7) 8/24/99
Start ride: 9:00 AM Tabo to Chango
Ride: 3.5 hours total
Miles Ridden: 26
Start Altitude: 10,004 ft.
End Altitude: 11,998 ft.
Up at 5:am, I watch the morning sunlight move across the barren rock faces of the valley.
At 8:00 am we go to the monastery for a tour. The gompa was started in the ninth century
and additional buildings were added to it through the fifteenth century. When India
annexed this part of Tibet in 1962, in effect, it rescued the gompa from the cultural
revolution which destroyed most of the monasteries in Tibet in 1966. I am sad that we did
not spend more than an hour here. The paintings on the walls and the statuary inside the
many buildings are on par (or better than?) Alchi, in Ladakh. There was a skylight in one
that allowed the morning light to illuminate the guilt face of the Buddha and thereby
light the rest of the room. Tabo is spectacular! Back on the road, we blast down through
canyons of bare rock (landslide area) with the boiling, black Spiti river down below. We
pause for lunch at a small Shiva temple at the juncture of two rivers. A few miles later,
we stop to watch a bulldozer clear the road of a recent landslide. As soon as it clears a
path, we continue. We climb up from there to the village of Chango and end up camping in
the yard of an unfinished house. It's the last flat camp spot for the next 47 miles. It's
time to do some laundry at the back of the house, and then bathe in a stream that cascades
from above. Had I known that today's ride, was so short, I would have spent more time in
Tabo! Tomorrow will be a long day in the saddle. |
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