The revelry from the night before thankfully left few traces on us the next morning. All of us woke up as scheduled and got ready by around 4.30 am. Our hotel owner had not woken up, and would not be woken up by any means. He paid the price for this, quite literally. We were in a hurry and hence we just hung the lock on our door, couldn't pay him for our tea the previous night and began the long walk to main Manali. Having reached there we boarded our shared cab, which incidentally had only the four of us and pushed off to our second way-point- Keylong. Keylong would give us our first look at the stark, barren beauty of the Lahaul Valley.
And as luck would have it, we met with our adversary within an hour. Another serpentine traffic jam, the cause the same. We moved ahead and steadily made our way higher, snaking through the towering mountains, their greenery disrupted at regular intervals by mudslides. And then we hit the big one. Once we were sure that our vehicle was jammed in the queue, Gussu and I decided to take a walk to source of the jam and see how it was working out. Along the way we met some roadside food vendors, whose good business sense had pushed them down the mountain to the jam site and also cause them to triple the prices of their goods.
After a half an hour walk we reached the source and found it to be a rather exciting event. A few years ago a cloudburst washed away all the vegetation off this plot of land. Ever since, whenever it rains, the road turns into a mud path and cars often find it hard to find traction as the make their way up the treacherous slope. The paharis, friendly and helpful as they are, join hands with car owners to give the struggling cars a helping hand. Gussu and I watched in excitement as the cars and heavily loaded oil tankers crossed the area one by one, their engines groaning and their tyres screeching and spinning as they attempted the climb. Some cars got stuck and started rolling back and nearly fell off the cliff. The locals would then give them a helping hand. We too pitched in and got a share of the excitement. Some of the cars also left behind marks of their struggle behind in the form of burnt rubber. Burnt rubber on a wet, muddy road.
We filmed our car crossing this stretch (which it did with surprising ease) and hopped on, hoping that this was the last of it. All of us of course, in our hearts, knew the answer to that question.
As we carried on to higher altitudes the vegetation changed and an open view from the top enabled us to see that the jam we'd left behind had grown to almost 5 kilometers long. Along the way we also saw the wreckage of an unfortunate truck that had fallen into the ravine and been mangled beyond belief. Without any further incidents we made it to Rohtang Pass and across the dirt left by the tourists and past the zero point at 13050 feet, into the Lahaul Valley. The mind of the local tourist is shown very clearly by the fact that there were hardly any vehicles on the other side of the pass. The weather changed drastically and so did the view. From the tourist infested windward side, we changed over to stark, bare, and pristine rainshadow area of the Lahaul Valley.
However beautiful the view was, the road turned into a dusty, narrow path, eaten up by streams of melting snow at regular intervals. We slowly made our way to the valley floor, where we got our first view of the Bhaga river. A quick meal at Koksar, and two hours later, we'd reached Keylong.
Settled amid the mountains, Keylong is a small, sleepy little hamlet. Just to give the reader a measure of its remoteness, there are very few vegetarian dishes available because veggies are expensive and hard to supply. It is flanked by 3 monasteries, all of which were quite a walk away. For that evening we decided to roam around Keylong 'Town' and then come back. A few games of the staple sport later, we'd dozed off, hoping to find our bus to Leh in the morning, which was to arrive at Keylong from Manali the next morning.
That of course, as our experience teaches us, was not to be.
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