Reduced to its elements, Spiti is just big rocks, heavy dust, colourless water and thin air. It is almost completely devoid of vegetation and supports scant life. The sun is so bright it cooks the skin and the winter climate so cold it freezes your breath. The wonder of Spiti is not in the variety of vegetation it supports, but in the scant that it does. The beauty of Spiti is not in the vibrancy of the landscape but the subtlety of it. The incredulity of Spiti is in how it overwhelms you so much – with so little.
Sometime in the night the wood in the furnace burned out. When I wake up in the morning my face is chilled and my body is warm. To acclimatise my body to the room, I create a small gap in my blanket from which the room air can seep in. When some measure of parity has been achieved, I decide to emerge. Jatin and Puneet are also up. We deliberate if any water should touch our face today or not. Jatin is in favour, Puneet against. I decide to base the decision on the weather and so I draw back the curtain and peer outside. The glass is frosted by frozen ice on the outside. I rush to get my camera before the sunlight decides to warm the window. The next 15 minutes are lost to the frosted ice.
Eventually, I muster the courage to wash my face and change. Even that insignificant chore, leaves me with a sense of pride. At breakfast the topic of discussion is batteries. For the last 3 days, it has been so cold that phones are taking 5-7 hours to charge, and our photographer friends can’t get the drone batteries to charge at all. Breakfast is simple but delicious – parathas, omelette, butter, pickle and tea.
After breakfast, we set out. The convoy begins rolling around 11 – in the direction of Manali. The road to Manali passes through 2 high altitude mountain passes – Kunjum and Rohtang. Both passes are closed since November, as is much of the road leading up to them. For 5 days we have been travelling, higher and farther. Our expedition has been rolling forward unidirectionally. Today we hope to reach the end of the road, the summit, the apogee – the place from where there is no option but to return.
As we pull further away from Kaza, the road goes from shades of grey to hues of white. The straight level valley road begins to curve along the mountainsides. We pass villages, mountains and valleys glittering in the sunshine covered by a smooth blanket of snow. Interspersed in the undulations of the pristine white landscape are stripes, swipes, streaks and swirls of light brown, where the mountain asserts its identity. Drifting on a narrow road in the middle of this surreal landscape is our awestruck cavalcade. Eventually the word arrives that the road ahead is impregnable and so we halt to marvel at the landscape and to revel in this moment. This is the summit of our expedition and the beginning of the end of our journey.
But some adventure still awaits…
