At the foothills of the Himalaya

Location: Kaza
Country: India

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After my previous post, I wet to meet Limi (Yul's friend) and her boyfriend. Even though I had only been way for like 3 days, it was so nice seeing someone from home. I spent a few hours with them. They were going off in the morning to another area.
The next day I had made plans with the Israeli group that I came up to Manali with, to go see some waterfalls. After an hour of walking in blazing heat, and other hour promised to go, I bed them farewell and took a rickshaw back to the guest house, there I sat quietly reading my book. Apparently the waterfalls were not that spectacular anyway.
We ordered a jeep for the next morning to take us on a 5 day tour of Spiti valley, which is bout 12 hours north of Manali.
The view on the way was just unbelievable, breath taking. We started off with the Manali view which is green hills covered in apple trees, then slowly the trees began to disappear and there were just green hills, then it turned in to a desert with hills and rivers flowing. Apparently all these hills are part of the Himalaya. Just amazing view, but can't upload any pictures from here.
The ride in the jeep was not easy, when I say jeep, don't go ahead and imagine something comfortable, far from it. But again we are lucky to have a lovely driver.
We stopped on the way at lake Chandratal, which was nice enough. We were supposed to hike down to the lake for about an hour, but we all gave that one a miss.
After about 10 hours we arrived at Losar, where we were supposed to sleep, one look at the place ad the guest house and we knew we were not staying there. We asked the driver to take as on to Kaza which was about 2 hours away. By this point we were all dead hungry and dead tired, but there was just no choice about it.
At Kaza we found a very nice guest house which also had much needed hot showers, and finally got some food in our stomach, after eating nothing since breakfast.
Today we went to Ki Gompa (Gompa being a general name for a Buddhist Tibetan ministry), it is at about 4100 meters height. Having to walk up a small hill to the ministry almost killed me off. I'm sure most of you are aware at my lacking fitness, at these heights it just makes it impossible.
The ministry was nice, nothing spectacular, but the Tibbetians are just so sweet.
Then we went on to Kibber village, which was a quaint Buddhist village.
Now we are walking round old Kaza a bit, not a beautiful place, but a few shops around.
The weather here is rather cool, but not too cold for me. I bough a shawl, which seems to be a pre-requisite for anyone traveling in India, it keeps me warm.
The food so far I'm not that impressed with, but I find what to eat.
I think that about covers what's been going on, I'll go walk round the "market" now.