Manali

Photo album Manali:

https://picasaweb.google.com/116253494913081133936/Manali?authkey=Gv1sRgCLblrrPEgODiSQ#5649973214744644226

29 July 2011 Manali
Day 1
We had opted to book a car to take us to Manali instead of taking the bus. It was more expensive, but as Fia had not been 100%, we were worried about needing to stop or travel sickness, and for an 8 hour journey, we thought it was worth it.
We had planned for the car at 9:30 in time for us to be able to have breakfast and take the travel sickness pills. Fia and Jacqui swallowed theirs, but Tamsin was unable to swallow it whole and Jacqui crushed the pill, which later, we think turned out to be significant as it wasn't Fia that was ill on this painfully winding journey, but Tamsin.
We needn't have been so organised as we were sat waiting outside our hotel with our rucksacks for 40 minutes before someone strolled up to collect us. We thought we had paid for the luxury of the car picking us up at the hotel, but in fact he was to lead us on a 30 minute walk with our rucksacks down the hilside to the road at the bottom, where we waited another 10 minutes before a small car arrived with a different driver - though not THE driver, it seemed, and we loaded up the rucksacks onto the roof and into the boot. A 10 minute drive away and the temporary driver hopped out to make way for the real McCoy who climbed in, introduced himself, and said "Sorry for 5 minute late". It was now one and a half hours since we had expected to be leaving. "No problem" we said, amused.
We were off. The first couple of hours the car took a short cut compared to the more major road that the bus would take. We loved it, as it was winding its way through small villages and we got a little insight into some life off the beaten Lonely Planet travellers track, albeit behind the open window of a car. But not long after we had hit a fast, but just as winding mountain route, Tamsin announced she was feeling sick, and seconds after...was - unfortunately before we had quite realised the imminence of the situation. We stopped at the side of the road, and waited a half hour for Tamsin to recover, and for us to clean up as best we could. She sufferred for another couple of hours or so, and we stopped several times for her to have a break, and once when she was sick again, before she seemed to get in the swing of the journey (or maybe the road was a little straighter).
The route was of course stunning, winding its way between forested hills that seem to spring out of the earth so dramatically and numerously that it looked like a fairy tale. At times, we could see across half the world, without noticing any habitation, but when we stopped, the faint sounds of village life rose from the thick vegetation, and people miraculously appeared from nowhere.
Our car was accompanied on the road mostly by the huge, robust but colourful Tata trucks that rumbled their way along at a snail's pace. Overtaking them was an ordeal as we could rarely see sufficiently in front of us to know whether there was anything coming the other way, and uphill it took a painfully long time for us to edge past the truck, on the wrong side of the road - Jacqui and I with our hearts in our mouths, praying that nothing would appear around the corner heading straight for us. Did our driver know that nothing was coming around the corner? Had he developed some kind of sense of smell to detect ongoing vehicles? Did he have an action plan, an escape option in case something came, or was he just taking calculated risks, relying on the statistic of the in-frequency of traffic? We put our faith in him and tried not to think about it.
Just as Tamsin was recovering, we had a puncture. Everything was unloaded out of the boot to get the jack and the spare tyre out, and the driver started to work, while I floated around to try to look useful. Everything was going swimmingly, until the car, raised on its jack, suddenly gave up and gently descended to the ground, while we all watched - the jack had snapped. The driver looked anxious now, paced up and down and got onto his mobile phone, whie I tried to contribute what I thought were useful suggestions, but evidently weren't, and Fia and Tamsin made a video recording news presentation of the situation, Tamsin as the presenter. We were rescued in the end, not by my survival instincts and ideas for improvisation using rocks and branches, but by his friend who was on the same route, not far behind us and stopped to lend us his jack.
For lunch, we pulled over at a smartish looking restaurant. The driver had been fairly inflexible on where we would stop for lunch, and walked us up to the door of the restaurant while he disappeared into a cheaper restaurant to the side. A team of uniformed waiters greeted us with wide smiles, but on looking inside, there wasn't another soul eating there. We looked at the menu and decided that it looked like an over-priced tourist trap so we declined, to their great dismay and feigned bewilderment and we wondered round to a shabbier looking eatery a few doors down, with his pots of food bubbling away on his outdoor kitchen counter. We ate well on different vegetarian dishes with endless chapatis and it of course cost next to nothing.
It was around 7:30pm when we finally arrived at Manali and following advice from the guidebook, we headed straight to the old town to find somewhere to stay. Our driver had his own ideas and took us to his friends place, the Green Home cottage, extolling the beautiful views and calm atmosphere. The driver hung around to ensure that we would stay there and I was sure that the quoted price of 600 rupees (10 euros) included a commission for him. We told the owner that we would look around, but in reality it was dark, we were up an unlit lane and didn't really know where any other guest houses were and it was late, so we ended up shuffling around with our rucksacks, tapping on my telephone etc when he suddenly announced a drop in price to 400 rupees. We accepted for a night, thinking that we would look further the following day, dropped our bags and headed into the village centre for a beer, pizza and, as luck would have it, the England/India cricket test match on the television.

