wow, Spiti, wow!!

Spiti

The bus from Manali to Spiti valley is hands down the most impressive bus ride I've ever had in my life so far.

The look of the Himalayas changed from the steep rocky cliffs with lots of green vegetation, to dry barren desert valleys with impressive mountain formations, I was in awe and could not think of anything other than "wow, wow, what a scenery." I have seen lots of great sceneries in my life, but I have never seen anything like this.

I have the same emotional feeling I've had when I visited places like:
* first time in NZ, the coast of Otago, the Glaciers in South Island(1993)
* the road to Milford sound (~2000)
* Tongariro crossing (2003)
* Swiss Alps (2003)

Except that in Spiti, the scale of the scenery is about 10 times larger than the places above.

However, about the road condition to get there...well, let's say if the minister of transportation will get a heart attack if he ever sees this kind of "highway" in New Zealand, especially when it's on steep mountain valleys.
Ok, the road surface is not all bad, but in many places, it's best described as "rock, pebbles and dust" or "rock, mud and water". Most part of the highway is not wide enough for two vehicles to pass (bus, truck & jeeps), so quite often one of them have to back up to a wider area and let the other pass.

Highlights about my journey in Spiti:

Kibber: a small village with an altitude of 4205m. About an hour walk uphill from the village you will reach a high mountain plateau where you can have 360 degree of mountain view and no one else is around. A really wonderful place to be.

Jazz under the moonlight: what a coincident that 4 musicians (2 French & 2 Indians from Delhi) stayed on the same floor of my hotel in Kibber. So one night I had the front seat to a free concert. We sat around the table on the balcony, and the guys performed Jazz music with guitars and saxophone. The Saxophone was especially amazing, and the surrounding mountain acted as a natural sound theatrical system: creating echoes for the music. With moonlight & a sky fulled of stars, what a magical night~

Upper-class bus travel: The buses in India are always fulled, so on the journey from Kaza to Kibber, I ended up sitting on the roof of the bus, along with all the luggages & 12 other passengers. It was a fun experience and the view was wonderful, the only danger is that whenever the bus passed through some overhanging objects, such as electrical wires or monumental gates (eg. near the towns & gompas), we have to bend our heads down to avoid being hit by them!

Tabo Gompa: with thousand-year-old Buddhist wall paintings & sculptures, it's a truly amazing place to be, especially if you can get in when no other tourists are around, sitting in the dim lighting of the gompa, looking at the ancient Tibetan Buddhist decorations gave me a feeling of peace and tranquility.

I have uploaded a small selection of photos to picasa (click the photo for the link), I have not time to stitch the panoramic photos so for now the photos will just be in compositions straight from my camera. But actually I feel that no matter how I take the photos they simply could not fully describe the sceneries & feelings I experienced in Spiti.

I'm now once again in Manali. Spiti was an amazing place but there's no cellphone reception & internet was slow and expensive, so I'll relax for a few days in Manali & then travel to Leh.