On Saturday afternoon, we travelled to Tabo at the other end of the Spiti Valley. The road follows the Spiti River along the valley floor, with spectacular sandstone cliffs rising above us. The steep scree slopes between are studded with huge boulders poised to crash down onto the road at the slightest nudge. Rising above everything is a jagged line of high peaks, black and white against the blue sky. Angdrup drove us again, taking 1hr 45 minutes over a journey we expected to take up to 3 hours.
We had a day off on Sunday to appreciate Tabo monastery, 1000 years old, and climb up to the old monks meditation caves tucked into the cliff above. There is a new monastery here too, including a big hostel to house the monks, and a monk school for youngsters. Traditionally the third child of a family will become a monk or nun. We stayed in the monastery boarding house, a ramshackle timber and clay place run by the monks. There are lots of traditional buildings in Tabo; Pete is most knowledgeable about various roofing techniques following his attendance at the Oxford Spiti Conference 2 years ago!
There are no chickens in Tabo. The chicken man has gone on holiday, apparently taking all his chickens with him, for reasons best known to himself. Some cafes admit the lack of chicken, some don’t, letting their unsuspecting customers order chicken dishes regardless….and serving them goodness knows what! Benny and Fred, knowing this, still decided to order chicken momos for dinner. Momos are like stuffed dumplings, and you can’t see what’s inside – you just bite and see. We never did work out what was inside their momos, but everyone brave enough to try a bite, spat it out!
There’s also no alcohol in Tabo. A few years ago, the women of the village, fed up with their menfolk drinking too much, formed a womens cooperative, closed the beer shop and banned all alcohol from Tabo. They banned gambling too while they were at it. The ban seems to be holding as there really is not a drop to be found in Tabo, despite considerable effort to flush some out by Ben, Pete and Jules.
Monday morning found us at Serkong School in Tabo. There are 280 children here, a mixture of boarders and day students, plus around 60 young monks. The monks start school between 4 and 8 years old, and at age 10 they leave Serkong to live at Tabo monastery full time.
We were made most welcome by Ramesh, who chatted to us after the show with his colleague Nailatha. We were the first theatre company to perform a play at their school in all its 20 years, so they were enthusiastic and full of ideas and future plans afterwards.
Ramesh said “This is our first time to see, for the students, foreigners came from far off places. A different kind of experience in front of the children, and in different languages. I hope they can learn many things. We didn’t see such things in our lives before so we’ve got many new ideas from you guys.”
He commented that their students were often shy with foreign visitors and didn’t interact much – he was pleased to see how well they joined in with the show and talked and played with us afterwards. For us, this is the magic that having our own kids involved brings to the table – the effortless bridging of cultural divides that comes so naturally to children.
Both teachers were enthusiastic about using the performance to inspire teaching. Ramesh said “It is a good lesson for us teachers, not only for the students…”
Nailatha agreed, “Not to go with the books only, we can play, we can teach them acting, and act something”
Ramesh was very pleased at how the interactive elements of the play brought together the different groups within the school – boarders, day pupils and monks – who are often quite separate.
We talked about the themes of the play, and Nailatha said, “For students, wealth is like their knowledge. Knowledge is wealth for them, right now.”
(Serkong staff watching the show)
Ramesh invited us back to Serkong, and it would certainly be an absolute pleasure to return.
As we had left the boarding house in the morning, a monk on reception commented that the road between Tabo and Kaza was closed due to landslides after heavy rain on Sunday afternoon. After the show we called Kaza and discovered that the road had just been cleared and we needed to be ready to go at 2pm. Our driver appeared at 1.30pm, looking anxiously at the darkening sky and indicating that we needed to leave as soon as possible. We quickly loaded our gear into the bus and set off.
Just outside Tabo we paused at a rickety rope bridge crossing the Spiti River, which was perfect for recreating the troll scene. The weather was visibly worsening however, and we hadn’t yet reached the landslip area, so Pete contented himself with a few pictures…..for now.
As we entered the village of Sichling, the road became a slippery track of yellow mud. The houses and fields either side of the road were deep in thick mud, flowing right inside the houses. I felt so sorry for the villagers arranging their bedding on walls and hedges to dry, especially looking up at a black sky that promised nothing but more of the same.
A few miles from Sichling the valley narrowed, the scree slopes held at an impossible angle, the road somehow cut into the side, a narrow ribbon winding along the valleys wall. Suddenly we noticed stones tumbling down onto the road. Looking ahead we could see clouds of dust had started to rise up from lots of different places on the track ahead, as trickles of loose scree and small rocks started to flow down the mountainside and onto the road. The whole cliff looked ready to go. The loose section was about 500m long. Our driver put his foot down. We all held our breath as we whizzed past the section of slipping scree and out the other end. Scary moment.
Behind us the sky was black, and it looked very clear that the road would soon be blocked again. We passed a few cars going the opposite direction, into the darkness. Thunder rumbled all around us promising imminent downpours. As we pulled into the Old Monk we felt a huge sense of relief that we had made it back safely to Kaza.
Climate change has brought rain to Spiti. You’d think that rain would be welcome in a desert, but actually these torrential downpours are destructive and deadly, loosening the unstable cliffs, sweeping away roads and vital connections between villages, and damaging the traditional mud houses.
All through the afternoon, thunder cracked and the rain lashed down onto Kaza, filling dry river beds and gullies with torrents of brown water thick with mud, turning the main street into a river. Thinking of the poor souls out on the mountain roads, today we are very relieved that tomorrows show is in walking distance.