Today We Had Our First Visitors

This place is 12 kilometers from the last "proper" village and there's another 10 kilometers to go on the other side before you find the next one. Usually it takes about three "fade-ins" and "fade-outs" of the sound of a vehicle before it actually pulls up in front of the rest house. Enough time to go in and change into better pants. There is an average of about two vehicles that come by, usually taxis ferrying local people to a temple which is about an hour's hike uphill from here.
Today we had our first city visitors.

We were sitting in the sun, thawing our bones out on the steps of the rest house when we heard the slow guttural sound of the vehicle, heaving itself up hill. Soon enough a big spiffy looking van drove past us and came to a halt a little further away. A few people got off, some got back in. A lot of commotion later the van came back to where we were sitting. One by one two women, a man and a couple of kids came out. By now, we realised we were behaving totally like the locals, staring unabashedly and making no attempt to smile or make conversation. In our defense, the new arrivals did not care to look towards us or smile either. The little girl with the big bag of Hippo chips found me interesting and we had a staring contest for a bit, then she skulked away to whisper in her mom's arms. The ladies went in to inspect the rest house, to which there isn’t much in terms of size so they returned in a few seconds and complained about the wind, which was on the cool side. Soon, they asked the driver to put on some music. "Ahun Ahun" played loud and clear into the distant mountains and came back as "Huan Haun". I am guessing it went all the way to Tibet/China border. There was animated discussion about food and since the chowkidar told them there was nothing to offer at the rest house, the man said there was enough Chundo and Thepla. Everyone got back in the van and ate inside. After they were done, the women stayed inside the van. While I was picking Tshirts off the bushes where I had put them out to dry, the man walked to Manu and started talking to him. He was livid that some ass at the Himachal Tourism office in Sarahan had sent them on a wild goose chase up such a terrible drive and now his over enthusiastic co-travelers had decided to go on a hike and left them here to wait. “How long is the trek anyways?” Manu told him it’s at least two hours, if they climb up to the temple and come back. Our new friend was seething with anger now. The topic moved to us. “How come we are planning to stay overnight?” He was horrified when we told him we had been here a while and planned to stay on for a couple of more days. Thankfully for him, his friends came back soon. They had decided to skip the trek and walked back after about half a kilometer. They were ready to leave but not before telling us that we should have gone to Igloo Resorts in Chitkul instead of this God forsaken place. I imagined myself in a resort type place- Hot bath, room service, multi-speciality cuisine…maybe even a spa.

My dream sequence did not last too long. Their big van left us in a cloud of black smoke. The sun had moved. It was time for us to move ourselves a little further down hill where meadows are as clean and green as a golf-course and the big white mountains further out are framed with lush green ones in the foreground. Our visitors forgot to say “bye” to us and we forgot to tell them to look up and walk around to see all this and more. Oh well!

PS: Came back from our walk to pick up a big empty bag of Hippo chips, a yellow bag and assorted wet tissues littered in our sitting area.