July 16, 2016.

I kept looking at the black waters, fascinated, but eventually I had to ask, and Parvinder replied: “Yeh toh Gue nallah hai. Iska paani toh kallah hi hota hai.”

Before I opened my curious mouth again, Abhishek Kaushal explained: “In the higher reaches, every river picks up the colour of the mountains it runs through. It’s due to the nature of the rocks and soil on the mountain. Am quite sure the mountains around #Gue will have black or dark rock and soil.”

As we are driving along towards Gue, along the Nallah, I can see that the mountains are the colour of burnt ash, coal, and burnt mud. This was yet another different landscape within the Himalayas and like on all the previous roads, I just kept looking, staring, smelling, feeling the air and soaking in the environment.

The nallah carried the dark rock, soil and other material along with it towards the #Spiti. We were of course going the other way and very soon (about 20 minutes) the village of Gue came into sight.