Sangla 1

Well, I let my regular writing slip for a while because of things I'll explain later, so now I'll try to catch everything up to the present. It is currently the day before Thanksgiving, and I am sitting in a charming, inexpensive hotel room in Sangla, and since the last time I wrote an entry I stopped just before I got to Sangla for the first time, this seems like a good opportunity to write about that.

My whole India attitude before I got to Sangla was best described as 'game'. In other words, I was in very unfamiliar territory, being exposed to things that were mostly a combination of interesting and uncomfortable, and just trying to do the best I could to play my role and to enjoy myself. I had to file most of my experiences under 'to be processed later' since I just didn't have the right kind of perspective to even see if they were good, bad, or OK. But the minute I got off the bus at Sangla, I started genuinely enjoying myself. It was the first place in India that seemed just like a place, not an 'experience'. Part of it was that there are incredible mountains and forests, and evidence of truly rural life here, so I began to feel like there was some breathing room for me, if that makes any sense. There were people on the streets, but there wasn't the kind of hectic crowding that I had been dealing with elsewhere, and the pace of everything seemed much more relaxed. It was also obvious that trekking and nature tourism is a big attraction here, and since those are things that interest me I felt like I fit right in as the kind of tourist they expect around here.

Jessie had wanted to spend 2 nights in Sangla, and one day heading further up the Baspa to Chitkul, but within the first couple of hours I was here, I felt like I wanted to stay longer. I thought about trying to arrange some sort of short, easy trek. When Jessie and I were looking for a lunch spot, I saw a trekking and tours office, so I decided to come back in the afternoon to find it, and I saw that it also said 'Sangla Valley Sustainable Development Society'. I went inside, and that's when I met Ashok. He was minding the store, and his face lit up when I asked him about environmental concerns in Sangla Valley. He offered me tea and handed me a sheet of information about their organization.

I should describe the office, first, I think. It was perched on the second tier of shops in the main bazaar, and I had to climb a rickety, steep metal frame staircase to get there. Inside were several mountaneering trophied, trekking photos, bits of climbing gear, and a relatively new computer. It was easily one of the most appealing offices I've seen so far in India. When I fist showed up, it looked like no one was inside, so I knocked on the door, and Ashok came up from one of the lower shops to let me in. He sat himself behind the desk, short and enthusiastically intense, and sent a teenage boy to get us tea while we talked. I had to corral Jessie and bring him up from below, since it looked like we were going to chat for a bit and Jessie was waiting there.