Father Spirit: the Messenger

Jai Masih ki,

Towering walls of rock funnel us forward as we make good time through the boulder fields of Lahaul Valley. Heading northeast on a what’s been used as a Himalayan rally circuit, I chat with dad about southern exposure. The stark contrast between slopes strikes me. To our left the rocks are bare as bones, but burnishing a bright white coat the covered cliffs on our right burn brighter despite the shadows.

Winding our way up towards the Kunzum Pass, we cross ice crusted streams while spray from falling glacier runoff coats my face. Plowing through deep muddy ruts and carefully tight roping tire tracks through the snow we near the final ascent to the pass which sits at 14,931ft. Soon it becomes painfully obvious there will be no tight roping up the shadowy switchbacks. There’s nary a stone or clod, nothing but a fresh three inches of snow to serve as our path. Rounding the hair pin bends where the road is steepest serves the greatest challenge. Tipping the bike even a fraction from center sends me sprawling, but there’s 170 degrees of turn to be made and working the clutch for good power at slow speeds, the standard off road strategy, is a sure fire way to kick the back end out. Even throttle in first gear makes the passage tenable and I’m beginning to get the hang of it as we twist our way to the top. Two hours but only seven kilometers after the slippery sliding ascent began we make the passage through the peaks and the snow dissipates.

The night we reached Kaza we crossed over our highest ridge line of 16,000ft. Kaza is the point farthest from our origin and we were welcomed with incredible warmth. Dad was blessed three times over with ceremonial scarves and we saw much of the local fare. Auntie, as we called her, baked thousands of chapattis with her community that morning and the next day they were preparing to make 10,000 momos, which are delicious dumplings. Thirty-some villages were gathering to celebrate a birth. We were invited and wistful but couldn’t stay long enough to dance on the night of the celebration. As it was barley loaves, local distilling practices, chai and chapattis were all shared as we sat round the hearth burning with yak and cow dung. Much to my relief it was clean burning as any soft wood and I relished the warmth.

We made front page news in the Himachal edition of the Dainik Jagran paper. The main addition has us on the back page which is apparently the second most prominent place over here. They are calling me Shravan Kumar and changed a few facts to fit things to his story, which is disappointing. Yet it’s the largest Hindi newspaper with a circulation of 56,600,000 and I’m glad that the word that is getting out even if it is a bit distorted: http://bit.ly/1DLL6X.

We’ve been back for a few days now, and Pop started asking what our next activity would be on day two :-) There were of course major challenges during the eight day expedition of over 1,000 miles, but the team was amazing in their support, and it went far beyond what I could have expected. I rode the bike the whole way and the last day I encouraged Dad to take advantage of the Jeep because I was pretty exhausted. When he’s riding it takes about three time more energy to navigate the paths, but he wanted to go with me and that meant more then rest. So we made our way together for much of that day as well.

It’s been good relaxing a bit these past days. We made a move to Rishikesh today and are taking advantage of the spacious house the Bhandaris have made available to us here. We’ll take a few short trips before our next journey into the mountains, but I’m looking forward to the peace of a slower pace for some time.

If you look closely at the satellite image one can see the northern loop we took through the mountains. We had to get special permits to cross the “inner line” and came within a stone’s throw of Tibet.

Love,
-Jonathan & Pop