Spiti is a dry oasis between the Parbati Valley and the border between India and Occupied Tibet. Even though the place is a desert, I can only consider it an oasis; not only because of the rivers which run through it with dashing violence, but also because the Spiti Valley is a land inhabited mostly by ethnic Tibetans who speak a language close to Tibetan, the Ladakhi, and who practice Tibetan Buddhism.

Gone are the Hindu Temples and shrines with their frightening gods and avenging images, gone are the blank stares and hourly attempts to rip you off. You are no longer in India here: you are in an Asia even deeper than you could have imagined before. The faces grow more lively and rounder, the eyes slant and smile; people open their homes and their hearts.

Before I get too hard on India, I've got to admit that if we loved the Spiti so much and got so many insights into its people, art, culture and religion, it is thanks mostly to an Indian. Amol is one of the very few Indian backpackers I have met, a man who has taken the country by the horns and who loves her like a bride. He will travel by truck, bus, train or donkey just to get a glimpse at a rare view and his knowledge of the place in encyclopaedic. A good traveller is hard to find: Amol is also a great guy.

The roads are a challenge. The distance between Manali and Kaza is about 170 kilometres, but the bus ride takes 12 hours. If the mountain passes are beautiful and road-side eateries exotic, the roads themselves make you wonder why gravity doesn't seem to function when your bus should logically be at the bottom of a pitiless ravine.

12 hours then take you to Kaza and your first encounter with Tibet and her flat whitewashed houses, gentle people and elevation sickness. The air is so thin that climbing the hill to the guest house is like participating in the Olympics.

The next day we went off to Kibar, known as the highest village in Asia (4205m), although you could see with the naked eye another, higher one on the next hill. Fifty or so whitewashed homes in a semi-circle, their windows outlined in black as though with mascara, and animal fodder drying on the roofs alongside beans and tomatoes for the winter. Smoke rises gently from cooking hearths into the pale blue morning sky. In the evenings the sky is a dark marine blue, a heavy Van Gogh blue. A blue meant to make birds happy.

Our most wonderful surprise was the Tabo Monastery, two hours East of Kaza. A place of calm and also of reunions; since it was at Tabo where we met up with people we had met along the way. And so it was together that we explored the ancient chapels, hand-painted caves and surrounding countryside.

Spiti will always be the land of barren mountains and fertile encounters. A land where warning clouds sit as light as gods atop mountain peaks, a land where it is always almost winter. A land where saffron robed monks shuffle from meditation to study hall and a smile is in every mind's eye.

Leaving the Spiti was less fun. The five A.M. bus from Tabo to Manali stopped to pick up passengers at Kasa, and suddenly this half empty ancient bus was crammed full of people. Crammed. Like worms they were pushed on. Monks, old women, men carrying parcels, mothers carrying crying babies. They were to travel like this for 12 gruelling hours and since it was still cold outside the windows were closed and the air inside the bus was unbreathable.

We were eight kilometres outside of Kasa. Amol and Gregg were sitting in front of us and suddenly I saw terror strike in Marie-Do's eyes. The Tibetan nun to my right was going to vomit. She was holding it…holding it…waiting for us to get the window open. The window was, of course, stuck. Would you have it any other way? With my hand in the cast I was useless, and so Marie-Do and Gregg fought the ancient latches together.

Just in the nick of time the window was raised and the nun came forward, spilling most of her goods outside, and some of her goods all over Marie-Do. We, however, had had enough. We got out of the bus, got some of our money back and had breakfast while Gregg and Amol doubled back to Kasa to rent a jeep to take us to Manali.

They eventually made it back with an old jeep full of holes in the chassis (great for the dust), and a frightened speed weary driver. We had all woken up at 4 o'clock that morning and made it into Manali - 178 kilometres later - at 11 o'clock that night.

The whole thing was unforgettable. The mishaps of travel are what make travel.