There’s a funny thing about mountain passes. If unnamed, the thrill of crossing them gets dampened. Theoretically, any point from where one crosses over a mountain to the other side is a pass. But there is discrimination – some are named, some are not. Evidently, popular routes get named passes, while others languish. People, sniffing and wheezing, pose along the signboards of the named ones, while the unnamed ones do not even get a stopover.
These were the thoughts going through my mind as I climbed the road up one August morning from Lidang, a small place in Spiti that does not even get a dot on the map. The reason for such trivial thoughts: This was my second trip in two days to Demul, touted as the remotest village of Spiti, and the day before I had crossed over a mountain crest nearly 4,500 metres in altitude without giving it much thought. Surely, it was a high pass, but it did not have any name as it led only to a small village and did not fall on some old trade route.
The plan was to stay the night at Demul (4,350 metres), but as my wife and friend accompanying me developed alarming signs of altitude sickness, we thought it prudent to lose height and rushed back to Kaza, the sub-divisional headquarters of Spiti, at a manageable altitude of 3,650 metres.
However, the landscape that I had seen through this toing and froing was so bewitching that I decided to go back early the next day. The unnamed pass was about 10 kilometres from Lidang, which itself was roughly the same distance from Kaza, on the Kaza-Tabo road. And, about a couple of kilometres before the pass the landscape transformed.
The barren treeless browns transformed into a verdant meadow full of carpets of various species of flowers. So sudden and unexpected was the change – when all the green that one saw at the lower altitude in Spiti sprung of human hand, you did not expect nature to unfold its treasure at a much higher altitude – that it seemed like a scene from a fantasy film; a scene where you open a door and enter an entirely different, much richer, world.
Making the scene more fantastical was the fact that you see no hint of such meadows from the road running along the Spiti River below. And, adding to the experience was the absence of trees – there was nothing to block the sweep of the eye from the mountain top to the ridge to the spot where I stood.
Making numerous stops on the way – sometimes clicking the flowers, at times just indulging in the pleasure of lying down on the grass, soaking in the warm early morning sun – I took nearly 40 minutes to cover the last couple of kilometres to the pass. The pass was marked by two chortens (a crumbled old one and a new painted one), prayer flags and ibex and bharal horns.
Somehow, a day before, I had not realised the fact that the chorten signified the top of the pass. Today, though, I atoned for my thoughtlessness and sat down at the pass and had a leisurely breakfast of donuts and tea, which I had got packed at Kaza.
The other side of the pass was equally green and just after a turn I got the view of Demul, a collection of whitewashed houses set in midst of fields and meadows with a range of snow peaks running behind. It was near this turn that I had a day before seen what is celebrated by poets as chaudhvin ka chand, the moon of the fourteenth day. It dominated the view, large – nay, extra large – and close to the horizon. This was the first time I had seen the moon so large. It seemed just there, just a touch away, a beautiful silver globe that shone like a jewel in the light of the setting sun. It had me transfixed and maybe that was the reason I did not give much thought to the chorten marking the pass!
The village of Langza in the shadow of the Chocho Khang Nilda peak. Langza was known for its pottery but the craft is almost dead today
Today, though, the rising sun was shining over Demul. As I descended to the village, I saw the mountainside dotted by the villagers cutting the grass with their sickles. This grass would be dried on rooftops and other open spaces and
then stacked to be used for fire in winter when the village would be under snow and cut-off from the rest of Spiti. Demul also has been experimenting with solar power with the help of a local NGO, Ecosphere.
There’s an interesting folklore behind the name Demul. It is said that a villager lost his demo (female yak) and he went searching for it in the high meadows. After days, he finally found his demo grazing at a spot where Demul is today. As the grass was long and luxuriant, he realised that the soil was fertile. So, he, along with some fellow villagers, decided to move to this meadow and build their homes and called this new village Demul.
In the last couple of years, Demul has been gaining a name in the tourist circuit for its unique experiment with homestays. As a visitor, you can go and stay with a family in the village, but whom you stay with is decided by a villager, designated specially to cater to the tourist traffic. He assigns the homestays by rotation so that every house gets a visitor, and thus some extra income. If you are staying for more than one night, your host changes for the second night. Surely, it’s an interesting example of equitable distribution!
After roaming around in the quaint village, talking to a few old villagers who were not out in the fields working and a welcome cup of tea at a house later, I decided to start back.
