JUN-B-7
THE
ROAD TRIP UP ALONG THE RAGING SUTLEJ RIVER
TO THE VILLAGE OF SANGLA IN THE KINNAUR VALLEY,
A BRIEF STOP IN RAMPUR,AND LUNCH AT BAGHA NAGI
(PARTS OF THE NAPHTA—JAKRI HYDRO POWER PROJECTS)
AND A CLIMB UP TO 700-YEAR-OLD FORT KANGRO,
SEAT OF POWER OF RAJA SAHIB WHOM WE VISITED YESTERDAY
June 16, 2002
I am now in the new—that is, not yet completed-Hotel Monal Regency, in Sangla, Kinnaur Valley, with the roar of the white water river and the power projects hoping to harness some parts of that into the subcontinent power gird. This Hotel’s name is a bit grand for an institutions with concrete re-rod sticking out of piles of sand and upper floors ghosted in, with a “squatty potty” of the Asian type, no shower and a lack of such amenities as toilet paper---but we are here and not yet into the tents we had planned for Tabo. I will tell of what we saw in transit today and the events of this evenings post-dinner conference where we all get a bit of a biography, and I will give the “Dutch Uncle” talk about who is the leader of this group and what he will authorize and what is not going to happen without his consent in this non-democracy, with a very short book written by one of the unauthorized non-contributing hangers-on about an exciting dramatic scene followed by a rather long and lonely ride home if this is not understood. I will let them know that all of Shackelton’s men in Endurance survived since they did not vote as those who had never been there to over-ride the judgments of someone who had made the same number of expeditions there as I have in this particular valley
We took off from the Hatu Peak Hotel around eight thirty to ride toward the Sutlej River, and then went along the banks of this turbid roaring river as we headed toward the Kinnaur Valley. We are certainly making the grand circuit of Himachal, going up and around from the east, while my bags are, possibly, going to go up and around the west side of the same huge piece of the Himalayas—quite possibly meeting as we are about to leave. If that happens, I will have spent my time here with teeth chattering and one very well worn tropical outfit put on at the Wednesday morning start of this trip from the far side of the world.
We stopped as we lost about five hundred meters from our 2710-meter altitude start toward the Sutlej. We drove the winding road along the bank toward Rampur, current home of the Rajah Sahib we had seen yesterday morning and we would end up at Sangla under Fort Kangro under the wooden Palace where his ancestors had been rulers for seven hundred years, and he was the last of the line to be coronated. We climbed a long series of roads, many of them wiped out by avalanches and re-routed around obstructing rocks along the Sutlej. At many points along that line which measures a short distance on the map or between points without considering the terrain in between, we saw the massive construction projects for the NATHPA—Jakri Power Projects, building hydroelectric turbine generators underground, diverting a percentage of the roaring Sutlej’s flow down as far as 2,000 meters through the mountain to generate as much as 7500.MW of electricity to feed to the Indian grid. I had reviewed many of these in 1998, some of them still in construction, with at least full towns of clustered buildings clinging to the buttressed walls of eh steep canyon. A number of serious avalanches and one particularly big flood came through and washed away whole villages to change the river’s course through major rock remodeling. There were places of long series of roaring white water that was unclassifiable and unrunnable, with deep holes and some standing waves that shot straight up over ten meters in height.
We stopped at a Himachal Tourist accommodation where we ate our own box lunches, and admired the large garden above the center from the golf green lawn and under hydrangeas. The garden was above a wall and was a monoculture. It was a very luxurious and abundant growth of marijuana---a very abundant weed at this altitude, but I had not seen it growing as profusely as it was here—a cash crop with no market, since it is so abundant no one should need to buy it. We climbed up to snap some photos and admire the local flora.
We continued on and checked into the Kinnaur Valley along the Greater Himalaya Range against the Himalayan Massif—the monsoon maker and rain shadow producer that makes for this green and heavy water runoff of the Sutlej and the smaller branches many of which have mini or micro hydro power projects. We passed the Annapurna project of the underground hydro project where I had tried to sleep between two rock crushers that ran day and night in 1998. They are still running. I saw they had made progress on the coffer dam, and that they had built most of the tunnel races, but that the power was not yet flowing out of this part of the Sangla Valley, which had brought in a road, and much change including the language (Hindi) the culture (Hindu) of the predominately Buddhist village of Tibetan descendants and the later princely state Maharajahs such as Raju Sahib. The school near where our clinic was is still there, and, of course, the Fort Kangro and its Palace and temple. I immediately made plans to go back up to the temple and almost everyon else wanted to go too.
We climbed up to the village around the temple, as I demonstrated the “rest step”, PEEP breathing and the locked downslope knee to “Use Bone, Not Muscle.” Just as we got there, we heard drums beating, and saw big horns carried to the front of a Hindu procession. A god was being born on the shoulder poles of a party of bearers, and they would give a shake periodically, at which the god would shake under his gold trim, showing he had heard the intercessions of the people to whom he is ordinarily quite indifferent. I shot many pictures before going up to the Fort’s roof. Just then, the sky opened and the snowcapped massif behind the temple looked really close to the foreground historic temples.
Now, we have shivered in an outdoor candlelit dinner, with none of my stuff, and we had a mysterious dinner (since we could not see it, _ resulting in the ingestion of a number issues. After that we had the introductions and the Dutch Uncle practical talk I had promised them about how this expedition would be run and the fact that no unauthorized actions of anyone could be done without the consent of the single leader who was now telling them how things would go so that they did not have any confusion about the roles and random pattern of anyone doing what they want –such as authoring the “first book ever written on a single expedition” right after Keith Bair said that the reason he is here is that he had read each of the books I had written of each of the previous expeditions.
I hope that this was understood by those who might have had thoughts of “doing their own thing”—only identified as one so far—so we can now get to where we need to be and get into the joy of the medical mission to needy people.