making bracelets really lovely moments and Chris was treated to an evening of goat strangling music played at top volume and with an awesome house beat, cheered on by an audience of 25 - 20 people… When asked which key he liked to play in the host (a music teacher) replied with a waggle of the head and a depression of the keys that lead to the emanation of an eerie whining noise… “no, no, no” said Chris, “not which SOUND which KEY?” Chris knew he was beaten and resigned himself to playing the same tune for 2 hours until the keyboardist and singer then proceeded to serenade him, informing him as he stared deep into his eyes that it was a Hindi love song… Chris soon made our excuses and we left! Katie was only sorry she didn't get any photos of the lovelorn look in his eye, or the four little friends she made...
The last day we spent in Recong Peo was a test to our renewed patience, in trying to get a permit we were faced with the brick wall of Indian Bureaucracy…. A supposedly 30 minute
task took ALL DAY…We had to have photocopies of practically everything we owned, 3 passport pictures, taken courtesy of a local turban wearing David Bailey, who made Chris look like a simpleton and Katie like a jezebel, nice! … we took our room for one more night, ate samosas and then decided to settle in and watch a movie - our first since we’ve been in India - But oh No we ended up eating chocolate and entering a television stupor for 6,7,8,9 hours… it was good… What more could anyone ask for? We have adventure, TV., love, music(?), new clothes, new friends, more love, a working bike and finally an inner line permit… well ok a packet of maltezers and a fish finger sandwich wouldn’t go amiss!!
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