Spitian Notes – I

On our drive down to Kee monastry in Spiti valley, an animal loving friend got off the jeep to hug one of the two donkeys. For the donkeys this was probably strange even for Spiti standards.

In the next two days, Pooh Jha ( as she will be called here ) would hop out of the jeep to fondle another donkey, some sheep, a few blue, brown and yellow mountain goats and one domesticated and saddled horse. And although she expressed a desire a number of times to sink her head into the hairy mane of a yak, we never found one close enough for her to hug.

This was perhaps good for the yak as Pooh managed to spook the majority of the animals we spotted whom she tried to hug, despite proclaiming deep love and affection for all of them.

It began with the donkey pair that was quietly grazing on the road side, the day we went to Tabo and Pin. Pooh moved one step towards them only for them to shuffle sideways, away from her, without interrupting their afternoon meal, pretending to ignore the world, which perhaps allowed a distant thought to lull into her head that a hug may be possible after all.

She stretched her hand to pet one of them and they wriggled their rear and put a couple of more steps between us. She lunged one last time to hug and they broke into a trot and scampered away in tandem, their bums and tails synchronized and swishing. Oddly though, the donkeys never brayed.

She never named this couple citing treason on their part as the chief reason, but her next donkey love, Pooh called Ghanshyam.

This one was grazing away unsuspecting of what was about to descend on him. But Ghanshyam was quick on the uptake. The instant he sniffed non-four legged presence around him, he put in as much distance in between as was possible on donkey legs after an interrupted meal and days of non-bathing.

For a while, Pooh and I ran with Ghanshyam, calling out to him to wait and be hugged and then pose. But Ghanshyam ran unmoved.

I do not have pics of Ghanshyam. Of the first pair I have a forlorn Pooh looking at two donkeys running in the distance.

These were our later days in Spiti valley. And this was much before my camera phone broke. There was one horse — I forget his name — who Pooh managed to hug, of whom I have a video clip. Otherwise sheeps ran away, goats ignored, even a little kid didn’t take being pichkooed too well, but that is another story for another day.

On the third or the fourth day, journeying in Nako, we found a water beetle, who Pooh adopted and called Augustus Kramis – the third. Augustus ran away when he was scrubbed, force fed and force-sent to learn Sanskrit to be a Brahmin. An adopted housefly called Raghupathy in Kaza fled home when Pooh offered to get him married – or so I think, I forget the real reason. Of these I never managed photographs.

Yaks we never found in Spiti. They said they were abundant in Leh. But I have a postcard of a bunch of yaks on a farm in Spiti. Two of them, Pooh has named Ganpathy and Kundalika V. Young Ganapathy is peacefully grazing unaware that Kundalika is eyeing him. Kundalika is good at math and Ganpathy is good with knitting, or so Pooh said – I think. I might frame the postcard as an ode to the hug that never happened.