September 1st

J and I started off for Manali 6am from Dharamsala, watching the sun rise along the way. At a certain altitude, the sun in full array, we saw a veritable Roerich painting before our eyes. It was snow-peaked mountains appearing to float above a thick, solid, fluffy white cloud bank. I always thought the man took artistic license with his imagery, but sure enough, the chiseled facets cast by morning light on the Himalayas were in orange and purple-gray displays, the base of the mountains nestled in airy clouds. The scene looked like a fairytale setting.

The main road where Rohtang pass is looks by our standards like a single lane dirt road.  There is no railing at the irregular precipitous edge, and passing the slow trucks that ply the road means a lot of honking on the driver’s part and then a wing and a prayer to get back in lane without encountering oncoming traffic. Might makes right on Indian roads so trucks have the de facto right of way. Somehow it all works out, amazing.

I got a bit carsick from the descent, switchbacks all the way, the driver taking them maybe a bit faster, with blind passing, than my stomach could take. The diesel fumes and road dust was killing me. The smell of diesel alone is enough to nauseate me. Fortunately, there was AC which I asked for halfway through. We arrived around 1pm, with pitstop for breakfast at cheesy hotel bar/dining hall (J said she’d have to work on the driver to get him to choose better stops). Well, anyway, the aloo parathas (potato-filled flatbreads) were tasty and it was good to use the bathroom. Otherwise, it’s a roadside affair of finding a large rock or bush to go behind when nature calls!

We stayed at a place called Leela Huts after finding that J’s fave old Johnson’s Lodge, with English-styled cottage accommodations, was under renovation and closed. Leela Huts has a hilarious website: www.leelahuts.com. The sentence that had us in tears with laughter was, “Leela Huts swear sheer solitude to that tired man who has retired to the valley for a bracing vacation, away from the irksome crowd.”  Now there’s some florid Indian English for you! But anyway, it was a well-kept, walled off little oasis with two and three-bedroom houses with full kitchen and baths. We opted for just the hut with single large room.

We hightailed it to Manali because Khandro Thrinlay-la was in town for the afternoon before needing to leave for her next teaching engagement, and she invited J and I to come for a visit. OK, so here is one bit of convoluted family history. Her older brother is Sey Rinpoche, their father a great Drukpa Kagyu practitioner named Apho Rinpoche, who descended from the great grandfather Shakya Shri, who began this special lineage of masters in the Six Yogas of Naropa, a Milarepa tradition. These are the accomplished meditators who retreat for three years, three months, and three days to practice the secret tummo and other methods which develop, I am told, levitation skills and various abilities that defy convention. You would never know who was a great practitioner usually because they can look like any humble villager, and they never reveal their abilities normally.

Sey Rinpoche was supposed to be in Manali upon our arrival to meet with us, and make arrangements for access to monasteries in Lahoul where the family hails from, but we found he had left for Pangi where he is building a new retreat center. Instead, his sister Khandro-la (www.khachodling.org) was at home briefly, a lovely Bhutanese-styled house with colorful painted motifs on the crown and windows. She received us in her prayer room where she was doing prayers for safe travels, since it is the astrological snake year, and by Tibetan beliefs an obstacle year for those born in snake years.   I thought snake year was auspicious for snakes, but this must be the Chinese thinking. We discovered we all three are snakes.

Khandro-la has an international following which includes a lot of Australians, and women. She has a feminist approach, and is educated in the U.S., with MA in psychology, completed by the advice of none other than His Holiness the Dalai Lama. I find her interesting and contemporary. After learning about my Fulbright project, she asked me to photograph the murals at Gandhola, which turns out to be Guru Ghantal where I had planned to visit and document. She said it’s the oldest temple in Lahaul and she is interested in preserving its heritage properly.

We went back late in the afternoon to see Khandro-la’s assistant, and her younger brother who runs Druk Expeditions. He gave suggestions on places to visit in Lahaul, and so did Khandro-la’s assistant. It turns out that there is not so much to see in the way of murals of mandalas in Lahaul, but rather, Lahauli temples and area are structured spatially like a mandala. The suggestion was to go for a kora (a clockwise circumambulation around a sacred location) of Drilbu Ri Mountain, a holy site of the tantric deity Chakrasambhava, near where Guru Ghantal is, and experience the mandala physically, but to hire a guide so as not to get lost, and also to help carry things. Sounds like a nice idea, but we’ll see how I adjust to high altitude by then! I have so far been suffering from night headaches (like having a vice grip around my head!) and shortness of breath, bit of loss of appetite.

Next morning 5am we were off to Spiti.  Aaah, at last the journey to high Himalayas truly begins!  Our driver was a nice man, very good careful driver, and not as aggressive as some others. He drove a Toyota Qualis which J remarked didn’t look like the most comfortable car, but it was a tanker, and boy, I was happy about that.  You wouldn’t believe how parts of the road were like fording small rivers and waterfalls, with large rocks and vertiginous drops!  These are areas where glacial melts can wash out the road by afternoon.  After a couple of particularly nerve-wracking spots, we cheered our driver for his skillful driving! J said many a car or truck has been caught stuck in these.  One has to be on the road early enough to pass these before the water starts rushing down in the warmest part of day.

I took a lot of photos en route, what spectacular vistas! We had also many pit stops at big rocks where we could hide and relieve ourselves by the side of the road. Kunzum-la was quite windy. It’s a high point at about 15,000 ft altitude, and marked by three stupas and small shrines to the Dalai Lama and Karmapa and other lamas. J and I made incense offering here as a Geshe-la (title of a learned Tibetan Buddhist scholar akin to a PhD) suggested was an auspicious thing to do en route. I was feeling the shortness of breath by now, and when the wind blew the incense into my face, the odor caused me to feel nauseous. However, I totally loved seeing the wildly billowing and plentiful, layered, colored prayer flags blowing in the wind. We ended up not picnicking at the Nechung stupa as originally planned because J thought it was too windy and cold.  She was mindful not to be exposed too much in case of causing illness.  We instead ate in a large, flat valley, which was also windy, but at least less so.

The Spiti Valley is grand beyond belief! While passing Kullu Valley earlier was stunning, too, for its lush steep landscape, cascading, tall waterfalls that put Yosemite National Park ones in the kids’ playground, grazing sheep and goats, impossibly tall and regal pine trees, Spiti land looks like gigantic rock and sand slides of barren beauty, with a wide river valley that equally shocks one with its scale.  The river rushes in what looks like silver rivulets wending its way within the valley from the road high above, but any of its strands would dwarf a normal inland river.  J said this is what is characteristic about Spiti, and at every switchback turn on the road, another great Roerich-like view is to be had.  If I had stopped the car every time I wanted to take a photograph, we never would have arrived in time.  Manali to Kaza was about a 10-12 hour jaunty, bumpy car ride.

All photos © 2013, Eva Lee.