Tooth of Doom strikes again

  Sangla, Himachal Pradesh, India
Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Slept well for the first time since arriving in India. Odd that it was while sharing a bed with a stranger.

Anyway, woke at 6 and went out to watch the sunrise (something beautiful that I was alerted to by spying it out of the tiny bathroom window whilst brushing my teeth).

Instead of sitting in the restaurant garden where we drank wine yesterday (the corner of the building blocks some of the view) I spotted a path down to a little hut with a flat roof. I wandered down, and by means of hand gestures got permission to sit on the roof from a poor guy who'd probably only just got up. I sat for a good while in the crisp stillness, my legs dangling above the valley, until the daily bus blew its horn. I watched it wend its noisy way down the mountain road, amusing myself by trying to guess where it would appear again when it went behind each fold of the hillside. Sound carries well in the air here, but the mountains muffle it well too. A truck coming up the other way had people on the back, singing or maybe just joking loudly, I couldn't tell, but I could hear them well before I could make out their features. As soon as the truck was out of sight the sound would stop, only the mournful horn getting back to me, revealing their progress up.



Then I went back and found the only other person awake (Ann) and dragged her with me. We sat until it was time to gather for a short walk uphill to a lookout. Personally, I thought my roof view was better. Breakfast of aloo parantha (thick chapati filled with potato) then pack and quick shower.

My tooth started to ache last night (meaning I've had 7 whole pain free days, 3 of which I was still taking the last course of tablets) so this morning I started the antibiotics again. This is beyond a joke. It is totally coming out when I get home.

Another fantastically hair-raising drive, including a really bad section before the road crosses to the south of the Sutlej River, just as the junction splits right to Sangla and left to Kalpa. That means that we'll be doing it again when we drive to the trek starting point at Kafnu. As it was, I somehow missed the whole thing, sleeping despite the bumps and then the horns when we queued. The horn thing drives me batty. What do they hope to gain? The road is blocked by a truck doing repair work, or maybe closed off while they dynamite ahead, so no-one is going anywhere. Honking your horn doesn't make a blind bit of difference! Again Cookie drove well, minimising the amount of overtaking on blind corners. We stopped at a depressing road-building encampment huddled under a cliff - mainly manned by Nepalese - and had tea. Poor Dirk, deprived of his coffee, slipped up and called Cookie 'Coffee' amusing him no end.

The road-building gangs have a thankless job if ever saw one. They are mainly from Nepal, so I hear, since the pay here in India, pathetic though it is, stretches further when it's taken back to Nepal. Men and women alike [often with little children in tow] sit on desolate, windswept, high stretches of road, smashing rocks or manning smoking tar drums or directing concrete into 'dams' of corrugated iron which, once hard, will reinforce the crumbling road.

It's such a precarious existence, and you can really see it in places - just how much of a constant battle it is to keep the road from sliding down the mountain side. And how they make a new route, clear across a rock-face, dynamiting and drilling a crevice which eventually turns into a road that will carry big trucks... incredible.

Sangla is very pretty, lush and green with mountains all around. We are staying here 2 nights, tomorrow only being a day trip to Chitkul, further up the road. Unfortunately the bridge is out - the last 5m or so has no floor - which may make the jeep ride to Chitkul rather difficult. As it is we have to climb through the girders at the side and scramble up the embankment next to the deep river gorge, since all the restaurants/little shops are on that side.

It was worth it though - the food is once again excellent. Francoise and I have discovered the delights of mixed vegetable curry with curd poured on top. I'm sure the woman serving us thought we were weird but hey.

We walked up the hill (everywhere around here is either up or down a hill) to the temple, through narrow passages flocked by school children on their way home. The temple was pretty, but my tooth was making me irritable so I stayed outside, not in the mood to don a belt and a hat that makes me look like a Canadian hunter. Apart from the clothing, another rule of entrance is that women must not enter whilst menstruating. So the temple guide must have assumed that. Oh well. I sat and enjoyed the view instead and then, in poking my now abscessed tooth, discovered it to be full of yellow gunk. Nice. A little worrying for the trek in 4 days. Fortunately it doesn't seem to bother me too much when I'm eating. It just throbs.

We returned to the rooms (I'm with Jenny for the next 2 nights) and then I rang home to ask them to talk to the dentist - whether it'll be a problem at altitude, etc.

Ann said she slept great last night. Apparently, Jenny is a light sleeper so she doesn't sleep well. Maybe sleeping with me is the solution. (I have a private theory that involves gases and the vast quantities of beans and lentils I've been eating.) I guess we'll see.

Feeling a bit crappy - the evening didn't go well when Jenny inadvertently ignored me as I answered a question she had just asked. I struggle a bit, since I obviously don't understand Flemish and sometimes one of the group will point something out and I'll not get informed. Also, since I tune out the Flemish, it means that sometimes I don't immediately hear when someone talks to me in English. I'm sure she doesn't mean to, but I resent Jenny treating me like a child. I know she's an experienced travel organiser/guide with many trips under her belt, but I'm hardly a beginner to this either. India may be new to me, but it follows the same basic travel template and I do know what I'm doing. When I don't, I ask, and I don't expect my questions to Cookie to be scoffed at by Dirk and Jenny, since I have as much right to ask as anyone else.

Besides feeling a bit sensitive (pain will do that) everything is great though, and, so far, we've not met any 'one rupee?' kids. Everyone we meet smiles easily and returns our greetings of 'Namaste'.