The Mother of All Drives - Part 8. Chango - Chitkul - Narkanda - Delhi.

 The village of Leo is a patch of green as seen from Highway 22

10 July 2001. Chango - Poari - Sangla - Chitkul - Kinner Camp.

With a lump in my throat and my eyes on National Highway 22 I drove out of Chango at 7:50 am. I was bidding farewell for the fourth time to this little village and I knew in my heart that I might never return to this oasis in Kinnaur above the Spiti river. Fortunately the stretch called the Maling  Slide was in negotiable condition. In 1998 Ravi and I had been stranded in Chango because the slide had taken out the road and we had to return home the long way via Kaza, the Kunzum La, the Rohtang Pass and Manali. Chokdup accompanied us up to Yangthang where we stopped for breakfast and then it was hugs and heartfelt goodbyes.

Sketch map drawn by the late Arun Samant for the Chango 98 expedition
( See http://taccidental.blogspot.ca/2014/02/the-chango-chronicles-1998-third-time.html )

A vehicle negotiating the Maling Slide in July 1998

At the top of the Kah Loops

The road at Khab

Descending the Kah loops we rapidly lost altitude and were soon at Khab, the junction of the Spiti river with the mighty Sutlej which swallowed the contents of the former in a seething, frothing tussle of rapids. It was a different union now than the one I had witnessed at the end of September 1993. At that time, the Spiti had already been transformed into a pellucid ribbon of aquamarine blue as the summer melt was over and the crystal clear water raced over the rocky river bed in a mobile work of art. Even after its meeting with the muddy brown water of the Sutlej, it had continued to flow as a distinct entity for a couple of kilometres before finally being forced to give up its celestial hue. Now, at the height of summer, both the rivers were swollen with snow melt and both were carrying enormous amounts of gravel and mud and stones as they plunged down their respective gorges.

Reo Purgyil (6816m), the highest peak in Himachal Pradesh, is visible up the Sutlej gorge from Khab

The terrain began to change as we lost height and travelled along the deep and narrow gorge of the Sutlej. The sense of infinite skies and endless possibilities of the high country of Spiti  begins to give way to a different sort of ruggedness: the cliffs and ridges enclose one into a tighter space, with occasional glimpses of snow capped mountains seen through the gaps as the road twists and turns to find a safe contour on the slopes; these slopes now begin to accommodate sparse forests of evergreens as the climate changes to a semi arid category.

On the road below Rekong Peo

Distance and altitude chart at Poari

The road along the Sutlej from Akpa onwards had been washed away in the floods of 1998/99. This meant that we had to go halfway to Rekong Peo and then descend again to rejoin the highway at Poari. Poari had a fuel pump so we took advantage of it. The atrocious conditions encountered in the next 8 km stretch to Karcham was a test for the sturdiness of the Gypsy as well as my nerves. We were glad to leave this section behind and ascend the 1000 metres to the entrance of the much touted Baspa valley. A lunch stop at Sangla was followed by a smooth dirt track all the way to Chitkul, the head of this beautiful part of Kinnaur. A number of interesting treks can be made from here, crossing some great mountain divides like the Charanghati to Lalanti and the Lamkhaga to Garhwal.

Chitkul

Franco at the end of the road in Chitkul

We parked the Gypsy and walked around the village. It was very quiet. There were a few men busy sawing logs of wood to build a house and two little girls fetching water from the village tap giggled when they saw us.

The Accidental Driver poses with the Accidental Photographer!

It would be dark very soon and we were keen to spend the night at a tented campsite we had passed on the way up. "Kinner Camp" was the name of this refuge located about 7 km from Sangla. For Rs. 300/- per tent (with two beds) per night, it was a steal. Situated in a field bordering the road, Kinner Camp consisted of permanent tents with low stone walls for sides, held up by centre poles made up of from the trunks of birch trees, two meshed windows on each side and a zippered door. There were stone walkways between the collection of tents which were named after birds (Minivet, Sunbird etc).

Kinner Camp

This tented resort was apparently quite new and that night and the next we were the only guests, barring Ameya Gokarn, a professional photographer who had spent a year in Rishikesh photographing birds and wildlife. While at Rishikesh he met Pradip Negi, the owner of Kinner Camp and was now spending a month in this beautiful place.

