Spiti- Land of the Lamas

This was my first day at Kaza when I woke up early morning around 5am and packed my bags and started walking towards Kye gompa, a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery located on a top of a hill at an altitude of 13668ft.

It was a 15km upward hike and the weather was just perfect. After an hour or so I found a group of locals going towards Kibber and I hitchhiked with them. I normally don't talk much with people but that morning was just perfect and I started off with random conversations for which they had some really amazing replies. That's a story for some other day. :p

So once I reached Kye, I got to the gompa and found out that it was Dalai Lama's birthday and the monks were busy preparing for the ceremony and there were no one else in the monastery. I helped them for an hour in arranging and decorating the place and just when I was ready to go back, one of the monks offered me tea. I sat with him for over 20 minutes and though we hardly talked we did share a lot.

I felt happy. I felt peaceful. I felt energetic. I knew that I could travel around Spiti on my own and might not even need any mode of transport other than my own legs. I got back to the homestay and had breakfast and once again started my journey. This time I rented a bike. I covered over 200 kms and around 6 villages in and around Kaja.
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