Himalayas 9 - Falling on top

The morning of a rest day had us up and about at around the normal time. It is hard to break a rhythm.
There were plans to go and see an important monk at the temple. Vidhya and Martin left early to join in the chanting. The rest of us slouched around until they got back mid-morning. Then we made a general move, under the careful shepherding of Alex to go and see the temple and the monk.

The temple was huge for a small town and extremely ornate.
The figures and pictures have an immediate impact with huge quantities of gold and red and bright colours, big windows and light
None of the dim, dour, dark gold and blood red of Christian churches. None of the intricacies of perspective and subtle shades of martyred muscle.
This was carnival style celebration.
But we filed quietly in and sat at the edge of the main room, respectfully, if not contemplatively, quiet.
Years of training in keeping quiet through school services and army dressing-downs gave me a chance for a little mild reflection. And it was a spiritual place, there was just little room left in this scarred soul for anything more complex than getting through the day. So any deeper meaning was a bit lost on me, but it was still a pleasant experience and interesting to see how much it meant to some people.
The monk gave us a red wrist band, filled with blessings, which showed what a good man he was. Everyone treated him with great respect, so I did too, though I knew little about Buddhism and less of him, but when you are with people you respect and they respect something, showing respect is a minimum.
We left some donations and sat outside on the temple steps to put our shoes back on. It was easy to marvel at the scenery in the clean morning air.

Then back to the hotel (the Deyzor, no Sizzle in Drizzle for us bad boys), where we changed for the days ride.
At the daily briefing Alex started off with a warning to Andy who had been wearing an ipod. The road was treacherous and music was very much frowned upon.

Of course the talk of treachery affected my confidence immediately. I was also tired after several days riding.

There was a hoo hah at the petrol station, shuffling inelegantly backwards to the back of a tanker to get filled up. It seemed like getting fuel off the back of a lorry, but this is India so it felt normal enough.
We started off out of town, simply enough, climbing the tarmac sand rock combination loosely construed as a road.

As we ascended my bike lost power. It felt like dirty fuel.

The bike sputtered and struggled and became very frustrating as the only solution seemed to be revving it hard in low gear.
Then came the muddy part. At least it wasn't wet mud, just deceptive and I had little faith in the bike. So the multitude of cross crossed tracks with ruts and bumps were a novel experience. I was not confident.

The altitude also got to me and close to the top we came across Keith who had fallen.

He was getting back on his bike but was on the middle of the path with muddy ruts on either side. Rather than wait I squeezed past, thinking I was very clever. Then I got stuck in a rut that ended in a puddle. Normally that would be OK, but the puddle concealed several layers of slate rocks. Flat and piled on top of each other.

The bike dislodged these, like skimming playing cards off the top of a deck. I could not hold the bike and went down. Into the puddle. At least my leg was under the bike, ensuring minimal damage to the machine.

Andy and Abhi helped the bike off and Doc checked I was OK, again.

I was, but of course pissed off about the inevitable ribbing coming my way.

So I slowly sulked my way to our destination. The worlds highest village and monastery at Komic.
It is a staggering location.

Just high, 4,600 metres, that's over 15,000 ft. high. Surrounded by even higher mountains.

You can understand the mystical undercurrents in this society. The higher you place your prayer flags the more they read their message to the world and the universe.

I arrived last and started off by asking if anyone else had been for a swim, then calling them poofs' in the standard macho aggressive defense manoeuvre.

It may have eased the strength of the attack, but it did not stop the deserved ribbing.

Being late missed out on the trip round the monastery but we had chai and took photos, of the scenery as well as my trousers.

But the place had an ethereal quality and it was just too high up to get energetic about anything.
The monks would not sell chai but we were welcome to whatever they had and were welcome to leave donations. Looked at it one way the chai was more expensive than the standard market price, but it was definitely far too cheap for the experience!

So we were inspired to take photos and be at peace.

The rode down for me was laborious and for Abhi it was probably on the edge of suffering. We saw some condor like birds, which cheered me up, especially since they didn't start circling overhead, waiting for the roadkill.

Still we made it back early enough to shower and change, rinse the trousers and hang them out to dry and pose for a souvenir Indian underpants photo, which of course you note was from the muddy fall, honest.

Then on and out to Kaza village for a late lunch.

Despite the late night stroll of the previous night we were pretty lost as to how to get to the main village, which was across a small stream hidden in a large chasm. At a guess the chasm may be fuller in springtime.
We wandered around in the knowledge that we would not be taking the shortest route, probably because there wasn't one. But we found a sort of main shopping and eating area where we wandered up and down searching for a place with Indian sim cards, the perfect restaurant and somewhere that sold underpants.
Teenager style we ended up as a group back at the first place we saw, a restaurant offering Indian, Israeli and English cuisine. Of course.
Naturally given this choice we proceeded to massively overorder.
A few spots of rain drove us inside where we failed to eat everything we'd asked for, which felt like a crime to me. But that may have been an overreaction on my part. From what we saw, and we saw a lot of materially poor people, we did not see obviously desperate hunger, we did not see starvation.
It makes you wonder if the excess stuff we have, our material wealth, only comes with spiritual poverty.

The rain cleared and we wandered the streets again. Still looking for a sim card for Michael. There was only one company that had service in the mountains and it wasn't Vodaphone, which we'd chosen in Delhi airport. But the Sims were only for locals. Seemingly incredibly we found a huge sign for Adventure Ashram the charity we rode for in South India last November. Fritha does get about!

We ended up splitting up and I found biscuits for nothing ha'penny and trousers for 250 rupees... and perhaps not the best named hotel, though it didn't look that shitty to me.

A wander back for a quiet evening. The hotel prepared a special evening meal for us, which we valiantly tackled without hunger and quickly regained our post lunch bloated demeanor.

The internet remained scrappy and it turned into a night for early bed, along with most of the others. We all just seemed tired and wanting to get ready for the big ride the next day.

The whisky soaked nights of jossing around were beyond our middle aged bodies. As usual when there is something important that requires extra rest and energy I had a fairly sleepless night. Dreading the big day.

This is the one I told Michael I did not expect to finish. And just today I'd had another fall.

At least I got to see the stars again, leaning out from our room, once the late night revellers had quit, the dogs had quietened and the lights were mostly turned off, it was time to stare at the staggering number of stars and galaxies.

Contemplating my infinite smallness, sleep came for a while.