Mountains Beyond Mountains

After I left Leh, I spent an entire day on a local bus on my way to Spitti Valley, an amazing part of northern India not too far from Tibet, with small towns cradled closely between high, snow-capped mountains far above the tree line. Mostly I was drawn here by Graham's photos from his travels here last summer.


My first destination was Ki Gompa - a Buddhist monastery perched on a high peak overlooking the valley and the snaking Spitti River below. I was planning on spending one night and one day at Ki Gompa, but I ended up staying for three days and three nights.

To get to Ki Gompa, I chose to save money on a taxi and take the single, daily local bus to Ki, which was supposed to leave Kaza around 5:30 pm. Instead, the bus left around 7pm. I was incredibly nervous waiting for the bus, because it was dark by the time we left, and I worried I wouldn't find my way to the guest quarters at the Gompa, or that it would be full and I wouldn't have any other sleeping options for the night, or that it was past dinnertime at the monastery and I would go to bed hungry (I was already starving at 6pm). Luckily, two Ki Gompa nuns were also on the same bus and they were fascinated by me and pelting me with questions on the ride there, so I knew they would take care of me. When the bus pulled up to Ki Gompa, it was pitch-black. The nuns pointed up a winding road to the flickering lights in the windows above, while they headed a different direction to their personal quarters. With my huge backpack, I slowly made my way up the curves of the road in the dark, breathing hard in the thin air (4116 meters high!). When I arrived at the front door, a monk sort of pointed me inside and down a dark hall way, where another monk met me and whisked me into the dark kitchen, lit by a few skinny candles. I dropped my bags, and the monk in the kitchen (who I later learned is named Thandup) pointed to a chair and immediately passed me a hot cup of chai. Then, without asking any questions, he poured me a bowl of vegetable stew and reheated some chapatis. I was so relieved and happy. There is nothing more comforting when travelling than kind monks and a good, hot meal. When I finished, Thandup showed me to my room. The monastery has five dorm rooms that can sleep about four people each. Luckily I had a room to myself, and it was clean and cozy. The bathrooms, though, were sincerely lacking both cleanliness and comfort. I refrained from bathing during my stay in Ki, mostly due to lack of hot water.


In the morning at 7am, Thandup blew the monastery horn (a conch shell) to awaken all the monks for breakfast and morning puja. I was already awake and dressed. Thandup gave me a bowl and a spoon, and wrapped in my amazingly warm yak-wool blanket, I made my way to the prayer room for puja. I sat with the monks on the long carpeted benches and drank hot chai from my bowl, which a very small monk was constantly refilling. It was so wonderful and I was so happy. About an hour into the puja, the little monk served us butter tea with barley flour, which we mixed with our fingers to make tsampa, a barley pooridge that Tibetans love and routinely eat for breakfast. Personally, I could never see tsampa again and be happy, but it's good to try traditional foods at least once. So the monks paused the puja to eat their pooridge, then continued the chanting and bell-ringing and drum-beating for another three hours. And I'm very proud to say that I sat through the whole thing - from 7am to 11am!

After puja I went on a solitary stroll down the path and around the mountain to see some of the valley. It was spectacularly beautiful. The mountains are such amazing colors - a swirling blend of red, purple, black, green, yellow, brown, gold. From the mountain where the monastery sits, there are euphoric views of valley. (See attached pictures.) In the afternoon I helped Thandup cook dinner - a significant feat for a monastery of 150 monks! Monastery food isn't the best - mostly variations on bread and a vegetable dish. So we peeled and chopped many, many kilos of veggies, threw them in a pot with some water, some spices, a little dirt, maybe a few pebbles, and soon after dinner was served.

After preparing dinner on my first day at Ki Gompa, Thandup told me, in his bad mix of English and Hindi, "Abi we go, gayi. You come, thora thora." And before I knew it we were trekking down the mountain to Ki village to retrieve the monastery's cows. So I became the monastery cow herder during my stay at Ki, guiding them up the mountain and into their shed. It was quite exciting, actually. And on my second morning at Ki Gompa, I took a break from the four-hour puja to help milk the cows too! Sadly, I sucked at it, but at least I got some milk out.

I made some good friends with the monks at Ki Gompa. Only one really spoke decent English, and the other spoke to me in a mix of Hindi and bad English. A lot of our communication was me teaching them new words in English. Then I would walk around the monastery and monks would randomly shout out words I had taught them earlier, so that I was constantly greeted with random words like "Summertime!" or "Eh-snake!" or "Dirty!" or "Goodmorninggoodeveninggoodnight! Food!" It was quite endearing.

After my stay at Ki Gompa, in which I sat through four-hour morning pujas, slept in a monastery dorm but did not bathe, and milked and herded the cows (I'm repeating all this so everyone knows how hard core I am), I went to a another small town in Spitti called Tabo. Most people come to Tabo to visit the Tabo Gompa, which has been declared a World Heritage site, and preserves "some of the finest Indo-Tibetan art in the world." It was founded in AD 996, and has amazing murals in its various prayer halls. I also attended morning pujas in Tabo, which began at 6:30am but only lasted about an hour. Not so hard core.

On my way back to Manali from Spitti Valley, our bus went through a serious snow storm. In the morning in Kaza, where I woke up to catch the 7am bus, some of the mountain tops were already covered with snow. Then, while we were stopped at a local dhaba (food stand) in a tent in the middle of nowhere for lunch, some very wet snow began to fall with the high speed winds. Then, as we kept driving, it turned into thicker snow. Eventually huge heavy white flakes were falling all around us, and the ground was quickly turning white. I could no longer see across the gorge or any of the mountain tops around us. We were litterally driving through a white cloud of snow. Also, the bus only had one windshield wiper, which kept about one-fourth of the windshield clear during the storm. The driver and his assistant kept stopping to dump water over the windshield to clear it of ice, though it only made more ice. It was very reassuring to be riding along mile-high cliff edges like this.

Now I am back in Manali for two days before returning to Dharamsala. I'm staying in a lovely guest house a bit removed from the tourist traps of Old Manali. Its balconies face green mountains and the house is surrounded by apple orchards where the tree branches are heavy with ripe fruits. There is also a garden of sunflowers and marigolds. And - I have my own bathroom with a hot shower! Such luxury.

During the last few days I have been feeling very ready to go home. Though I'm a bit intimidated to be returning to the States - and especially to Kentucky of all places - I am looking forward to the comforts of home. I miss coffee shops and clean streets and the way people actually stand in line at stores instead of pushing their way to the sales counter. This morning in Manali I treated myself to a cup of filter coffee at a very touristy, very hippie coffee shop. And while I was ordering, a local woman with a large basket tied to her back edged up to the counter next to me and handed over two large metal canisters of fresh milk to the man behind the counter. And as I was walking back to my hotel room, there were small boys and old men walking up the hilly streets selling incense to the shop owners who were just opening their doors for the morning. I could smell the incense burning already all over the town. These are the little touches of India that I will miss when I am home in sterile suburbia. Even in the most touristy of the tourist nests, India is still India.

This last picture I took on the drive through the snowy mountains to Manali. Even baby cows need blankets against the cold!