That’s Lalung right in front of me and I realise that my mouth is a little open and I am sort of holding my breath – it’s an idyllic village, true picture postcard stuff.

Photo: Sanjay Mukherjee

The houses are all made in the typical style that we have been seeing right from Upper Kinnaur into Spiti – cream-coloured clay and mud houses, black and red paint on wooden window frames. Farms clustered together, the whole village tightly knit and yet sprawling across the slopes of the mountainside. And of course a central road into the village.

Then I noticed another road, a little higher going towards an old houses… and Parvinder identified it as The Lalung Monastery.