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“Why would you ever want to stay in a slum if you get to stay in decent hotels??”

That’s exactly the reply the tour organizer gave us on asking if we can stay in local homestays as because we thought we can feel the local essence better that way. I was left dumbstruck as to how can a person strike such an insult on another person without ever knowing the ground knowledge. Coz, by then, I have had a fair idea about homestay standards through searching and at least had no doubt about locational beauty and decency of each place. In any case, we chose to listen more what other probable hindrances he was keen to show us on our first ever high altitude travel to a place very less travelled by commercial tourists.

It was the year 2018. We were actually planning for Ladakh. One of our friend along with his wife and 10 year old son were to accompany us – me & my husband. It was my uncle who first mentioned the name of Kinnaur and Spiti to us. He had been to Ladakh before. & I had gone to him to ask for some kind of guidance for our upcoming tour to Ladakh. Of course he was happy to help, but in between, he mentioned about Spiti. Till then, we only knew about Shimla Manali, Dharamshala Dalhousie as far as Himachal Pradesh is concerned. Never had I heard about this circuit. Obviously, it was inferred that few tourists actually are aware of the existence of such a place in HP. My uncle had tried to travel along the route once with his middle aged friends & their family, but had returned back from midway after observing the aloofness of the region. Obviously, not all have the guts to travel the off-routes, to places least known to general public.

Anyways, so this story of his did take our attention. Come on, everybody of us knows about Ladakh – we watch it on movies, on each travelogue. Its no doubt a dream destination for any mountain lover, for any adventure seeker. But what is this destination that’s comparatively easily reachable, is less hard on the pocket, but very few are actually aware of this. We started our own online research. Spiti – The Middle Land, the cold desert. We started studying maps and travel routes, started asking our biker friends coz by now, this has become clear, if not tourists, but this route should be in any biker’s travel plan. And we got to learn about Chandratal – the mythical moon lake and along with it, the luck each person needs to get the chance to visit the lake since the route remains mostly closed due to snow. The more informations we were gathering, the more it piqued our admiration and enthusiasm to be at the place. We shared each information to our friends who were to accompany us in the tour and though, they had a 10 year old child tagging along, they thankfully too shared our enthusiasm and had struck the right chord meant for adventure seekers, to go beyond the comfort level.

So, it was them who suggested to visit this tour operator. He had previously planned for one of their outing in Uttarakhand and that’s the reason they asked us to try him once. Though we were apprehensive at first since the vast amount of studies and research work and interviews we had conducted by then, we were pretty sure that we can go ahead with our plan ourselves without any kind of help. But then, we agreed to their request thinking nothing can go unused. May be he can guide us better with his experience. And there we made the mistake.

The first negetive attitude – to what I referred in the beginning as far as our wish to try homestays are concerned. The next hindrance – its dangerous to even think of visiting Chandratal that too with a 10 year old child and family. And by the time we came out, we were totally demotivated to undergo this trip, all our studies and research-work regarding Spiti all these days seemed to go in vain. We stood solemnly thinking what to do next. Either, we go with our gut instinct, to go as per planned,  to face what may come in the process, or go for the ‘safer’ way. And of course knowing our quest for adventure7, we chose to take the risk, knowing very well if anything goes wrong, IT WILL BE ON US BOTH & no one else to blame. 

And thus we started our preparation for our 1st Spiti trip. The month was mid May approx and we were to undergo a 13-14 day journey  in total (including the travelling part, though now I know, to actually explore each place, you need more than a fortnight) as our travel partners along with us were fixated on one thing – to explore to the fullest. No ‘Touch & Go’ for us.

To-Do list was made, rather it’s a To-Must -Carry list. Adequate woolens and warmers to negate the plummeting night temperature. Dry Food for emergency or while en-route, in case road side eateries are missing. And thus started our process of over loading baggage (a minor problem which the airport officials gladly overlooked). We were to fly directly to Delhi to save time and reach our 1st destination – Shimla within 24 hours.

Flying to Delhi was alright. We reached by noon and from their we were to take a Shatabdi to Chandigarh. Our initial plan has been to take the early morning toy train at 4 in the morning from Kalka for which we were in such a haste. But since while we were boarding our flight, out toytrain tickets was not confirmed, we thought to start from Chandigarh by road the time we reach without wasting our time – a mistake on our part, the reasons for which I will explain later in my  interference. And so started our hectic journey. Flight was fine, but the time you have to get yourself transferred to NDLS for your onward journey to Chandigarh with all the baggage was hectic, a point which we hadn’t thought of before. Never-mind, we took our 5 pm Shatabdi and by 8.30 pm the same say, we had reached Chandigarh where our cab on which we will be travelling for the next 12 days was already parked. Without wasting any further time, we started for Shimla at night. And by that time we all were actually quite tired. We calculated our time to be reaching Shimla at dawn. Dinner to be taken en-route. Anyways, everything were going as planned, leaving some miscalculations and the hecticness of the whole journey in our wish to start our trip to the mountains at the earliest possible. 

There were quite a traffic on road till Parmanu after which it started receding as  we went deeper into the night leaving aside the loaded trucks. We were missing out the scenic landscape no doubt due to the darkness but then we were too tired  as well to care much about it. The place we stopped for dinner late at night, at a beautiful location most probably, since except for the darkness around us and the occasional blinking lights of traffic on road, we could not fathom much. But here we are sitting on an open terrace for our open air dinner of chapatis and vegetable curry. We were already at an altitude surrounded by dark alpine forest. Our ‘ustad g’ the cab driver pointed out to the wildfire directly before us – red flames arising in the middle of all the darkness. It was surreal.

It was approx. 3.30 in the morning we reached Shimla and the first problem of Shimla specifically came before us which we were unaware of. It was the same as our very own Darjeeling where cars are allowed till a specific point from where you have to go all up walking. Imagine our condition, standing with the baggage and thinking how to manage this at this hour after a whole day of journey. Some local cars were standing who are to carry the baggage up to some distance of course at an extra cost. So that was a saviour. Rest, its time to actually starting to climb up to the ridge where we had booked our hotel thinking closeness to the main area of Shimla but unaware of this menace – with the local dogs in company, albeit that was an experience in itself. If not for the darkness, the beauty of an empty ridge  with the surrounding landscape of the Queen of Hills had to be an added bliss. We reached our hotel with a thundering heart, and we were actually enjoying the whole turn of events any how, woke up the care taker and after checking in, had no further urge of any thing but calling it a day and going to sleep. & soon we were transferred to some other realm.