The final week of the Yak Pack Theatre Project takes us to some of the highest villages in the world. In the summer the villagers work together every daylight hour to coax food, fodder and cash crops from their parched rocky fields in order to survive. In the winter they are completely isolated from the rest of the world for around 6 months – snow preventing any travel, temperatures down to minus 40, no phone lines, no internet, they only have each other.
No wonder they know how to have a good party, find the fun in everything, and always make time to sit and talk and drink tea – these are survival skills.
We spent a night in Kibber village to acclimatise further – we are going to be performing and trekking between 4,300m and 4,800m for the next week – considerably higher than Kaza. The air is noticeably thinner and it’s very easy to suddenly find yourself dizzy and nauseous from a flight of stairs or standing up too quickly.
Like all villages, the families in Kibber each own a few goats, or a yak, or a couple of cows. Every morning the animals come out of the little pens underneath each house and file out of the village, bells ringing, in the care of the shepherds who take them up to the high pastures for the day. Five or six women followed the village herd, picking up the precious dung from the road and popping it into baskets on their backs.
On Sunday we drove to Langza for our first village show and to meet up with our yaks. Langza is famed for its fossils, which are exactly the same as we find at home in Dorset. I love this connection with Spiti, once under the Tethys Sea, before the formation of the Himalayas pushed the seabed into the sky.
Langza used to be the village of potters, who made clay vessels which were traded all over Spiti. There is only one potter working in Langza now, thanks to plastic and metal. The children had turns making bowls on his potters wheel, whilst we eyed up the open spaces in the village and talked with locals about where they would like us to perform.
The weather was closing in as we chatted, dark clouds coming down the valley, and forked lightening silhouetting Chau Chau Nilda, a 6300m snow-topped peak standing behind the village. We had little choice but to abandon an outdoor show and head up to the Lang, a temple at the highest point in the village.
The Lang turned out to be the smallest, dustiest and darkest venue imaginable. Tendrils of soot dripped down from the ceiling of sticks, so low it touched Bens head. We had to use half the space for the stage, and about 40 villagers squeezed into the remaining space. No electricity but luckily lots of people brought lamps and torches for us to use, and a great deal of fun was had by all.
Monday dawned grey and gloomy, but the excitement of meeting our yaks overrode our worry about forth-coming rain. Izzy and Fred christened them Chucky (who has earrings and is very placid) and Norman (huge curving horns and more feisty). We also have 3 donkeys in our caravan, sturdy little chaps who bundle along the path in a little mob, festooned with guitars and costume bags.
Unfortunately the altitude has taken its toll on Benny, who has felt unwell since the show in Langza. After a bad night, he is installed on Norman for the walk to the next village of Hikkim, in the hope that resting rather than walking will make a difference. Izzy and Fred doubled up on Chucky, and we set off for Hikkim as a light drizzle began.
The light drizzle worsened into torrential rain and howling gales. Although we were grateful for the absence of biting insects, every drop of English stoicism towards Weather was required. We have no waterproofs because we are in a desert!! We were extremely grateful to see Hikkim come into view a couple of hours later, nestled into a bowl of hillside, black shale steeply sloping into terraced fields green with barley and peas. Our hosts took us into their big downstairs room where we sat on rugs around a fiercely hot yak-dung fuelled stove, drank chai and dried out.
Our homestay is a typical Spitian mud built house. It’s built into a south-facing slope so that the sun can warm the rooms, and the thick mud walls provide great insulation. The roof is stacked with animal fodder ready for winter, though rain is currently dripping through in a quite a few places – flat mud roofs are made for deserts and don’t cope well with this unusual amount of rain. The sunny upstairs rooms where we’re sleeping are only used in summer. In winter the whole family uses just the big downstairs room in the warmest part of the house.
Poor Benny still wasn’t feeling better – getting soaked probably didn’t help – so we bundled him into bed and re-jigged the cast. With just an hour to go before tonights show, our children yet again amazed us. Ollie took on the role of Boy, Alfie took on the challenge of the Chicken and Freddie made a very endearing Young Man at the end. Numerous changes to almost every scene.
Like Langza, Hikkim village invited us to perform in the Lang. The temple stands alone, facing the village across a small stream-carved gorge. Up on the roof a tall bundle of sticks, ribbons and flags represents the village deity. There was a ceremony taking place in the Lang. About 80 people were crowded into a hall smaller than the one in Langza. They were drinking tea, banging a gong, chanting gently and showing no sign whatsoever of moving so we could set up!
The ceremony was part of a horse festival was going on for a couple of days including all the surrounding villages. Youths race horses round the perimeter of the villages to bring good luck. The start and finish of the racing was somewhat unclear, probably due to the rather drunken nature of the riders. We drank tea and waited for events to unfold, the show will happen when it happens. Going with the flow and making last minutes changes has been a feature of almost every performance!
At about 7pm, just as it was getting dark, we managed to persuade about 20 rather sozzled chaps (and a few ladies) to move from where we needed to set up. To the general entertainment of everyone we got things ready, then embarked on the performance to around 70 local people absolutely crammed into the tiniest space possible. The cast coped incredibly well with the lack of Benny, and it’s a relief to know we all know the play well enough to handle last minute madness. There was a really fun-loving festival atmosphere, and it felt like we were the culmination of a day of relaxation and celebration for these hard-working people.
I took photos standing on a pile of yak dung next to a young monk recording every moment on his ipad. The juxtaposition of ancient lifestyles and traditions with the totally modern is always surprising.
The horse-riders joined us in our homestay for dinner, trying to persuade Kaku to go on a wild night ride with them. They brought chang (barley beer) and arak (spirit alcohol also made from barley) and the party continued. They vanished outside about 10pm and with much hilarity they hoisted each other bareback onto their horses. With a jangle of bells and much whooping they set off into the pitch dark night for Langza.
Silence descended again in their wake, the total peace you only find miles and miles from anywhere. The Milky Way shone clear overhead, an incredible star-scape with no streetlights for hundreds of miles.