Marty Mellway Photography

Key Gompa, an ancient monastery in the Spiti Valley, a high altitude desert valley cut off from rainfall and the outside world by soaring mountains and treacherous roads in the state of Himachel Pradesh, North India. We stayed here over night while trekking through from Kibber to Kaza. Tea and meals with the monks was so much fun. We were called to meals and tea by the sound of a conch shell horn. One of the younger monks showed us many of the sacred inner rooms of the monastery which housed thousand year old scriptures and Thangkas (Tibetan paintings) which had been brought over from Tibet over the last thousand years. Some rooms were so sacred that outsiders were not even allowed to look in, which I really like because it leaves some mystery, which there ought to be in a thousand year old temple deep in the Himalayas  The monks take there meals in an ancient kitchen, along one wall there are big stone wood fire stoves. On top of the stoves huge bla...

 The Spiti Valley was beyond all expectations. The Spiti valley is located in the North eastern part of the Indian State Himachel Pradesh.It is a desert on the roof of the world,a shangri-La of legend, cut off from the outside world by soaring himalayas and deadly mountain passes. A land where fifteen years ago no foreigner was permitted to enter. Close to the politically sensitive India/Tibet border the Spiti valley has been a restricted area since the forming of India. To this day all vistors must apply for a permit to enter in the mountain village of Rekong Peo, a small town surrounded by tall mountains in the Kinnaur valley which you must go through in order to enter the Spiti valley. When I traveled to the Spiti valley I was in the company of Jeanette and Philine, Jeanette and I were on our big India Nepal trip and we met Philine in Manali who decided she would also like to try to make the trip to the Spiti valley. We met in Shimla, the old summer British capital back in ...