Koksar

Koksar is a trucker stop surrounded by 5 to 6000m high mountains. There are about 50 shacks and houses. It lies in the middle of the Lahaul valley and should have been are over night stop to get to the Spitti valley.
But as soon as we arrived we met three travellers who just got evacuated from the Spitti valley. Apparently the snow was deep the pass for an unforeseeable period closed and I just had flip flops. Obviously not the best circumstances and so we had to decide to give up the idea of the Tibetan monasteries altogether. Instead we slept in a dorm which cost 35 US cent. The toilet was adventurous and the water ice cold.
We ate at the best restaurant which was at a old mans place who was delighted to serve us. The next day we wanted to do a casual hike. After a while of walking through the Lahaul valley we decided to hike one of the smaller mountains. There were only paths from sheeps and it was pretty steep. I was obviously out of shape. The mountain was steep and the air thin. It seemed like it will never end. But after several hours of walking up we made it and were able to see into the valley behind. It seemed like a dead end, so we were sure that nobody has been back there since a long time. There was also a river coming down from the mountains that led all the way to Koksar - probably. But we didn't know if there would be a path or just a gorge. We decided to take the risk of not finding a path and walked down on the other side. For that we had to walk on a thin ridge in the cliff. Juan was struggling because he was afraid. So he was really slow and it took for ever. In the meantime I took a look around and found out that there probably is no path and that we have to backtrack. The prospect for Juan of getting back to the cliff was not discussable for him. So we climbed an even more dangerous, extremely steep gorge. Luckily everybody made it safe to the top, where we picnicked an hour before. Then we walked down. Dutch and Argentinian people are really bad at walking down. People were slipping all the time. Happy to have made it back to the "heaven" of Koksar. But then the sicknesses began. Here I got the stomach problem which I have up to date (one month later).
Next morning we left back to Manali. A horrible ride, with traffic jams and Marieke yelling at the bus driver to be a bit more cautious. Once when it got really close to falling down the mountain, people left the bus and walked this part.