I wanted to spend more time in Demul, but I had decided to drive back to Kaza via a new road that connected Demul with the villages of Komic, Hikkim and Langza. Before the road came up, this used to be a somewhat popular two-three day trek through these villages high above the Spiti river valley. For this, I had to retrace my steps back to the pass and then, after descending a kilometre or so, take a right on a jeepable dirt track off the road to Lidang.
This road followed the ridge on which the Demul pass lay and all through traversed above 4,000 metres in altitude. It rose steadily at a gentle gradient to follow the folds of the mountain.
After about 15 minutes, the road took a turn and burst out into a vast field of bulb-like mauve flowers. I got out of the vehicle and was assailed by the smell of onions – later, with the help of some experts and the photographs I had taken, the species was identified as Allium carolinianum, or wild onion. It was a scene out of fairytale books – mauve flowers as far as the eye could see, sky in an impossible shade of deep blue and high snow peaks at a distance, with Mane Rang (6,593 metres) towering above the range.
Far below, peeping from between a ledge in the ridge, could be seen a slender, silvery thread, the Spiti River. The road gained more height as it wove its way through the luxuriant meadows.
The next stop was Komic, the highest village on this route at 4,513 metres.
The Komic monastery could be seen at a distance, a little below the road. That meant I was at an altitude of nearly 4,600 metres. On the left, about 5-6 kilometers before Komic, I saw a cairn about 100 metres below the road. That must have been the earlier trekking route.
As I went down towards it, I came across another beautiful flower –rust-red in colour, a foot high and sprouting out straight as a ramrod from a base of big leaves spread on the ground in a circle. It was aptly named the Spiked rhubarb, which, I was told later, the local people ate either raw or cooked. Moreover, its root had purgative properties.
In another half-an-hour, I reached Komic Monastery, where the monks fed us with a simple lunch of rice and dal (lentils). They also showed us their 1.5-KW wind solar pedal hybrid plant – a mix of multiple technologies; a 1,000 W windmill, 400 W solar power and a 100 W pedal powered generator – said to be the highest in the world.
The plant is managed and run by the monastery and a monthly amount is collected from the monks. This amount is deposited in an account with a local bank and the funds used for maintenance and future expansion of the plant.
The third village on my route was Langza at an altitude of 4,400 meters. Divided into two sections – Langza Yongma (Lower) and Langza Gongma (Upper) – this village was known in the region for its pottery. Langza’s mud vessels were used in almost all Spiti households. But, with the introduction of steel and aluminium utensils, this craft is almost on its last legs. Agriculture is the primary occupation of the villagers today.
Langza had yet another interesting facet to it, which I came to know only after I returned to Kaza. All this while, on the right, I could see a beautiful snow peak, immaculately conical in shape, the kind children make when drawing mountains. It had also been visible from Demul, but at the extreme left corner of the horizon. The road seemed to have brought me round in a circle, so the peak was in the front now and loomed over Langza.
In a hand-drawn map in Demul, it had been marked as the Shila peak. But, it seems, this name was for visitors as it was easy to pronounce. I was told later in Kaza that the real name of the mountain was Chocho Khang Nilda, and it had a fascinating legend attached to it. Chocho in local Spitian means ‘princess’, khang is ‘mountain and nilda is a combination of two words – nima, the sun and dawa, the moon. So, there was a divine princess of the mountain who was as radiant as the sun and as beautiful as the moon.
And there was a married shepherd, who was a master lyun (local flute) player. When he took his herd to the meadows for grazing, he used to play the lyun. The celestial princes so loved his music that she fell in love with the shepherd. One day she came before the shepherd, who was struck by her beauty. He also fell in love with her and the two kept on clandestinely meeting each other for years.
The princess had, meanwhile, warned the shepherd to keep their affair a secret. “If you tell any other person about me, I’ll take it as a betrayal and will never meet you again,” she said.
One day, when the shepherd was at home, his friend came to meet him and the two got drunk. In the stupor, he forgot about his promise to the princess and started talking about her beauty. When his wife asked him about this beautiful princess, he ended up blurting out the affair. The next morning when he got up, he saw himself covered in boils.
Realising the mistake he had made, he ran to the meadow and called the princess. But, she did not appear. So he started trekking towards the mountain. The princess used her powers to create bad weather to desist him from approaching. The shepherd had a tragic end.
Even today, the local people believe that whenever somebody tries to climb the mountain, there is bad weather, and tragedy follows.
Not only that, but the shepherd’s family also is supposed to still live in Langza. I would have loved to meet the ‘descendants’ of this shepherd, but unfortunately, I had come to know this story only after I had reached Kaza. May be next time!
