Higher and higher

I love the sea!!! And in general I love water: I want to live in cities that are touched by the sea, or a lake, or a big river. If I see water I dive into it. I prefer holidays by the sea. For work I spend half the year by boat. The mountains? Beautiful, very beautiful, they are filled with many childhood memories, memories coloured in white by the snow, with autumn colours, and with summer greens. But the landscape that really resonates with me is that of the sea.

When we arrived in India, we did not have a detailed plan of what we were going to visit, but broadly speaking we had in mind to spend a few days in the famous 'golden triangle' (Delhi, Jaipur, Agra) and then to move slowly south to visit the beaches of Goa and Kerala ... but instead we were literally sucked into the Himalayas! After the first few days in Amritsar, where we visited the beautiful golden temple, we decided to make a quick trip to Dharamsala, or rather to Mcleod Ganj, a small village in the foothills of the Himalayas and home to the Dalai Lama's temple. This was to be the small consolation for skipping the Karakoram in Pakistan.

We leave Amritsar at mid-morning by local bus. The journey was so bumpy that it was even difficult to read the guide book of India because our eyes were struggling to keep track. We leave the sun to arrive in a cloudy and humid but warm atmosphere. Mcleod Ganj is not a valley, but a small village nestled between the slopes, not high, of the mountains. Low clouds are wedged between these mountains, creating a mystical landscape of glowing green. The spirituality of this small village seems to permeate from every stone, stream and tree, creating an attraction incomprehensible but strong enough to drive us further into the Himalayan interior. Instead of going south, we then decide to move to Manali, a little further north and a little higher up. After a night bus that would have made even the greatest polar explorers who crossed Drake's Passage nauseous, we arrive in Manali where warm sunshine and blue streams await us. Manali reminds me a lot of the landscapes of the Alps, except that every little bridge is decorated with Tibetan prayer flags. We find a cosy and delightful guest house in old Manali and our plan to spend just a day or two there slowly unravels and as our plan loosens so do we. Manali is soft, comfortable, cosy. The green mountains, the blue waterfalls, the apple orchards, the small street hugging uphill lined with small shops selling clothes and jewellery, or with 'cafes'. Life seems slower here, older women walk their cows and collect fodder, other women, of all ages, with children, gather near the water spring to wash clothes and blankets. The mystical atmosphere of Mcleod Ganj gives way to a more meditative one.

We are fine, but those mountains we see on the horizon, getting higher and higher, become too strong a lure. So we decide to visit a valley that is recommended to us by many people: Spiti Valley. And so we set off one morning at dawn to travel further and further north, higher and higher. The journey from Manali to Spiti takes about 10 hours, nine of which are on a dirt road. The bus climbs nimbly for the first hour, then goes through the Atal Tunnel, a few kilometres in the dark to come out into the light of a completely different landscape: the trees disappear, the bright green of the pines is replaced by the light olive green of the moss, the brown of the trunks turns into the yellow ochre of the stones. From here, a dirt road leads up the steep mountain walls. A lump in the throat trip. We have seats in the last row, so in addition to the knot in our throats from the fear of the road, we find ourselves with our stomachs in our throats from the constant jumping and bouncing. But the spectacle that unfolds before our eyes around every bend makes every jolt worthwhile. Higher and higher, we reach altitudes that I would never have imagined reaching, and as we pass the 4000m mark we begin to feel fatigue, winded and a little dizzy. When we get to Spiti, we find ourselves travelling through a long desert valley carved out by the Spiti River, which is fed mainly by the melting waters of the glaciers that give it a crystal-clear blue colour that shines in the sun. We arrive as far as Kaza, one of the small villages dotting the valley. We are at 4000m and are surrounded by high mountains, majestic and mighty. The Himalayan landscape looms up around us in all its elegance and majesty, crowned by white clouds against a deep, creamy blue sky. One of the most impressive spectacles of nature I have ever seen. Life in the village seems to have stopped in time, here (so a local tells us) in the summer one prepares for winter and during the winter one thinks about survival. This region was once part of Tibet, so the language, culture and even the appearance of the people is very different from the Indians we have met so far. We only stay two days because other plans await us, but we have time to visit the surroundings and especially to climb even higher to visit one of the highest Buddhist monastery in the world and the biggest center of Lama training, the Kee Monastery (or Kee Gompa). And so in these two days we keep going higher and higher, reaching at the end 4600m at an isolated Tibetan shrine: I had never been that high!

Friendliest person: the doctor who gave us a lift to Spiti, up to Kee Gompa (the Buddhist monastery in Kee), and told us about the life of the people in Spiti

Food: 'momos', a typical local dish, very similar to Chinese dumplings. They are eaten steamed or fried, filled with vegetables or meat.

Music: Pahadon Mein by Salman Elahi

Highlights of the trip: In Spiti you cannot get around by public transport, the best thing is to hire a motorbike. However, Peter and I do not have an international driving license, so we decided to hitchhike to see the surroundings. Most of the time we were 'picked up' by tractors :)

Lowlights of the trip: The bus from Dharamsala to Manali was the worst trip I have ever taken (but luckily shorter than the Quetta-Islamabad bus in Pakistan)