lucid_skies

Do you remember my affection to clouds on top of mountains peaks from the last story? It was sunny, warm, no sight of a broken road. Where could it possibly be? But just as we've reached top of Rothang pass and made it to its other side everything got clear. I mean absolutely not clear: fog was so dense that we could hardly see road we were stepping on.



( mist and what's behind it )

This story is the last from my trip to Spiti valley - to beautiful places lacking even the simplest wonders of civilization such as mobile network, internet and even electricity almost completely. Not even to mention good coffee. Also in summer in Spiti one can never be certain if the road is open of not. One roads is fixed and instantly another one is broken by heavy raining. So I didn't know till the very last moments if I can get to Manali or not. But then there happened to be microbus on the street in the morning and there happened to be a place for me. So here comes the first step on the way.


( mountains sooo high, sooo wide )

If you think that local people don't cherish the beauty of their native places being used to them since birth then you're probably right. But then locals can definitely cherish the beauty of places few hours away from their native villages. And so Jamaika was telling me about a village of Lancha full of astonishment. Would anyone doubt I start sharing his joy as early as on the way there?



( three picturesque places from near and far )

While traveling in high Himalayas once in every while you would be getting to "highest" places. Highest monastery, highest pass, highest lake or road... So here we have the highest village reachable by motorable road.



( Kibber is highest, Kee is less high )

I've published most of my photos from Kaza on website of the guesthouse where I lived. There are more photos there than I've chosen for my own story but some of them are better processed here.



( so what's there in Spity and why did I decide to do a website for this guest house? )

Finally I manage to continue my half-year old travel stories from Himalayas. These were paused on my teleportation, oops, I mean deportation from Thailand SEA to Ukraine because of no free place in pasport, was put on hold while I had too many other things to take care of in Kiev, Nepal and India and finally continues at the point when I have been standing for few hours at the exit from Tabo waiting for local bus and suffering from envy towards organized tourists leaving on jeeps. When my bus finally arrives and rumors about broken road come out true I can watch the same tourists on jeeps standing in line before the breakage and realize how useless the disturbing emotion of envy is while crossing the problematic part of the road on feet with my backpack.



( and what after? )

Our last story was put on pause at the moment when I crossed the waterfall on motorbike, got totally wet feet and looked at Nako for the last time. The moment of writing the next one was delayed almost by a week because of karmic turbulence which is already at the state of stable instability and it got clear to the author that there would be no chance to get any quiet days and author has to get concentrated and write in between rises and falls. And we start from last views of that mountain perspective which I adored so much in Nako and which I include here to prolong my pleasure.



( and what about anything new? )

It does not matter how wonderful this place is I still pack my bag one morning and go to wait for a bus. Few previous days were very foggy and rainy but that day looks hot, sunny and simply beautiful.



( my last day up there )

Nako turned out to be my favorite place from whole Himalaya trip even though there was no electricity and mobile network. Five days without luxury of civilization went on very quickly. My guest house is a building in traditional style and I cannot wait to leave it and look what the place we've been climbing so long in dusk looks like.



( life's nice without internet here )