so, that's it. I am going to try to write another version of what I've written yesterday...

the first place we have visited in spiti valley was kibber, a traditional tibetan village that is supposed to be the highest village in the world with a motorable road (which doesn't mean much as almost any road can be made motorable in india simply by driving a motorbike on that road ;o) and electricity (which really means something). the village itself has approximately 230 inhabitants and about 40 traditional tibetan houses.

an old man invited us for tea and showed us around his house which gave us some great insights into the life of a tibetan family. actually, the houses consit of two floors: the ground floor is used in winter only as it provides space for the animals (mainly sheeps, goats, and yaks) and the people and the main room has a big stove which keeps all of them warm. the first floor has larger windows and is mainly used in summer when the sun provides enough heat (spiti is a desert area which gets very hot in summer). the roof is also used in summer and is a kind of all-purpose place where children play, women work, and the grass is dried for the winter months. it was interesting to learn that the roofs are built out of wood although the spiti valley has virtually no trees. we were told that the indian goverment provides the wood and imports it from manali (where deforrestation causes many landslides each year).

after kibber, we walked to key gompa (see photograph that was taken with fabian's digital camera;0), the largest buddhist monastry in the spiti valley, where we a monk showed us all the different temples and some beautiful tibetan paintings. although the interior of the monastry was really worth the visit, the sourroundings and the outside
were even more spectacular.





another monastry that was even nicer than key gompa, was dhankar monatry which lies between kaza and tabo. unfortunately, dhankar was too far from kaza to make it in one day by foot, so we decided to hire a jeep which was really worth the money (ok, I mean, 10 euro is not much for 55 kilometers dirt road). here again a monk showed us all the temples and allowed us to attend to the prayers (although women were not allowed inside - so I stayed outside and listend).

now we are back on the way to dehli spending a day of rest in shimla after two times ten hours in indian busses. no need to mention that indian busses a quite an uncomfortable way to travel, but there is simply no other choice in this state (which is called himachal pradesh) as trains don't run in the mountain regions. tomorrow, we will travel on to delhi (again by bus because the small toy train from shimla down to kalka is very slow) where we plan to spend a couple of days before heading to the taj mahal in agra or directly to south india where fabian will start his project in mid-september.

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About The Salt Museum in Zigong

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