Drilbu Ri and Keylong

While in Keylong, I have been visiting the Pau Gomba Sanju Dhaba morning and evening. In external appearance it is quite undistinguished, but as I have discovered, the atmosphere inside is friendly, the kitchen clean and open, the food tasty and the staff willing to cater to my little whims.

(This piece is reproduced from EPW, Jan 30, 2016. Pictures added)

Keylong seen from the base of Drilbu Ri

Pasang Dolma runs the dhaba with a male assistant and her two younger sisters. The food is priced reasonably, and the dhaba does roaring business. Despite keeping long hours – 6.30 in the morning to 10.30 at night - Pasang remains cheerful and is always ready to engage in friendly banter with acquaintances that drop in. And as for me, I have found the information she has provided about excursions around town to be very useful.

Today I plan to do the kora (parikrama) of Drilbu Ri (Bell Mountain), a formidable mountain that towers over Keylong. The kora regularly attracts pious Buddhists and Hindus and occasionally the not so pious trekkers like me. Pasang informs me that it is a long and hard trek and people start by 5 am. I get off to a late start - it is past 7.30 by the time I have eaten and packed some food for the way.

Fire Fronted Serin

I walk through the town and follow a path out past fields of peas, cauliflower and potato. The path slopes down to a bridge spanning the narrow gorge of the Bhaga and then climbs steeply to the Khardang gompa (monastery). School children run down past me while I make heavy work of the climb. One of them informs me he has completed the kora twice and that leaves me reassured. Just beyond the gompa, I stop at a spring to catch my breath and watch the sparrow sized birds - Fire Fronted Serin - that flit about near the water.

The ramparts of the fortress like Drilbu Ri loom above, its grassy flanks streaked with pink Himalayan Fleece. The sun and clouds play with the hills to produce strange patterns of light and shadow over the valley. The path climbs up the side of the mountain and is marked with flags, painted rock signs and cairns.

First sight of prayer flags on Rangcha Gali

 It turns out to be a long and lonely walk. In the three hours elapsed after passing the gompa, the only person I see is an old man so engrossed in his prayers that he walks by without looking at me. The trek down - if I have to return the same way - is going to be tougher, for the path is steep and slippery in many places. I harbour thoughts of turning back.

Not a minute too soon, the prayer flags marking the pass come into view. With newfound energy, I cover the stiff remaining climb to reach Rangcha Gali, a narrow passage to the other side of Drilbu Ri, skirting its commanding heights. My altimeter shows 4380 m. I have gained nearly 1.5 km height from the time I walked on the bridge over the Bhaga!

I sit down and feast my eyes over the panorama. The majestic Pir Panjals stretch out east and west as far as the eye can see, mingling with the clouds. Directly across from me, the 6000 m Shikar Beh and Mukar Beh rise vertically from the Chandra River 3 km below.

Ridge separating Chandra and Bhaga watersheds, 4380 m

 The view over the side of the mountain that I just came up is no less enchanting. Pretty Keylong lies spread out at the bottom of the Bhaga valley against the backdrop of imposing hills. Visible through a gap in the hills, is Zanskar, a forbidding world of snow and glaciers.

Colourful prayer flags flutter in the wind and chortens adorn the ridge separating the Chandra and Bhaga valleys. Next to a chorten, a small yellow tin shed serves as a temple. I spot a gaddi perched on a rock from where he can keep an eye on his flock that is somewhere below. He throws a remark at me - "so you have reached" and offers me a slice of fruit that he is eating. My ascent must have appeared to him excruciatingly slow.

Shikar Beh and Mukar Beh ( both 6000 m +)

Higher up on the ridge, I come across a large group of monks in red. They are students of the Tibetan School of Medicine in Sarnath belonging to different Himalayan geographies - Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and Ladakh – here on an excursion. I did not run into them so far as they left Keylong much earlier than me.

It is an easy descent into the Chandra valley and in a couple of hours I reach the Manali - Leh highway. A bus takes me along the Chandra downstream to its confluence with the Bhaga and then along the Bhaga upstream to Keylong. I head straight for the comforts of the Pau Gomba Sanju Dhaba. Pasang Dolma is not surprised to hear that I completed the kora - "he walks fast", she tells her co-workers.

Pasang is ethnically Tibetan like many Lahoulis and I have assumed that she is Lahouli too. In conversation, I discover that she belongs to Nepal, to the village of Listi near the Chinese border. So does her assistant. Their village is known for the Pau Gompa and they have named their dhaba after it. Who is there in the village, I ask her. My son and my in-laws, Pasang replies. 'Sab kuch hai ghar me – makaan, kheti, gaadi’.

Pasan Dolma (center)

Pasang is familiar with Delhi and this intrigues me. With more questions I uncover the amazing seasonal migration of this family. With the coming of winter before the road to Keylong becomes snow bound, they move to Delhi to carry on a different trade - selling Nepali woollens. When winter is over, they return home to Nepal. (There is even a direct bus service from Majnu ka tila where they live while in Delhi to their village, Listi!) Come summer, when the Manali - Leh road opens, they are back in Keylong running the dhaba. I ask the family if they ever take a holiday and get a short retort - ours is not a government job!

It is time for me to leave Keylong and I stop by at the dhaba one last time. Pasang Dolma asks me to visit again. I am not being just polite when I tell her I will.