Our finances and our time constraints restricted us to spending only one day relaxing in these sylvan surroundings, feasting our eyes on the green after weeks of drifting through the stark yet stunning scenery of Ladakh, Lahul and Spiti. While the chirping of birds and the distant roar of the Baspa river catered to our aesthetic sensibilities, a delicious and generous helping of fresh mutton curry took care of more basic needs. We followed this up with an afternoon siesta from which we rose and went for a short ramble across a boulder field and sat down to soak in the views up and down the valley.

That night, as we chatted with Ameya over dinner, I could feel a sadness creep up on me. My two months in the mountains was now coming to an end. We would be heading back to Delhi via Rampur, Narkanda and Shimla the next day and life would return to the usual mundane and depressing pursuits of the plains, accompanied by the cacophony of the multitudes.

What I had not reckoned with, however, was the fact that The Mother of All Drives was about to throw a monkey wrench into the works that would add a memorable sting to the tail end of the trip!

12 July 2001. Kinner Camp - Sangla - Karcham - Rampur - Narkanda.

A flat front tire on the right hand side greeted us in the morning as we prepared to load up the Gypsy. Since we had a spare it was only a short time before we had replaced it and were ready to leave Kinner Camp. All the staff waved goodbye as we took to the gravel road again, heading for Karcham to rejoin the highway.

The traffic increased as we passed through the areas affected by the Jhakri Hydel Project, trucks moving men and machinery relentlessly to help the engineers bore tunnels to create enormous chutes through which the waters of the Sutlej could be diverted and their hydraulic energy could be converted into electricity by massive turbines. I had witnessed the progress of this long term infrastructure dream from 1993 onwards, each time that I had passed this way on my way to Chango. The project certainly had left scars in its wake, as roads were blasted up side valleys and slopes lost their forest cover, landslides followed inevitably, and a rapid and haphazard urbanisation of the area was set in motion. Since the project involved the participation of global corporations with enormous economic clout, backed by the government's blessings, a whole township had sprouted up on one side of the road to house the technicians and consultants; satellite dishes looked to the heavens to connect them with the other side of the world. Meanwhile, thousands of feet above, on the ridges guarding the gorge of the river, shepherds still tended their flocks in the manner of their ancestors and still headed north to the lush pastures beneath the snows across high passes. It is true that the ancient and the modern can co-exist quite comfortably in India.

We passed Rampur and halted for lunch a couple of kilometres later, looking forward to the cooler climes of Narkanda at 9000 feet. Rampur is at an altitude of only 4000 feet and it can get quite warm here in the summer months.

The road began to climb again and as I changed gears to tackle the incline the engine died. I turned the ignition on again and it fired robustly but sputtered away each time I engaged the gears. We looked under the hood. Everything seemed all right. I poked around a few wires, checked the connections, peered at the various parts of the distributor, the carburettor and the alternator without really hoping to be able to diagnose the problem as I am not a mechanic.

Getting ready to be towed with a steel cable attached to the truck.

We flagged down a truck carrying stones and requested a tow to the nearest repair shop. This meant going back towards Rampur! The auto service facility was typical of the sort you can find along India's highways and even some lesser roads - a sort of makeshift structure where mechanics with no formal training, education or certification but with loads of hands on learning and experience can fix almost anything on wheels.

We were informed that the clutch plates were worn out and that they needed to be replaced. The owner of the shop took out a cardboard box with "Maruti Genuine Parts" printed boldly on it with the accompanying logo of the automaker.  Four hours later the job had been accomplished, after the whole gearbox had been dismantled and the innards exposed. Our stomachs were full of the endless cups of chai that we drank in a nearby teashop as we waited for the mechanics to do their work. Now, with our wallets considerably lighter, we took to the road again.

We were climbing up the gradients that eventually would lead us to Narkanda when the clutch problem resurfaced. It was an exact replay of what had transpired earlier and our frustration reached new heights. With a combination of push starts and a judicious use of the gear shift we managed to roll into the Tourist Lodge at Narkanda run by the Himachal Pradesh Tourism Department in the dark at 10 pm. We had to pound on the doors to wake up the caretaker who then kindly let us in.

