I wanted to see the Great Himalayan National Park but our son wanted to see the Tibet-like cold desert which he had seen only as a child and remembered little. So that is how the great horseshoe trip — Delhi to Delhi — emerged. Take the road to Manali, turn off on the way at Aut to see the national park, thence to Kaza at the heart of Spiti valley and right in the cold desert, thereafter return to Delhi, whizzing past Shimla so as not to have to see the concrete jungle.
The park, which we accessed through Banjar and Jibhi, lived up to its reputation. On the way to Jalori Pass, from where you get a panoramic view of the park, the slopes are dense with deodars and a stream happily splashes through. This is the stuff of picture postcards.
You come to see nature in all its glory and get a bonus — meet a gentle handsome people who call upper Himachal their home. We seldom heard anybody raise their voice and the only instance of firm assertiveness was the purposefulness with which girls in uniform go to school.
But there is a discordant note in heaven too and knowledgeable locals told us the current trend was for girls to acquire as much of education as possible locally and then get out of the region. The social scene was no good for them. The men did little work, drank a lot and domestic violence was significant.
Jalori Pass and its environs offer a lesson on the current state of nature tourism in the hills. When you look down, the endless view of dense green hills and misty valleys is breathtaking. And as you look up, the skyline is made up of thousands of deodars pointing up and asking you to look for another reality beyond stone and green.
What brought you down to earth was the people around you emerging from cars — over madeup and overweight, the prosperity of Delhi and Punjab stamped all over. The odd ones were a group of smart slim women of different ages, obviously NRIs, who remained physically fit as a matter of course. And then there was the group of happily chatting youngsters with their camping gear, trek done and waiting for the transport back.
The other odd one out was a local food shop owner who kept an empty cardboard box to serve as a dustbin before his shop. Every five minutes he would dash out from his shop, pick up any kind of litter around and put it in the dustbin. Soon a couple of young men came with paint and brush to create an information spread on the wall of the shop on an eco-tourism group. And when you’ve had enough of looking at humans, you could turn your head to take in a flock of sheep idling on a hillside and adding to the idle.
When nature gives you so much it must take back a little. Halfway through our stay on the edge of the park we learn that Rohtang Pass, which this year had opened early, had closed again. The booking at Manali up in the air, we do an arc via Anni and Rampur to take the old Hindustan Tibet Road to get to Rikong Pio, the headquarters of Kinnaur district.
It will be another day’s journey to Spiti valley, down a road and a river (Sutlej) ravaged by development. First it was a series of hydroelectric projects that killed the Sutlej, then it has been the widening of the road. Stone, dust and bedraggled work gangs turned nature’s beauty into a graveyard. A traveller earlier in the last century described the road as “terrifying”, I found it a bit better, “appalling”.
If in Jibhi and environs we had a sense of what drove young girls in Himachal, at Rampur we caught up with the boys. Those in the state without too much education but aspirational try to get into the armed forces. A recruitment camp was on the next day and the way to the recruitment centre was elaborately marked the forces way and the main streets of the town and the bus station were chock-full of young men.
If nature forced us to change our route, then man tried his best to test our mettle. A decade ago I had taken the same route, travelling by Himachal Roadways buses from Shimla to Rikong Pio to Kaza and found it quite doable. The roadways staff and passengers were accommodating, men and luggage made way for all and never once did someone lose his temper.
This time the experience was different. In two successive days of bus journey, there were two tyre punctures! What was incredible was that the first bus didn’t have a stepney, not even a properly functioning jack. A passing roadways bus, its driver laughing at our plight, lent us his stepney.
The next day, as we approached the historic Tabo monastery at almost the end of the day’s journey, this bus also had a tyre puncture! Luckily it was one of the rear wheels and the driver was able to take the bus to a nearby roadside repair shop. The job this time was done much faster but the condition of the busted tyre was incredible, totally worn out and threadbare, with the inner webbing showing. How any organisation can allow buses in such condition to journey down the narrowest of roads that hug the mountain side at sometimes over 12,000 ft is to be seen to be believed.
Next fortnight: The cold friendly desert subirkroy@gmail.com
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