With Jim safely in recovery, Cara, myself and Funjuc headed back to meet the others. Whilst we were away they had ridden up to a small mountain village and without the jeep to support them had stayed in a local house and eaten with the family. For Andy this truly local experience was the highlight of the trip. We caught up with the team again in Kaja, the main village in the Spiti Valley, at a comfortable Tibetan style guest house and made plans for the last couple of days of the trip.
The following morning we took off early, and as usual it was straight up and out o the village, at first with the luxury of a tarmac road and later once into the high hills again, back onto rough dirt tracks. We were aiming for lunch at the small village and monastery of Komik and then on over the mountains on a broken jeep free road to spend the night at what must be one of the prettiest villages on the planet – Demul. At 4500 metres, Komik claims to be the highest village in India. We spent a long lunch there, and having missed a couple of days of the trip and a couple of days of acclimatisation I have to admit that the altitude was catching up with me. On from Komik the road continued to climb to another high pass.
At the top the others were waiting for me, as I staggered to the top feeling like death. Cass had talked about mouth-watering singletrack on the way down from here, but with my head pounding like a jack hammer, I couldn’t think of anything except down and quick. Whilst the others set off down fabulous singletrack, I just continued on the rough doubletrack with my head banging every time I hit a bump. By the time we reached the main road again, what seemed like a life time later, someone had finally switched off the jack hammer and I was once again able to think rationally. Unfortunately we had to go back up the hill to get to a camp, and not wanting the jack hammer back I opted for a lift in the jeep.
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