In spite of the knowledge that we still had a mechanical problem on our hands, we fell asleep easily. Narkanda, with its altitude and its forests of evergreens stretching upwards, was a welcome relief from the near tropical heat of Rampur.

13 July 2001. Narkanda - Shimla - Ambala.

After breakfast we coasted down the road from Narkanda and as soon as the road levelled off and gravity would not provide us with any more momentum, we sought the assistance of another passing truck to tow us to the nearest roadside auto service facility. We explained the problem to the man in charge here and informed him that we had just had the clutch plates replaced the day before near Rampur. He listened patiently to our story, then went into his store and brought out two identical cardboard boxes with brand new clutch plates inside and both boxes bearing the Maruti Genuine Parts logo.

"Which box did that mechanic sell you?" he asked. "The blue box or the red box?" We looked again and realised that the logo was printed in blue ink on one box and in red ink on the other. We pointed to the red box.

"That is a spurious product," he stated emphatically. "The blue box is the one which has the original part."

"So why do you stock the spurious part?" I wanted to know.

"Because some customers don't mind paying less for the fake part and it does work for a little while."

"Well, in our case it worked for barely a couple of hours!"

Since we had no choice but to experiment with the blue box, we told him to go ahead and have the new set of clutch plates installed.

Money changed hands again a few hours later and we began the slow descent to Shimla with plenty of apprehension, hoping that there did not exist a third green box on the planet with Maruti Genuine Parts emblazoned on it! The Gypsy seemed to be behaving normally and we were soon past Shimla and heading down the excellent highway towards the plains.

The shop where we had the genuine clutch plates installed (between Narkanda and Shimla)

We had lost time again due to the clutch replacement. By the time we had come off the hills it was dark and I realised that we would not be able to make it to Delhi before 2 am, a rather inconvenient hour to wake up my brother Raj and his wife Sushma who had work to go to in the morning. I stopped at a telephone booth and called him up, asking for suggestions as to where to eat dinner and spend the night. He recommended Ambala.

We stopped at a dhaba on the highway a few kilometres away from Ambala and ordered dinner. The time was well past midnight by the time we were done. We enquired of the dhaba owner if there were any cheap hotels where we could bed down for the night.

"Why do you want to go to a hotel?" he said. "There is a gurdwara just down the road. Just ask if you can spend the night there, I am sure they will not mind."

We found the gurdwara quite easily. There was a big open concourse with a marble floor which felt cool to the touch. We found one person and asked for his permission to sleep for a couple of hours on the floor. He said that it would be absolutely no problem, we could park the Gypsy in the little compound adjacent to the temple. We took out our sleeping bags, I took my camera gear and wallet and  made myself comfortable on the cool stone.

Just as I was drifting off to sleep, there was a clap of thunder, flashes of lightning lit up the dark skies and big drops of rain began to fall. The rain soon settled into a steady and soothing rhythm, the perfect lullaby to fall asleep to.

Sometime later, a human voice reciting the sacred chants from the Granth Saheb to the accompaniment of a harmonium, was added to the sound track - thus we dozed till 4 am when we decided that now was an optimum time to leave the temple and complete The Mother of All Drives.

14 July 2001. Ambala - Delhi

We drove bleary eyed all the way to Delhi and reached my brother's house around 8 am, in time for breakfast. While unloading our baggage, Ravi realised that the expensive camera (borrowed from his friend for the trip!) that he had inadvertently left in the Gypsy during the night and some money in his wallet were missing. Someone had expertly stolen the camera and the money in the course of the night in a manner that had left no signs of burglary.

Thus ended a dream of a drive. We had managed to squeeze in some breathtaking scenery and encountered some wonderful people on a route just under 3000 km and as a bonus even climbed a peak of 20,000 ft during the trip. I doubt if any future road trip of mine will ever match the excitement of this one.

In spite of the unfortunate incident in Ambala there was a happy ending to this tale : even after detaching the air conditioning unit from the Gypsy, Raj was still able to sell the vehicle for a little less than what I had paid for it two months earlier. He kept the aircon unit and installed it in his Maruti 800 and it did cool the small interior for a couple of years!

Concluded.