Day 2 - 30 July
We set off to explore Old Manali and in fact soon realised that our first guest house was out on a limb from the heart of this thriving community and by 12:00 had checked out of Green Home cottage and into Dream River guest house, with a double room plus an annexe with an extra bed for the girls, a bathroom and with views in all directions on the roaring waters of the beautiful Beas river.
We were at the bottom of the main street of old Manali, a winding hill, lined with shops selling shawls and flakey hand-made travellers clothes and restaurants, all with a distinctly laid back feel, decorated with ethnic drapes, Che Guevara and Bob Marley murals, low hanging dim lit whicker lamps and with cushioned areas and backgammon sets to while away the smoke-drenched days. The travellers there completed the picture with their dreadlocks and pony tails, regulatory baggy colourful trousers, bare feet, loose fitting T-shirts and headscarves and simply oozing with the totally relaxed state of mind and body that comes with the days, or more likely weeks, of gentle inactivity in this hedonistic den. If there had been a beach, we would have thought we were in Goa. Life seemed to revolve at a barely perceptible pace around sleep, smoking, drinking, pizzas and chocolate fudge cake.
We of course stood out like sore thumbs, looking as though we had just stepped out of the Paris metro, and it didn't take long for Jacqui to hippy-up a little with a pair of baggy trousers and some flakey tops, and the girls to do their bit with Henna'd hands and a brazilian hair braid. With the exception of my growing stubble and increasingly floppy hair, I still looked as though I had stepped off the Paris metro. It didn't take long either, for us to adjust to the pace of life, and most of our lasting memories of Manali are of leisurely, disproportionately long meals in some cafe or another.
Under this surface of hippy life, the differences between Manali and what we had come to know of India from Delhi to Shimla, were very apparent. The people, the clothes, the buildings and the food were revealing another history and culture. The faces now had a more central Asian look about them - slightly less dark, with serene and friendly Tibetan or Nepalese looking eyes. Hindu temples were now matched with Buddhist, and some dishes such as momos and thukpas had appeared on menus that we hadn't seen before. Early morning, elderly ladies with faces worn from their outdoor life, dressed in woollen aprons, and with blanket shawls with colourful hand embroidery wrapped around their shoulders, would wonder down the hill through Old Manali, driving their milking-cow for a day of grazing, or heaving some heavy load of produce on their back, supported by a carrying strap on their forehead.

By this stage, we had not really got to grips with our electronic connections - the blog was not even set up, we could only write e-mails and Tweets when we were connected, which since leaving Delhi had been limited to sitting in impractical grim internet cafes, we had a 3G phone SIM card that we had never managed to connect to the internet with and now couldn't even get a mobile phone network. We were determined to leave Manali with this all sorted and it was a good place to work on it, given that there were good facilities and that our labours could be lubricated and eased by pizzas, beers and chocolate fudge cake.





School also progressed well in Manali and after French lesson we headed for dinner in Moondance, a classic laid back restaurant, semi-outdoors but with coverings for the rain and with a separate room laid out only with cushions and games. The girls joined up with some other young and explored a little, until Tamsin came back to us a little distressed to inform us that a lamp had bitten her, a little embarrassed that it sounded so implausible. She'd had an electric shock from a ragged poorly fitted low hanging lamp - we were lucky that she could learn this lesson without any further injury.
We finished the evening with the girls playing a board game of ... (something unrecognisable) in the chill-out room with a couple of friendly indians. One of them had hermit-like grey hair down to his knees (seemingly not cut in the last 10 years) and a beard to match - Fia fondly named him 'Barbichette'.
The food was good, the atmosphere was cool, everyone was friendly, and the girls were having fun.
Fia, now fully recovered from the loss of appetite she suffered in Shimla, made the following entry in her diary (translated from french):
"it was so good, I just wanted to dance.....if only I had had the Nervillois with me"

We all slept soundly to the soothing roar of the Beas river.

Day 3 31 July
Breakfast was in Little Italy - the first restaurant in India we had found with wi-fi access. We were out on a shady terrace on a warm, sunny day, the breakfast was great and the service was Manali-speed slow - but if it hadn't been, we would not have made the progress on the blog that we did. Writing the text of the blog was only half the job - Jacqui also sorted through all the photos and then went through the painful uploading process, with the frustrating insertion of each photo taking an age.
This restaurant had become the hang-out pad for the large groups of Israeli tavellers, who we soon came to realise are en masse in India and in particular in Manali and Kasol (an identically laid-back twin town in the Pin valley). It seems that travelling to India and one or two other places, is the almost systematic step for young Israelis to recover from the rigours of their tough obligatory national service and hanging out in cafes, smoking and occasionally eating is the classic recovery medicine. Their reputation amongst the local indians, we were to discover later, is not positive and is responsible for the new more restrictive laws on the issuing of tourist visas.
We had a good day of school - the girls sitting on cushions at the little table in our room - and then whiled away the rest of the day on a combination of work on the blog, browsing the little shops for Yak wool or pashmina shawls (renowned in this area) and clothes and Fia and Tamsin having their Henna and their hair braiding done, sat on a bed in a little hair/beauty salon wooden shack, with a lovely friendly lady who was emamoured with both of them. They were absolutely delighted and went to sleep in great excitement, with their arms rested on the pillows so that they wouldn't damage the Henna patterns.

