Banjara Retreat Kaza

There is another record here: I'm waking up in a 2℃ room, well, who cares! But yes, I wish I'll stop writing about the temperatures in my room. There is almost nothing to pack, and I have some time to have a breakfast.
The bus is crowded, but I manage to find a place to sit. We start riding and more and more people are getting on the bus. When we reach Tabo it's really hard to get off the bus. And I start to have my concerns about ...

Spaeter aber nicht nie, ein neuer Juleo-Reisereport.

Am Ende der Strasse, wo die Sternschnuppen hinfallen…

Dort, wo sich nur die hartgesottensten, mit allen Wassern (oder eben gerade nicht) gewaschenen Touris hintrauen, die Baertigen.

Von wo zwar die meisten, aber eben doch nicht alle wieder zurueckfinden, sei es nun wegen der steilen Klippen bzw. Der zu schmalen "Strasse" oder “ shesh besh“.

Genug davon ...

Just when we thought we were safe, we arrived in Kaza. The roads in and out of Kaza were still closed by avalanches, so we were stuck there for four more days. Don't get me wrong - it's definitely not the worst place in the world. There's electricity, water, and even internet. But after six days stuck in Batal, we wanted to get someplace warm, and Kaza was ...

On the sixth day, Tomak, Yanka, and I were walking along the road for about 5 km to check out the conditions, and we decided we would walk out the following day. It would have taken three days walking to reach the nearest town, but we were tired of waiting. As we turned to walk back to Batal, we saw some helicopters passing overhead and were happy that the authorities had finally realized we were here. But, when we arrived back at ...

Just a quick update from Kaza, the district capital of Spiti. We've cycled 420km (ish) now, taking us eastwards from Shimla through increasingly barren territory (we've moved into the rainshadow of the Himalayas) towards the border with Chinese-occupied Tibet, where we headed north for a while, before turning northwest, up into the Himalayas proper. Everything's ...

I decided to stay in Tabo one more day after the green toast incident to gain some strength. I've already lost a lot of weight because my stomach was scared shitless (in this case quite litteraly) during my first week here. It remembers all too well how horribly ill it was last time I was in India. I'm glad to say that my appetite is back, but maybe I should inspect my food a little more thoroughly from now on. I went to the local ...

Spiti is fantastic! The mountains look different here. The cliffs are rugged and pointy, but the slopes are perfectly even, covered with gravel. Tabo sits on the bank of Spiti River, and everything looks lush and green. On both sides huge walls of rock shoot up. On one side there are dozens of small and large caves dug into the mountain. The monks from Tabo Gompa come here ...

Pointlessly got up at 7 to finish packing only to be told the bus didn't leave til at least 9.30. I grabbed a cookie thing from the bakery for breakfast and sat by the main road outside a hotel I've forgotten the name of. Angel, a guy who worked there, came out and chatted, then helpfully flagged the bus down for me. There was plenty of space and the people were friendly. A couple of other travellers in the back, but I sat at the front near the door for the draft. It was fun ...

For one year, I have been thinking of Tabo Monastery, ever since Guge Kingdom in western Tibet. The monastery in the Guge Kingdom had surviving murals, but many of the millenium-old statues were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. The comparison is useful: the mandala temple at Toling, where I lived for a few days was almost completely destroyed by the Red Guard, with remnants of hands or a ...

We spent the afternoon visiting Tabo Monastery. The monastery is built of mud brick and mud stucco, resembling the adobe structures of the U.S. Southwest; stark and beautiful. We were the only visitors in the afternoon, and apparently there was only one other visitor all day. The monastery celebrated its 1000th birthday in 1996 ...