Jammin Global

30 May 2013

A woman in Sangla who wanted her photo taken when she saw me walking around with my SLR. She must have a lot of interesting stories to tell...
I love the confidence and ease that mountain people exude. It probably comes from living in a challenging environment, surrounded by natural beauty and learning to appreciate the goodness in the small moments :)

From Sangla, I rode to the end of the track at Chitkul with more stunning views of snow-capped Himalayas with Tibet just a few peaks over. Then it was back to the Sutlej River and up to Kalpa, another small mountain town perched on the other side of Kinner Kailash from Sangla. sanDRina's bosch horn needed a good cleaning as it's ingested a lot of dust and water; a loud horn is essential equipment in the blind corners of mountain roads.

At Kalpa, I decided to turn around and not go through Spiti Valley as sanDRina's chain is stretching and nearing the end of its life and I better save it for the high passes to Leh. I'll come back and ride Spiti another time. So, from Kalpa I rode back down the Sutlej River along the Hindustan-Tibet Highway and wound through small tracks, sometimes dirt, sometimes tar, sometimes covered in pine needles and am just a short day's ride away from Manali.