Day 4 1 Aug
We were starting to make plans for a trek - we had heard it was very different trekking here compared to Ladakh which is much more barren and dessert-like, so thought it would be good to have the two perspectives. After having made some enquiries with different agencies, we registered our interest with one of them for a trek across the Hamta Pass, a reasonably challenging 4 day camping trip rising to 4200m, requesting to leave within 2 days. We hoped they could find some others interested, as it helps to bring the cost down.
After a long morning of school work and continued work on the blog (now published for the first time), we headed into New Manali to complete our equipment needed for the trek. We had verified what was needed and were looking for good sunglasses for the girls, a waterproof poncho for Jacqui and waterproof bottoms for the girls and myself - but the choice was very limited and we ended up only with a poor quality poncho.
We did have success however with our phone - a few days previously we had lost the network on our phone eventhough it was an area where Vodaphone had a network. The vodaphone recharge shops were unable to resolve the problem and told us to call the Vodaphone customer service, but after my painful experience lasting several hours with the customer service in Delhi to get the phone working in the first place, I had no intention of starting this again and I offered the boy in the recharge shop 50 rupees (0,8 euros) to get it done on our behalf. So we sat in the shop for half an hour watching him use our phone to battle his way through the vodaphone customer services fortress and succesfully resolve our problem - it was the best 50 rupees we had spent. While waiting, the girls played outside the shop at horses, Tamsin the trainer with Fia galloping in circles around her, making suitable horse noises, much to the amusement of onlookers.
As darkness was falling, we walked back to Old Manali through a nature reserve - wooded and pleasant, though other than birds, there was nothing else to see.

Day 5 2 Aug
Our last day in Manali - we were determined to get out on a more substantial walk to see a little more around Manali, and also to have a minimal stretching of our legs before our trek began the following day.
We managed to keep the school to the morning, then headed off down the Beas river, grabbing a handful of chapatis on our way for an on-the-go picnic lunch.
It was a beautiful walk of around 4 hours through the rural life of the river valley, passing ladies dozing in the shade while their cows grazed, lizards sunning themselves on rocks and through a rustic village, where a group of men sitting out chatting, enthusiastically hailed us as we passed. We had some rock hopping to get across a part of the river before we reached a wonderful rickety old footbridge to get across the fast flowing part. Coming down river on the other side, we were able to take a steep 'short-cut' (a phrase well embedded into the Hindi language) up to Vashist village - the alternative travellers hang-out to Old Manali with a temple and hot springs at the top of the village.
It was only a quick look around because we needed to get back to New Manali in order to make another shopping attempt to complete our equipment for the trek. We were impatient not to lose time - a dangerous situation in India when Murphy's law (or the Indian equivalent) is at its most destructive. We hopped into a rickshaw which started to head down the bumpy, narrow unsealed track down the hill out of Vashist, and turned straight into a traffic jam. The rickshaw driver knowingly turned off his engine to wait - we started to get fidgety but each time we were considering to hop out and walk he reassured us that it would be clear any minute, though was never able to explain what was causing it. Just as we were about to give up, the engines all came on and the traffic cleared - but a minute later, he pulled over to the side and announced that he had a puncture. We jumped out - threw him half the fare and started walking quickly down the rest of the hill, flagging any rickshaw that passed us. One obviously sensed our urgency and stopped for us eventhough he already had 2 passengers in the back. "No problem" he said, one of the passengers got out and into the front to share the seat of the driver, while the 4 of us squeezed in with the other passenger in the back. With such a heavy load, we felt the need to lean into the corners to avoid toppling, but we were in a rush.
We found another hiking shop which, (Murphy having exhausted his powers for the day), had two pairs of good quality sunglasses for the girls - our most urgent purchase. They were less well equipped on waterproofs, but were very friendly and offered us chai, so we ended up staying in the shop for a couple of hours, looking at our upcoming trek on various maps they had and chatting.
We ate pasta for dinner, back in Little Italy, and despite good intentions, did not get the early night that we had planned in preparation for our trekking.
Tia Video Productions
https://picasaweb.google.com/116253494913081133936/TVPEnRoutePourManali?authkey=Gv1sRgCNyxp97-rYG7MQ#5654413950927929266

Tia Video Productions
https://picasaweb.google.com/116253494913081133936/TVPHavingFunAtMoondanceManali?authkey=Gv1sRgCPS_5eeVvrjl2AE#5654426786952983474