Spiti
Breathable, moisture wicking, elastic, polysester-amide blend, sleeveless thermal. Breathable, moisture-wicking, cardio-workout special tee. Goose wool, light, compressible to fist-size, downjacket. Convertible hiking pants with fastening straps. Wide brim HAT. UV Level 4 protection sunglasses. Sunscreen.
Packed and all set for my initiation to the hiking and trekking subculture.
Komic, at 4513m, is one of the highest villages in the world. It has no police, no post office, no hospital - none of the things any typical village might take for granted - but it does have a monastery, which is, quite expectedly, one of the highest in the world. Being ‘one of the highest’ isn’t just a superlative meant to promote tourism, but comes with its own associated baggage. some of the realities of life at high altitudes, especially the accompanying geographical and altitudinal inconveniences. During the winter months, for example, the temperate hits as low as -40 degree Celsius. The village families are forced indoors during the entire season, and snow has to be melted with the help of firewood to meet any water requirements. Firewood isn’t easily available - there are practically no trees in this desert - so the villagers collect the wood over the entire year for the winter season - much like the ants in the ‘The Ant and the Grasshopper’ fable. Burning the wood itself causes the emission of carbon dioxide and black carbon, which particulates settle on the nearby glaciers causing them to melt. Economically expensive, environmentally damaging and logistically harsh - life at high altitudes is no __. Long Nights by Eddie Vedder
Our group came here with a mission - to construct a solar bath for the monks in the monastery. Back when I signed up for it, it sounded just like the kind of thing I needed. Just last year I had backpacked across Rajasthan, Gujarat and Kerala. In that trip, even though I had many interesting encounters, and loads of unique experiences, and so on, in the end it all felt frivolous - like my journey had had no real effect on the world. Sure it did contribute to my personal growth, but it still felt like a selfish indulgence. The Spiti arrangement, on the other hand, involved adventurous travel with purpose and meaning. Trekking up to remote villages in the trans-Himalayas to help in the the lives of the mountain folks - Now who wouldn’t want to do that?
Such soul-engulfing beauty. Words beat me. I wonder if the villages understand the sheer heavenliness of it all. I get it now why it was the Buddhists that came up with concepts like Nirvana.
But I am getting ahead of myself. It is impossible not to. Words are like 2 dimensional, while I am floating in the infinities of an infinite dimensional space. Everything is like nothing. It’s a cliche, but one perfectly apt here. All the earthly human emotions - attraction, jealousy, ambition, attachments and desire - all the human worries have been washed away in this tide of transcendental peaceful soulful currents.
I am sitting, Buddha-like, on the edge of a hill. Behind me is the monastery for which we are to build a solar bath over the next few days - I’m responsible for laying the groundwork tomorrow, while the other groups will be involved with mud work, masonry and cooking. The vast expanse in front of me has had held me in a trance for quite some while. There’s the farmland, being tilled by the village ladies, there’s the grazing cattle - cows and sheep- overlooked by a shepherd and a cowherd. The landscape just ahead of the grid like farmlands is spattered by houses - the home stays, including the big one, where we are staying.
Stuff like this rekindles the imagination, the childhood visions that get buried under life’s crap as we grow old.
It is our fourth day. Or maybe fifth. I’ve lost track. Hamish and Lauren went back to Kaza today - Lauren wasn’t responding to any medicines so maybe the lesser altitude would do her a bit of good. People have been falling sick left, right and centre - the teacher from Scindia and the lady from Mumbai have had nosebleeds, Pinegrove’s soccer coach has a toothache, while the two new joinees today are already having second thoughts about the whole thing. It would seem that headaches, nausea and all the usual suspects are on the prowl, hunting one prey or the other each passing day. In a totally uncalled for incident, our home stay owner dunked one too many bottles of Chhang, the local homemade brew, yesterday, and as one might imagine went on to clonk and plonk himself at the walls , falling and injuring himself at multiple places on his body. Needless to say, my first-aid kit has been put to good use, even though my own body has been like a trustworthy stallion, showing no signs of weakness whatsoever.
What is it in us humans that makes us leave the comfort of our homes and seek the unknown - climb mountains, cross the oceans and get to know the unfamiliar? Society by Eddie Vedder
Mountains have personalities.
The green ones - covered with a thin layer of alpine grass - are like innocent peasants. Occasionally they’d have one metre high stone walls, demarcating each farmer’s boundaries.
The light brown ones are like middle aged, short, bald men. They have serpentine furrowed paths and patches of green shrubbery.
Towering above the short brown ones are the dark brown heavily built henchmen. Well chiselled in some parts, their bodies have ugly rocky formations jutting out in others.
Far behind is the council of the elderly, the wise men - standing tall and distinct. They have lived through ages and have been through it all. They wear white capes.
And then there are the in-betweeners, the ones transitioning from one stage of life to another -half green half brown, dark brown ones with snowy heads, light sandy ones with hard rocks, and so on.
Each mountain tells its own story.
What is it about natural beauty that strikes us so to the core? Would these mountains and valleys and river gorges had held the same effect if they were made by us humans?
It is the effect we strive to achieve through art. Art, ever so artificial, reaches out to achieve the perfection nature has so effortlessly and flawlessly achieved. Nature is Art’s perfection.
We get new visitors everyday. Most of them follow the same template - they’d typically be a group of 3 to 7, drive up in a jeep or a calvacade of motorbikes, and immediately brandish their DSLRs. The less aware ones - one would not think it possible to descend to such lower heights of less-awareness - would walk up to us and ask where Komic is. They’d watch us working happily in what have become our sort of daily chores - digging up the hill, shoving away the sand, carrying stones, levelling up the mud - and stand their with an amused bafflement - what I’d like to think of as admiration.
They are tourists. We are travellers.
19 June 2014