The community centre and Kie Monastery.

A leisurely get up for breakfast, which was a choice of porridge, toast, omelette and/or curds, and we left for Kaza town and a visit to the New Community Centre. It is being built by the Spiti Valley Project, www.spiti.org , and has been designed to demonstrate the use of modern technology, combined with traditional build skills as developed in the area. It has thick, inner, rammed mud bricks with an outer layer of glass windows which heat up the bricks and slowly release that heat into the living spaces. They also have a convection system which circulates the warm air from the small gap between window and wall using openings at the top and bottom. Building in the valley is a long drawn out procedure as it can only take place in the warmer months after the snow has melted so while the building is complete, it will be a while longer before the inside is kitted out with an eye clinic, maybe dental, community room etc. it should be an absolute boon to the community.
We then walked through the old town to the hospital which was built a few years ago. It is a small subsidiary of the main hospital in Manali and carries out births, broken bone setting and other small surgical routines. They are in a transition at the moment as the old doctor has just retired and the new doctor arrives tomorrow so it will be interesting to see how things develop.
After lunch we drove up to Kie monastery where we looked around the Main Prayer Hall, the old prayer wheel and a couple of temples before returning for dinner, which was Chinese based and very nice.


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