JUN-B-8
A
GOOD DAY STARTS WITH A HIGH ALTITUDE RUN,
THEN THE LONG, LONG
RIDE OUT OF SANGLA AND
KINNAUR ENTERING “RESTRICTED AREA” AT JANGI,
WITH MULTIPLE WAITS FOR BLASTING LOOSE
AVALANCHES, AND FINALLY ARRIVAL AT TABO MONASTERY
June 17, 2002
I have arrived at a nearly deserted Tabo Monastery, where we were expecting to be mobbed, and relegated to outside tents by the crowds of people flocking to the Tabo Monastery for the Dali Lama XIVth’s special festival of dedication and installation of a successor to a rimpoche here. Not only did the Dali Lama cancel out, since he was ill and his staff could only now get through the snow-choked Kunzum-La Pass, but then the entire festival was called off. So, I am ensconced in Room # 1 in the Monastery Guest House.
The day started with the first run of the trip for me, the first run of a lifetime for both Michael and Blake Eiffling and a good one it was. We got started at 6:30 and ran twenty minutes downhill on the main road way through Sangla toward the Chitkal border town where the road stops before Tibet. We got to the wildly roaring rapids of the Sangla River below the hydroelectric power plant in whose guesthouse we had stayed in 1998, and took a few photos in front of the roaring river. I had predicted 20 minutes out and 30 minutes back, and kept up a steady uphill run for the return half as Michae3l and Blake fell far behind. But they came in toward the outdoor “breakfast club” where we had our dinner last night on the bowling green. Following dinner I led the round of the biographies and then the “Dutch Uncle talk” letting them all know that there was one leader of this group which was not a democracy, and there would be no unauthorized adventures or personal plans for doing whatever might please individual without consideration of what the impact o n the group might be. That especially relates to the “writing of a book---never done before ---on this expedition” which might compromise each of the books I have written and will continue to write on each of the expeditions and the two sources who are interested in following up on it, only if they have exclusivity---Raghu Rai as the photojournalist of India and the National Geographic Special on my excursions. Ravi said, as always, “Don’t worry about it.” This is what he said when I told him I do not want Bill Norton on any trip I am leading which seems to have fallen on dull reception with the very pompous and self-styled “leader of this trip” (and last night’s self-confessed alcoholic) still carrying on in his bombast, despite being a non-contributing detraction.
We road over the bumpy roads to get finally to the border post of Jangi, where we were signed in under our permit. We had stopped about four times per hour along the way: twice for blasting the avalanche rocks out of the mountain, which then crashed down on the road way and had to be moved before we could get the vehicles through. We had to portage around two avalanches and to get picked up by the same kinds of Tatas driven out by the monks from Tabo Monastery, and then finally, driving hard over the long “kazigs” (the series of 8 switchbacks for eighteen hairpins in all) to arrive at seven o’clock at Tabo Monastery to find---no one. So, we will have a slow start tomorrow as we set up our fist clinic after my second run. WE will spend two days here, two days up the Pin Valley and on clinic day in the Kaza hospital, Then we will head out by visiting both Ki and Dankar monasteries and Kibber and cross through he high Kunzum-La Pass enroute to Manali, and then for reasons inexplicable, going yet again to Dharamsala.
I hope to have a few of my possessions from the errant bags by then.