Day 6 28th April More village visits and insight into manure transportation

Photo above - the manure transportation crew.

Up the mountain to Tia village

After a late breakfast out in the sun, and an early morning power cut, we set off. We immediately headed off up into the mountains again, up quite a scary pass, heading for a village called Tia. We got held up by a train of donkeys carrying manure up the mountain - more on them later.

We went to the top of the village to see the gompa or monastery perched on the top of a hill. This one has a statue of the god of wisdom on top and was paid for by ex and current Indian servicemen to aid their spiritual journey. We then started walking back down to the main part of the village, when we saw a nun coming up the road. We stopped to talk to her. She had been down to check on some livestock, but was now going back up to the monastery, where a handful of other nuns live.

Friendly locals

We reached the heart of the tiny village, and everyone we saw was greeting us and asking where we had come from or were going to. Like a lot of these high mountain villages, there are a lot of houses that have been abandoned and new ones built, sometimes in quite a higgledy-piggledy fashion. There are lots of alleys, tunnels even, and tiny open spaces that you would not know were there.

The heart of the manure transportation business

It was in one of these tiny spaces that we came across a group of elderly ladies, a small child, and a couple of gentlemen having tea. They welcomed us and offered us tea and bread. Then suddenly through a tiny archway came a train of donkeys. The ladies immediately jumped into action and took some empty sacks from the ground and started furiously filling them with manure. The guys loaded them on to the donkeys and then within about 10 minutes a train of donkeys had been reloaded and were heading back up the mountain. All this activity was accompanied by a type of work song sung by the men. It was an amazing experience to see this happen, and the kindness of the village group who invited us to have tea and also to allow us to take photos was touching.

Back to the highway

Next it was back in to the car, down the mountain and pick up the main highway NH1 going north along the river Indus again. We passed another huge army camp, then we arrived in a bustling town called Khalti where we stopped for a quick snack. Shortly after getting under way again, we had to stop at a checkpoint to get our papers checked, as we get nearer, relatively, to Kashmir.

Now that we were back on the main highway we started seeing the safety slogan road signs again : “If safety is a question, patient is the answer”, “Give blood but not on the road”, and “ Safety is gainful, accident is painful”, my personal favourite.

More rock falls

Eventually the road started climbing quite steeply away from the river, and started to go through a long stretch where there seemed to be almost continual rock falls. There were huge piles of fallen rock at the side of the road, sometimes requiring a bit of weaving to get through, there were stretches where the road was covered with dust and small rocks where a fall had just recently been cleared, there were spots where boulders had crushed or destroyed the Armco road barriers. My personal favourite was where there was a boulder the size of a semi detached house completely blocking one side of the road…on a blind bend. Apparently it had been there two weeks. No sign to warn oncoming traffic that it was there.

A mile or so later we reached the village of Lamayuru (11,520ft/3500m) which at the last census suggested there were 117 households with a population of 667. Our hotel has an amazing view of the local monastery just up the road.

A wander around Lamayuru

At 4pm we went back out and walked in to the village for a look around. It is very small, quite ramshackle, built on a steep slope, dominated by the monastery, and is right next to the NH1. The lanes within the village are no more than dirt tracks and rocks. It has a charm though and is set in a very scenic location surryby mountains.

We learned earlier that the hotel does not have an electricity supply due to damage following recent snows, and we saw a power cable down in the village. They have a generator though which is switched on once it gets dark, to provide power for lighting. They cook with bottled gas.

Tomorrow we explore more of the local area.