Connecting without a Connection

 

Spiti Valley is in the Himalayas of North India, it is popular these days as a crowded traverse by car or motorbike, an insular ‘been there, done that’ tourist spin for five or six days. But here I was, alone on a twenty day local bus trip and today was only day two, would I last another eighteen days, without the umbilical cord of data? Years of ‘civilised’ living had made me an addict to my smart phone, connecting to friends and family instantly, constantly, compulsively. 

My smart phone was a brick, the smartest smart phone will not connect without a signal, and I had no signal.

I boarded the bus for the eight hour journey, but as soon as it started I was impatient for it to end, to reach my destination. Would the bone-jarring, single lane, often 3000 meter high, perilously winding mountain roads never end?

...Why wouldn't the bus driver drive more slowly? Why, that was a near miss, we nearly fell into the river! Why do those goats not stay off the road. Why, why, why, six more hours of why.

On reaching Chitkul at about 3500 meters, I was rasping for breath while staggering to the home-stay. It claimed to have WiFi but I saw no trace of it. I went for a walk that evening, a gentle level ramble to acclimatise, on the way I kept trying to get a signal.

The next day I rose very early to climb a mountain nearby as I wanted to see the sun rise from the top, but as dawn broke I realised that in the dark I had taken the wrong path and the top was nowhere in sight. Breathing heavily, I paused to enjoy the sun-dappled hillsides and then scramble down, looking for a signal all the way. Rather guiltily, I began to feel nervously liberated, but still no signal, no data, what if...

Two days later I was on a bus to Reckong Peo and on to Sumdo, a journey of nearly ten hours. The bus was filled with chattering ladies and gents, all going to harvest fields along the way. 

The elderly lady next to me explained the types of crops they were going to cut and why they were doing it now (if they didn’t, as it got colder the semi-wild cattle from the mountains would come down eat the crop). 

That the hour or so in the bus each way was the only time in their busy day that the local people got to chat. I noticed that all of them had simple phones, only to make necessary calls, no data, they used their precious time to talk face to face.

Well into my journey a landslide had blocked the road and I was getting impatient again, when I noticed that no one in the bus was perturbed and they simply accepted the situation. Landslides are a way of life here, and fretting does not clear the huge boulders on the road. 

Finding one road closed it was much simpler to explore another. In doing so I found Kalpa, a very pretty apple orchard town, spending three days there.

As the days passed, I found myself slowing down, caring less about plans and mobile signals. Rambling on mountain pathways, I began to feel very close to myself, gradually leaving questions and urgent thoughts behind. 

I began to feel the texture of life at a slow pace, perhaps we have forgotten this pace? 

Walking among the old houses, I see when the wind was blocked with stones and wood and there was time to fit them together precisely. The year was dictated by the seasons and not the clock, work was completed before it got too cold.

I tasted, soaked in and felt the places I passed through, it was very liberating from the shackles of modern life. I met people, got to know them, ate what they ate, and for a moment in time was privileged to enter their lives.

The absolute peace is very calming, I made connections without a connection.