Day 10: To one of the highest villages in the world.
7th August, 2001
We slept well last night. Very peaceful and cool. So today morning had charged us up. The climate was clear and we were at the dinning hall by 8am. Ordered king size breakfast for me and small mini meals for Angelo and Anahita.
By 9am we started for Kye monastery first. It was just 14kms from Kaza and it was a quick ride.
But ones we reached Kye what we saw was that the place had already filled up with tourists. And there was also a waiting for the next group to go in.
We decided instead of wasting time outside we will ride to Kibber instead. Its just again another 8-9 kms from Kye I think.
Ones we reached the village we headed straight to the Norling guest house I had heard about.
We checked out the place and ordered some pancakes and tuna sandwich for us. We realized this could have been a great place to stay for a night. Very decent accommodation and the village is just amazing to stroll around.
We took some photos around and after spending close to an hour here we started downhill for Kaza.
On our way down an Israeli chic wanted a lift down. Angelo gladly jumped the gun and took her all the way to Kye monastery.
After we reached down we now were enroute to Komic, Hikkhim and Langza route.
We covered some kms up the road and it was quite challenging. Its not a very wide patch and very inclined with very little road group.
We rode till a diversion and then got confused which one to take. After a little thinking we took a shot by taking the right turn and I also noticed my bike was heating up slowly. My guess the coolant must have gone low so Anahita sat with Angelo for next few kms. Only after reaching Chandigarh I came to know the radiator had just too much mud and slush stuck on the front and it only needed cleaning.
But since we didn’t know what was the issue back then we decided to keep my Ninja back down only till the point it made it and Anahita waited with the bike. I rode the P220 and Angelo sat with me to ride up and just check how far we need to go.
We made it till Hikkhim and the returned as I was getting worried about Anahita. Even the sun was very hot by now.
We returned back to where Anahita and my bike in less than half an hour. And we quickly started moving downwards back to Kaza.
It was past lunch time now and we were definitely very hungry.
We had ordered in the morning only what we wanted for lunch. So when it we arrived it was almost ready for us.
The specialty of this place, Timo Chapta.
It was a delicious thing to have here. But a little spicy thing. Look what happened to Angelo after few bites.
All Red
Around 4pm it started raining in Kaza. And whether too cooled down. But all our clothes got wet which were drying outside. i quickly ran and get them out but then was breathless for next few minutes.
After the rains stopped and weather cleared up so we decided to head to the market for final shopping and withdrawl from the ATM as money was almost over.
For some reason it was quite empty.
Now the highlight of the day. When we reached the ATM it was out of order. And we all panicked.
Anahita became restless and Angelo tensed, I little worried. Then from the bank we came to know this was because there was no electricity in Kaza.
As the light comes back the ATM will start working.
We waited over 2 hours for the light to come and then after getting frustrated we went back to the hotel.
We came back in few minutes on our bikes. And still nothing was active.
Again we waited and then went back to the hotel. But the moment we reached the entrance, the light turned ON.
We didn’t even got down but quickly rode our bikes to the ATM.
We were the first, the manager came and rebooted the machine. As everything came to normal we made our withdrawls quickly before the ATM runs out of cash…
What a day it was…. I’ll remember this, my first visit to Kaza always.
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