By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
I open my eyes only to witness a titanic canvas with black colour spills all over. I close them back again. For it takes time for a city-dweller’s pupils to adjust to this untamed beauty. This time, I pinch myself hard and strive to see beyond the coal-black yonder. Little by little in tits and bits they start appearing; first, the strongest shiners followed by the ones who only make their presence feel if you directionally stare at them. Before I can comprehend, the reflections in the sky feel like someone has hanged a larger-than-life-sized disco ball and forgot to unfasten it. Amidst Lesser Himalayas in a hamlet named Tabo, as I lay flat on my back on an unused helipad, the fairy-dust like night sky shimmering with all glitter stars, blanked my brain leaving me to feel nothing but the flowing tears of joy. *** Unlike the other locals in the state transport bus, I am exhausted by the 8-hour long drive from Kalpa to Tabo. For it rather feels like journeying on a horizontal unsmoothed cement wall—constant cavities and bulges are making my head bang first on the window to the left, and then forcing me to make involuntary touches to the Spitian lady on the right. But credits to the ‘Spiti river meets the barren mountain at the horizon’ views outside, I say sorry and choose not to complain. I remember as an Indian child, I used to own those small orangish-yellow coloured plastic cameras, which upon pressing the click button, changed images from the preloaded reel. I believe I am unknowingly, still carrying that. As soon as I blink, the quaint frames outside the bus window—acting like a camera lens—changes, as if the blinking was meant to be the click press. Only this time the frames are real and not the reflection of any reel. Half-an-hour more into the bus and I breathe a sense of relief upon sighting a colourful gate that reads ‘Welcome to Tabo’. As soon as the brakes hit, I, myself rush on to the top of the bus to collect my belongings. As I hold the right shoulder strap of my rucksack and with force swing it onto my back, I naturally happen to turn around. Now, I know a place that can only be reached after crossing one of the world’s most treacherous roads, would not have high-rise establishments. So yes, panoramic glances of the Himalayas were anticipated but I sure didn’t expect these uninformed attacks of live desktop wallpapers for as far as some savage mountain didn’t occlude my sight. As I sip mint tea in a traditional Spitian household, Mr. Phuntsukh, the humble owner of my homestay, explains the old & the new Chor-Khos monasteries are probably the only reason why Tabo witness backpackers from around the world. Apart from being a millennium old, it is India’s oldest monastery continuously functioning since its inception. And not only this, he tells, of how he was only 22 years old when Dalai Lama himself did a Kalachakra initiation in the new monastery built in 1996 celebrating Tabo’s 1000+ years. Mr. Phuntsukh, like the other 500 aboriginals, never gets tired of expressing love about his own version of the promised land—Tabo. Later in the night, I finally decide to break-up with the snugly blanket and go out in the freezing cold. As I lay down on the chilly cemented helipad, the pitch-dark night sky with sparkling dots of glitter-like stars is putting all the cameras to shame. It is not the kind of night you click pictures of, instead it is the kind where you just lay down and try and take it all in. One at a time. It is the kind of night where not only you can sight the milky way galaxy, but it is also the kind where you can see the planets—Jupiter, Mars, and Venus—with naked eyes. The kind of night where you can wish for multiple wishes as there is no scarcity of shooting stars. I can fathom why it takes 3 days to reach places like these and why, on a whim, I would agree to come here again and again.