words from the world

A white 4x4, Cashmiri guide and driver, an Australian pictures hunter who wanders about the world for 30 years, a young Swedish girl who has courageously chosen India as her first country, a Canadian lumberjack, untiring traveler, and a little French guy that decided to go round the world 3 months ago. An eclectic team and a 10-day communal life in the close future.
We leave Shimla for a long journey by jeep. The discussion starts in the close space of the vehicle. We learn from each other.
The cultures diversity enriches.
The winding road raises into a nascent valley. The misty veil glides onto the hills and wraps the silent nature up. We stop for a stroll in the forest marked out by a Hindu temple at the top. No breathtaking view, nasty clouds weaves a thick fence. Only just a bench to get our breath back and share a chocolate bar.







We start again. The chats carries on. Laughs. Travel experiences. Pieces of advice on next destinations. The frustrating feeling of an unknown chunk in the world. We bring it to mind, we use a few superlatives, we make dream the audience, and this place, utterly absent in my mind, adds up to the list of things to see. More we travel, more places to visit. An endless wheel, traveling makes and unmakes you. On the bumpy Indian roads, we deal with the bears and the salmon fishing into the rivers of Alaska. The visit of the Hanuman temple drags us out of the jeep. A Disneyland-like statue of the monkey-god invites vehicles to stop and spend some moments in silence.




We arrive in Sarahan. The darkness-blackened roofs of the temple announce a great visit for tomorrow morning. We sit down at a small restaurant. The cracked paint, canteen tables, bashed-in saucepan. A Nepali family runs the restaurant and in this only 10-m² room, the comfort of a familial meal, we feel at home.


Hectic awakening. No time to linger, we start tracking the large spiders which invaded the room, a bucket and a bowl as weapons. Then, we take a savoury breakfast and we relate our morning feats.
We leave to visit the temple. Exquisite wood-carved pediments, a hindu ceremony and a carmine tikka on the forehead.






We keep on visiting around the village and it's time to go. On the flank of the road, a cow struggles with a plastic box clung to its head.
The valley subsides. The breathtaking road, carved into the cliff at several hundreds meters high from the ground livens up when multicoloured trucks meet. Wing mirrors bang together. Driving back is sometimes the only solution and the jeep waits close to the void. It goes again on the close turns, pushing down the horn to warn the other vehicles. A dangerously high road that gives thrills to the passengers sitting along the precipice.
A valley with Himalayan dimensions.
The roads bleed the hill white that landslides wreck. Months of works to rebuild the missing parts. An unsuspected activity livens our aerial road when a herd of sheep makes a traffic jam or when a baba sadhu gives candies to the tired drivers and passengers.











We spend 2 nights in Sangla. A wooden temple overlooks the village. We must take off the shoes, don a hat and fasten a belt to get in the old monument.
Clumsy alleyways, purple, azure orchards and flower beds.
The apple trees are weighed down with the red fruits. In the depths of the village, houses with bare or whitewashed harbour a few Tibetan Buddhist souls in exile.










The visit of Sangla is interrupted by an excursion to the village of Chitkul, last village before the Tibetan border. At the wintertime, snowfalls may cut the access to the village. Then, this one lives in autarky, forgotten by the faraway civilization. Biting cold, far from the blazing sun of the Delhi basin.









Tomato omlette, toats with tasteless jam and black tea. En route to Kalpa. Rucksacks piled up in the back of the car, some handlings to get out of the narrow path of the guesthouse, we leave again. The asphalted strip starts again its twirling danse into the wounded cliff while the river below seems to be a mere stream. A dizzy spell strikes me as I size up the turquoise-blue ribbon down the valley. The ballet of the adorned trucks terrifies us, each turn is a trial. We chat to forget the void. A few stops to take photos.
The "Kalpa" sign announces the end of the stage. Here, the marijuana grows like the weed. And the apple trees bend with the weight of their loads. In the distance, the headland of the Kinnaur Kailash makes some bashful appearances through the clouds. In good weather, it lights up with 7 seven different colors throughout the day. Kalpa, another village clung to the slopes of a hill which lives difficult moments when the wind sweeps over the area.











A new day, the road keeps on raising. Dry nature, inhospitable nature. Bushes gush out here and there. The human paw inlaid some ramshackle and insignificant buildings in the earthy titan. The road zigzags on the steep slopes and vanishes at the entrance of Nako. Below the hills, a tiny lake soaks up a few souls who gathered to struggle better. The Himalayan scenery as the only comfort of this hard life. For us, we gorge ourselves on these impressions, these smiles, these wind-stroked stones, these fringes-worn flags fluttering at the top of a mound, these cubic and uneven houses. Where is the madness of the Indian cities ? The horns of the rickshaws and the crawling poverty on the pavements ? Hard to believe we'll still in India. However, that's this diversity which attracts flocks of tourists, far from the hackneyed routes. A simple journey by train and the ecstasy of a bit of greenery clears away the nervous breakdown and the unease of a seething town. We feel well here.