Facelessman
Active Member
Whoever said “all the best laid plans of mice and men go awry” was probably predicting what would happen to our plans to travel to Spiti. Our plan did not go awry but it did change in unexpected ways.
It all started out with a phone call to my longtime friend (and BCM’er), Indian Traveler (IT) in mid-May. I had just booked my wife and children on a flight to Bagdogra for their summer vacations and called IT to check if he would be interested in realizing our long-term dream of traveling to Spiti together. I knew it would be a long shot as he would need to convince his better half (and two boys) to let him go on an ‘all boys’ trip. We all know what a tall order that is! Nevertheless, I still thought I would give it a go and picked up the phone.
IT is an old hand at trips and has been my companion on many adventures to the mountains – right from our college days. His response to my phone call was mildly optimistic which gave me hope. We ended our brief conversation with to-do’s for both of us. I was to start putting a first draft of our plan together while he would begin working on his better half.
Cutting to late-May, many Excel files and hours of pondering over options, we had our plan ready. We were going to do Spiti from June 4th to 15th. We explored many options (including Pin valley in our itinerary) but eventually settled on the following:
June 04th – Delhi to Fagu
June 05th – Fagu to Kalpa
June 06th – Kalpa to Nako
June 07th – Nako to Rangrik (excursion to Tabo Monastery)
June 08th – Rangrik to Lossar (excursion to Key, Kibber)
June 09th – Lossar (excursion to Kunzum La)
June 10th – Lossar to Kaza (excursion to Langza, Komick)
June 11th – Kaza to Tabo (excursion to Dhankar Monastery)
June 12th – Tabo to Kalpa
June 13th – Kalpa
June 14th – Kalpa to Narkanda
June 15th – Narkanda to Delhi
As you have seen, we were not planning to do ‘the circuit’ but more of a semi-circle, which allowed us to climb up via Kinnaur, cover Spiti and return via Kinnaur. This meant that we would not do the Kunzum-Rohtang leg and skip Lahaul.
Little did we know that providence had something else up its sleeve…(to be continued...)
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