Before I proceed further I must mention that the previous night while having dinner I noticed the owner of the home stay had a strange concoction, which was a liquid in a small glass(slightly bigger than tequila shot glass) with one boiled egg and few cloves of garlic, which he gulped down in one go. Later on I came to know that this was home brewed spirit made out barley!! This also happened to be my sixty fourth birthday. It was simple affair where I paid for all the damages incurred. We also decided for a change we would leave slightly late, meaning around six-thirty in the morning, as Tabo was only forty or fifty kilometers .
In the morning after our usual breakfast of parathas and scrambled eggs (made the Indian style with finely chopped onion and green chillis and tomatoes) washed down with two cups of tea. Before this we had already packed our bags and lashed them to our bicycles.
When we stepped out we noticed that the owner had grafted his apple trees, so his one tree was growing both green as well as red apples. I think all of us packed our bags with four or five apples each.
As we started to cycle it was that beautiful moment, just before the sunrise where the valley was little bit dark and beyond the mountain peaks the sky was turning silver. The road was mostly gravel and there were boundary wall made out of stones which kind of protected the apple orchards. Beyond the apple trees the river Spiti was flowing. We came across a sign board showing us the way to Kaza, Tabo and Lossar on the left and Kaurik on the right, which is close to Indo –China border.We took the left road as we had to go to Tabo and Kaza. We passed through a police check post and then to wards Sumdo passing a place where lot road repair was being done by BRO. Here river Parchu flows into the river Spiti.
We continued on the road to Tabo. This was road though tarred was pretty narrow, on the sides one could see fields where barely was growing with patches of apple trees. At some places construction work was going on. People were trying to finish whatever they could before the onset of winter months. Luckily on this road the traffic was negligible.
After Sumdo we came across a temple built on a slope by ITBP (Indo Tibetan Border Police) the gradient of this slope was fairly steep. The road was quite winding and again as usual it was cut in the mountains, with massive rocks hanging overhead. I came across arched gateway which mentioned “Welcome to Gue Monastery’’. The distance from this point was about 8 kilometers. This is famous for a six hundred year old mummy of a Buddhist monk by the name of Sangma Tenzing in a sitting position. Once all of us gathered at this gate we had a long discussion as to should we go and visit this monastery or not. Col.Gurung and myself wanted to go and visit this place but rest of the team was not upto it. My argument was that it was very unlikely that we would pass this route again, so any tourist place within a radius of ten kms or so should be visited. My reasoning fell on deaf ears and I had to go with the majority. This incident pissed me off greatly.
Anyway we continued on our journey towards Tabo We passed through various villages which basically were one street towns void of any kind of human activity. We came across a village known as Chandigarh village. When I saw the signboard I was stopped for a few minutes scratching my head in wonder, because Chandigarh is a famous city. After sometime we reached Tabo. All of us stood at the arch and were thinking if we were at the right place or not. Again there was no human activity, and the first shop on the left hand side was shut. We entered the village and proceeded towards the homestay. We checked in.
The home stay was managed by an old lady and her children. After we checked in the old lady offered us some tea and biscuits, which we gulped down. She joined us and was exchanging local gossip and kept telling us she had lot of work to do. The home stay was very neat and clean. We took this opportunity to service our bicycle and were very careful to ensure no grease stains or oil patches were on the floor. In the meantime our host was busy cleaning the rooms and chatting with us. It was bright and sunny day so we took this opportunity to do up our dirty laundry, after which we had another round of tea and biscuits. By this time it was lunch hour and all of us marched to one of the restaurants close by.
I decided to go for Spiti Thali which consisted of barley based rotis dal and vegetables more like thupka minus the momos steamed bun and a cup of butter tea washed down with sea buckthorn juice . Rest of the people I don’t remember what they ordered .The place was managed by a young person who must have been in his late 20’s or early 30’s.He belonged to Dehradun (our home town ) and was working for an IT company. He had lot of interesting tales about the culture of the people of Spiti. I must mention something about this youngster. According to him after finishing his school he came to Spiti for the first time, and fell in love with this place. While in college he made a point to come here every holiday. During the covid times he was working from home then he moved to Tabo and continued working remotely and at the same time manage the guesthouse and the restaurant. During the peak season when the rooms were full he would pitch a tent amongst the apple trees. He was doing this just to spot the elusive snow leopard. At times he would become a trek guide.
After lunch we went to visit the famous Tabo monastery. This monastery was founded in 990 A.D. and is made out mud. Every time bit any portion of the monastery is damaged it is repaired using the same mud. There are three halls and the main one is bigger in size as compared to the other two.
Before entering the halls we were asked to remove our shoes and given slippers to use inside the halls. Then one of the monks was our guide and took us telling us about the history of this monastery (I will not go into detail) The frescoes were quite faded out and require repair work. In one of the halls we spotted a lady meditating ,and as we entered she bowed down and she left. Our guide informed us that she was from Australia and she spends six months every year in this monastery meditating, and most of the time she is living on apples. Our guide told us the reason behind the small doorways and small size windows in most of the houses in the mountainous villages. It is because the people living in the mountains are very superstitious and they thought that the evil spirits are very huge in size and would find it very difficult to enter the house. This made sense to me because I had noticed this small size doors in number of different hilly villages of the country. He informed us that after the death of a monk, their work mostly in form of journals is also buried. Then we moved to the new monastery which was re-built after the earthquake in mid- 70’s and was inaugurated by Dalai lama. All of us decided not to go to the caves which were used by the monks for meditation.
We walked back to our home stay and then we were by invited to sample sea-buck thorn tea by one of the ladies staying close to the home stay. The tea was very refreshing and of course the chit-chat was equally interesting.
We took her leave after thanking her for the hospitality and walked to our home stay. By now it was dark and we picked up our dry laundry packed our bags after dinner and were soon lost in the dream land.
Trash Bucket 