Meadows, Ibex and Coke!

Our next stop was the highest motorable village in the world - Kibbar - snuggled high up at 3800 mts. Kibbar turned out to be an oasis in the rocky barren Spiti desert with its green pea meadows and totally "made-for-rolling-down" hills (ofcourse once u really start rolling down you are covered with sheep poop!). It's a strange place - isolated from the rest of the country for 8 months a year when snowfall cuts off all supplies. The people here seem to be doing quite well though- maybe from the pea farming or maybe they are just happy living in such a beautiful place. Or maybe I am being the typical tourist and exoticizing their misery - I am sure they wd trade places with me any day...

PS: I am cheating on the pic - it's actually of this place near Alchi (near Leh) but it reminded me of Kibbar & yes these are pea farms! What can I do, I didnt have a digital in 2001!

All the wime oops iwne oops wine I had with Anne is making me woozt woosy woozy! So I will do some unacademic stuff like blogingg..

In Kibbar we were staying in the first floor of a Kibbarian's house - most amazing place with roots coming out of his roof to keep the place warm and a hole in the ground as a loo! One morning A & I decided to venture out to the highest village the world - after a lot of trekking thru nowhere land reached this patch of land with 5 huts - which was apparently our destination. We lay down next to sheep poop and rested for a while only to head back on nowhere road - it was actually a river bed which was slippery and nasty and steep as hell. But being a pseudo feminist (!) I had to pretend to be all brave & competent! After this gruelling walk we turned up without any fanfare at the only restuarant in Kibbar to find our fellow travellers looking nice and rested over a bottle of coke. I was livid and demanded one for myself only to be told that the coke supply for the month had been exhausted and the next case would be arriving next year! So all i could do to keep my brave front was to burst into tears! HEHEHEHHEH

And since we had actually achived nothing except a rest next to poop we told them tall tales of ibex and rare species that we saw in our imaginary sanctuary. I was somehow sure ibex was a pretty deer - ofcourse they turned out to be these ugly bulls with horns that we encountered for real in Leh 4 years later!

Few memories of Kibbar - aprt from these real memorable ones..

The first one is of this woman yelling out about some "women's meeting" and her voice echoing thru the entire valley " something something saari mahilae ... varna zurmaana 100 rupayya". I was impressed not just by this brilliant way of getting the msg across to the entire town without a phone, but also the messenger's volume - Wooppeee for Spitian feminists!