Pooh-Nako-Kaza

Next day was again a late start. This was now becoming a habit and little did we know that later in the trip this would get us into trouble.
nice view from our guest house.. the houses on left are the Pooh village..

army camp as we left Pooh..

the roads here were good..

the Khab bridge where there is the confluence of river Spiti and Satlij.. the one on right is Spiti and one coming from under the bridge is Satluj..

the Kazigs.. a series of sharp loops..



high up in Kinnaur but still no sign of snow..

the cold desert..

a small army convoy..

magic of wide angle.. we were standing right under the tree..

soon we reached Nako.. we parked the car and walked inside the village in search of the Nako lake..

religious inscriptions on rocks.. man what intricate work!!

the prayer wheels.. a common sight in this region..

first glimpse of the Nako lake.. and yes, it was completely frozen!!!

we walked further inside the village, trying to figure out which way leads to the lake.. surprisingly the village seemed pretty empty..

more carvings..

finally we reached the lake.. there where some children playing ice hockey on it..

yup, its frozen and safe enough to walk..

hesitantly i started walking towards the center.. on tv i have seen may times that the lake surface suddenly breaks and people fall inside the chilled water.. so i tested the ice in front of me before taking each step and finally reached the center.. the children wanted me to play ice hockey with them which i politely refused.. surprisingly they were running on the ice with normal foot wear.. many times they slipped also and fell badly but then they must be used to it..

i was more confident on the way back..

then it was Manik's turn.. as he stepped on to the ice it started creaking.. i was so sure that he would either break the ice and fall or slip on it and fall.. i was ready with the camera on burst mode to catch this.. but sadly he dint fall and also went till the center and came back..

dried up trees around the lake..

cute little kid in the village..

the prayer flags..

then we walked back to the car and left Nako.. on the main highway there is a dhaaba and a helipad behind it.. we had some food at the dhaaba and clicked some pics on the helipad..

we moved ahead.. plan was to go till Tabo and return the next day.. now we were seeing lot more ice.. the mountains were still brown but where ever there was water, it was freezing up.. some places where the water crossed the roads, there were patches of ice. the car got stuck on the very first such drain it encountered. the font wheel went inside the drain and got stuck.. even the front bumber banged on the edge of the drain.. after much pushing and putting rocks in the drain we finally got it out.. then came the bigger challenge.. Malling Nala..

thankfully the car dint get stuck and we were able to cross it quickly.. the highest point on the route..

the sand mountains.. i wonder how they are still standing..

the easy descent (baad mein issi ne humari maar li!!)..

abbe isse bread lene ke liye bhi lambe trek ka plan banana padta hoga..

chango.. a small, sort-of insignificant village on the way to Tabo.. (baaki to baad mein pata chalega..)

driving along the Spiti river..

Sumdo check post right after entering Spiti.. mind it, no photography is allowed here..

more sand hills..

that reads "mere dil wich tera ghar hove"..

chandigarh pahunch gaye bhai.. delhi ab door nahi..

the straight roads before Tabo..

Tabo..

Here we started searching for a place to stay.. the hotels seemed closed. only thing people said would be open will be the monastery..


here also there weren't many facilities available.. there was no water and only dorm rooms were available.. since we still had time, we decided to go ahead till Kaza..



there was a guest house few kms after Tabo in a place called Poh.. there also there were no facilities and so we moved ahead..

soon it got dark but Manik dint reduce the speed..

we stopped at the first building which looked like a guest house..

this was the circuit house.. the caretaker provided us a warm room and with a heater.. this turned out to be the comfortable stay in the trip.. we hogged down the food he provided and then again tried to click some star trails..

then when it got too cold to stand out, we returned to the room.. After a hard day's work, finally some comfort.. but there was lot of dissatisfaction.. the aim of the trip was still not fulfilled.. we had set out to find snow and here we had reached Kaza and still no snow.. what luck!! no snow in december in Spiti.. and tomorrow we will be returning.. so with a sad heart i went to sleep..

Total distance traveled: 154kms

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