Chicham: village life

13 July - 24 July

Having spent about 3 weeks in the Spiti valley, I thought I had become acclimatized to the altitude, but this, my fitness, and resolve, were all tested thoroughly at my next volunteering; my most authentic Indian experience to date.

I was due to spend the next two weeks with a local family in the village of Chicham, a small village of 75 houses in the Spiti valley.  While I had spent most of my time in Kaza, which sits at about 3,700m above sea level, Chicham sits at 4,200m.  And when asking the host what I would be doing all day, I was told that it was not the causal work (which I had been fired from, for being to slow) I did at my last volunteering, but 12 hour days of manual labour, helping mainly in the fields. 

The idea of this volunteering was to live with a local village family, eat with them, work like them, and get an actual uncensored version of what it is like to eek out a living at this altitude.

I was picked up by the owner of the house, and an hour’s drive later we arrived at his house.  Takpa is very modest and feels his mudhouse reflects a poor state of class, compared to his neighbours, who are all building houses of concrete.  However, I found his house every bit as comfortable and welcoming as any I had stayed in.  He had three large rooms on the ground floor: a bedroom for his worker (Puntchuk - who you were introduced to in the last post); a large lounge for where the family spends all winter (basically in this one room for six months, because the snow is too deep to get outside); the kitchen, where Takpa and his wife sleep; and at the end of the passage is a greenhouse, with vegetable patch, and washing area.  Cleverly, he has put the washing area inside the greenhouse, so that even in minus temperatures in winter, you can still be relatively warm, and have a shower.

The lounge.  Could you spend 6 months only in here?
Chicham, Spiti valley

The indoor/outdoor greenhouse,
Chicham, Spiti valley

Upstairs are the guests / volunteer rooms, as he also runs a homestay.  I got a large room, with ample room and sitting area. 

My room,
Chicham Spiti valley

Niceties out the way, and an evening’s rest under my belt, work was due to start.

They really were not kidding about 12 hour days, and however hard you feel you may work, I do not think you can know what a hard day’s work is, until you have spent 12 hours in a field (the best I got to was 11).

They work so hard, because they only have 6 months to make a living.  Once winter (and the snow) arrives, there is no possibility of growing crops (except in the greenhouse, but those are limited, and not for sale, but only the house’s consumption). 

So come rain, wind, or sun, Takpa’s wife (Padma – a sweet frail looking lady, but who is one of the hardest workers I have met), his mother (who is about 120 in the shade.  I mean the way she coughed, it sounded like she had minutes, not days left – although this could be the harsh village life – and maybe she is her early 50’s), and their worker Puntshuck (a boy of 16 they have taken in from another state) get into the field just after 7am, and do not return until after 7 in the evening.

As I was living like a villager, I too got into the field just after 7, after some tea and breakfast in the house.  Their cash-crop is green peas, and we spent the first number of days deweeding.  Takpa’s family is one of 13 families who were the original inhabitants of Chicham, and therefore the only people in the village permitted to own land.  As the first born son he inherited all the land.  He has about 8 fields, so there was a lot of deweeding to do.  By the time I was done, the skin on the tips and sides of my fingers were hard, and the dirt did not come off for days, seemingly engrained into my skin.

Me and Takpa's mum deweeding in the end of a long session,
Chicham, Spiti valley 

    

So, a typical day meant I woke up at 5:30am, got up and stretched (the old back and knees needed some love after a day of toil).  6:30am was a light breakfast, oats or a pancake, before heading into the field at 7am.  Some fields are close to the house, perhaps a 5 minute walk, but most are a lot further.  The main ones were 15 – 20 minutes walk downhill, so 25-30 minutes uphill, at altitude, after a whole day’s work in the field.  Walking up feels like you have had way too many trips to the pie shop, and are paying the price now.

Another basket filled up with weeds, so much still to go.
Chicham, Spiti valley

We worked until about 1pm, filling a basket with weeds, over and over, when lunch was served.  Lunch was tirik (homemade bread) and either chutney (crushed tomatoe, chili and coriander), but mostly homemade butter.  This was washed down with more tea, and tsampa: crushed barley and chang (homemade beer).  The post-chang buzz really helped the afternoon session, which lasted until about 4:30pm, where there was another tea break and any leftover tirik and tsampa, which would need to last you until 7pm, where they packed up, and then went to make dinner.  Dinner was served between 9:30pm and 10pm, so I had a chance to relax, wash, and maybe do another stretch session, and then sleep and repeat.

Tsampa and chang in the field (note my "spoon" - a flower stalk),
Chicham, Spiti valley

Padma and Takpa's mum, making tsampa (and chang, obvs)
for lunch, Chicham, Spiti valley

Following from the overly hospitable nature of the people I had already met, this house was no different, and Padma and Takpa always made sure to try and serve me generous helpings, and seconds and thirds, until I had to pull my plate away.  I quickly learnt “maan”, which meant enough.

Spitian food is similar to Nepali/Tibetan food.  The momos, thentuk, and tirik were amazing.  We also had more traditionally, Indian curries; and even a really good pasta one night.

Food glorious food:
Veg pasta,
Chicham, Spiti valley

Food glorious food:
Padma, making butter,
Chicham, Spiti valley

Food glorious food:
Spinach and potatoe curry, with roti,
Chicham, Spiti valley

Life however was not not all fun and games, and Takpa was usually out of the house and did not come back every evening, as he worked in Kaza in tourism.  He was the only one of the family who could speak English, so I was left most days to settle for a combination of sign language and just a few words of English, but mostly smiles and nods.  This made understanding the plan for the day, where I had to go, what I had to do, or basically anything that needed communication, very difficult.

This was although not the most annoying.  The hardest part of this volunteering was not the hard work, or the language barrier, or roughing it village style, but Pantschuk (their worker’s) horrific taste in music.  He had a Bluetooth speaker, and as I can assume because of the scant access to the internet, a very limited number of songs on his phone, that he would blast through it.

Pantshuk, taking a break from herding
and hurting my ear drums

For the first day, it was bearable, and maybe even a little motivating, to listen to his trashy dance mashups (that were illegally downloaded - so full of adverts), but three days in, after consecutive 12 hours sessions of low-grade, loud, electro trash, I was nearly at breaking point, and the language barrier made it difficult to sign out “your music is making my ears bleed”.  The best solution was to work on the other side of the field to him, or far away from the noise pollution.   

Yak ploughing,
Chicham, Spiti valley

Besides for the work deweeding in the fields, I helped plough other fields with a group of yaks (literally, yaks), and spent other days in the mountains herding cattle and collecting cow dung (but you know that story already 😊).

Unfortunately, after 10 days, they had run out of work for me to do, or perhaps the novelty of having a white guy clumsily fumbling about his work had worn off.  Takpa had also left for two weeks to lead a tour group, and after two days of having no work, and not being able to speak to anyone, I decided to cut my stay short. 

I thanked my host for her hospitality, and caught a lift back with some other volunteers from Kaza that had come to do some work.  The feedback I received from the volunteer organiser though was that they had actually enjoyed my company and were surprised at my resilience, especially as a (the first) foreigner to stay with them for such a period, where the Indian volunteers they had, had all given up after a few days.  I was grateful to hear I was not so useless, and for a real authentic experience on village life, and to learn how tough it is.        

The streets of Chicham, Spiti valley

Finishing up a whole pea field (7 more to go),
Chicham, Spiti valley