Kaza (part 1)

Kaza
https://picasaweb.google.com/116253494913081133936/KazaAlbum?authkey=Gv1sRgCPv6hsjywY7qQw#5656063801185291170

Day 1
8 August

We sheepishy handed over an enormous pile of unpleasant laundry from our last week o sweat drenched trekking, and headed off to find somewhere for breakfast.
Kaza is used to foreign travellers, with a number of guest houses and with restaurants that served cornflakes and muesli for breakfast and pasta and pizza as well as indian, chinese, and israeli food, but it is smaller, much more remote and primitive than Manali. We had running water in our hotel, (which we think came from a tank of rainwater on the roof), but all the restaurants and houses had a tub of water that they kept filled by carrying cans of water from a hand-pumped well in the centre of town. If you wanted to wash your hands in a restaurant, the waiter would stand next to you with a jug of water, pouring over the balcony as you soaped and rinsed. If you asked for the toilet - they would look confused and signal vaguely outside the restaurant - toilets were rare in Kaza, you were expected to find somewhere in the rubbish strewn wasteland behind the houses. Electricity was only occasional and residents had learnt to live with it using torches and candles. Traveller oriented menus were often not backed up by supplies and we learnt to check what was available before spending too long deciding. Fruit was particularly scarce the whole time we were there, despite tantalisingly tempting mango and kiwi lassies offered on the menus.
The town is split in two by a wide stone laden river bed - completely dry except for a tiny apologetic stream of water that weaves its way betwen the heaps of rubbish and scavenging dogs, on its way to the churning Spiti river, leaving one one side the old town of Kasa, with its ancient whitewashed houses along the winding main bazaar street, and on the other, the new town, with its concrete residential areas and corrugated steel roofs, hospital, petrol pump station and local government departments.
Dreary as it was in the rainy weather that welcomed us, if you looked up (from the already high 3640m altitude) it was surrounded by the majestic Himalayas on all sides, and along with the rest of the region had the unique Spiti character - so different from any pre-conceptions of India that it could be a different country. The Spitians (if that is what they are called?) have their own language and customs. Buddhists represent less than 1% of the Indian population, but here, everyone is a Buddhist, and there is a laid-back sense of calmness that (rightly or wrongly) we associated with this. Colourful Buddhist prayer flags can be seen in all directions and a brightly painted Buddhist temple is positioned on the hill, supervising both new and old Kaza. In the 9'th or 10'th centuries Spiti was a part of the Tibetan kingdom, and in everything we saw and did, we somehow felt closer to Tibet than we did India - though this was Spiti and what we were seeing was not Tibetan but a unique culture evolved over centuries of remoteness.
We had difficulties again in getting cold millk to go with Fia's cornflakes - it was available but it seems that the word "cold" hit a black spot in our waiter's English vocabulary, no matter how many different ways we tried to accent it. Eventually a third party was pulled in for the translation and there was relief and smiles all round.
We took a wander around Old Kaza after breakfast, getting a feel for the place and also to have some guest house comparisons and alternatives to the larger room that the Zanchuk had offered us to move into. All were similarly cheap and basic, though clean and adequate. When we finally got to see our new larger room in the Zanchuk, and successfully fought over the price - we decided to stay there. It was big enough for the mattress on the floor, had the possibility of hot water (if the electricity supply allowed it), even if our " shower was a bucket-and-jug "Indian shower". There was a terrace on the roof of the guest house which we loved - it had great views and was a bit of a meeting spot for all the travellers staying there,
Our afternoon was spent in leisurely exploration. We found out that internet connections were limited and much more expensive at 80 rupees per hour - 1,33 euros which doesn't sound much but started to add up with our different e-mail, Twitter and blog activities. Both of the two internet cafes in Kasa were satellite connections only, which are much slower and when Jacqui tried to upload the first photo onto the blog page - she brought the whole internet cafe to a standstill - the satellite was shuddering in space with the weight of this 3MB photo, and several other travellers were left watching frozen screens while their 80 rupees ticked away. We spent an evening learning how to reduce the size of our photos.
Our phone SIM cards that we purchased in Delhi were no longer working - Vodaphone had no network in the Spiti valley, but BNSL, the state national network did - so I purchased yet another sim card, along with the 2 hour long procedure of form- filling, passport copies, letter from our guest house etc - just for Spiti.


9 August
The sun was shining. When it rained in the Spiti valley, it was cold enough to have to wear long sleeves, but when the sun shined, it radiated a blissful dry heat - unlike the humidity we had suffered on the plains. Everything in Kasa immediately looked more pleasant and the hemisphere of deep blue sky that encapsulated us formed a beautifully contrasting background to the grey rocky scree-coated mountains and did wonders for our spirits. At least for Jacqui and myself - the girls were less impressed and in any case had been told that today was our big "back to school" day, so their spirits were in need of something more than a blue sky.
We started in the morning with a maths lesson at the Dragon restaurant, sitting on a sunny terrace while we were waiting for our breakfast. It seemed a good idea as breakfast would typically take a long time coming, but hunger together with distractions of meeting Zohar, an interesting Israeli zoo-keeper and two charming canadian girls (all of whom we got to know over the following week) proved to be a poor medium for mathematical concentration and after a stressful conflict and a 7 year old tantrum, we decided not to repeat the experiment.
Later, tempers were calmed, family relationships repaired and we were able to make a productive school day.
By late afternoon. we headed off for a walk up to the monastery - a fairly recent one, but beautiful and impressive - and then onwards up a path climbing the valley wall to an old, and now disused, monastery. Buddhists seem to have an irrepressible urge to climb every peak in sight, and if they didn't build a monastery on the top, would at the least honour it with a string of colourful flapping prayer flags. We had little information about the old monastery, but the views of Kaza, nestled on the valley side of the Spiti river were amazing.

We took the plunge and called to confirm our 9 day trek to Tso-Moriri lake. It would be a challenging trek but we felt that the girls had proved they were up to it (staying with our final conclusion that Tamsin's illness on the last trek was stomach related rather than altitude). We had heard further inspiring information about this trek from an agent in Kasa, Lote, with whom we had got into conversation (and whom later we came to know much better) and as an additional bonus, the trek would take a large chunk out of our journey towards Leh in Ladakh, where we were heading afterwards, cutting out some of the painfully long bus journey. Mules, donkeys, a cook and helpers had been pre-prepared in Manali awaiting our confirmation - we were to leave in two days.


10 August
We set off early in the morning to catch the 7:30 Tabo bus for a day-trip visit to the mythical looking Dhankar monastery, about 1 hour away along the Spiti valley. We were at the bus station by 7:00 the bus was waiting there, already fairly full, but it seemed you had to queue at the ticket desk before getting on. Jacqui joined the queue and was still in it at 7:35 while I was hovering near the bus, ready to get everyone on if it started to leave. Finally Jacqui's turn came, and rather than the ticket that she thought she was queing for, she was given a little slip of paper on which the clerk had scribbled seat numbers. The ticket was to be bought on the bus, and our piece of scrap paper was only a reservation - but it was worth doing, as we were able to claim our seats while others were standing.
We were at the back, and the ride was nothing short of a roller-coaster. The bus careered at great speed over very pot holed roads and tracks, and at each bump, the back of the bus leapt, throwing us all up from our seats with bone shaking ferocity. I felt like it was going to jar my back, the girls giggled uncontrollably with delight, and Jacqui let out involuntary, but very loud yelps, causing worried and curious faces to turn round to see what had happened. The journey went quickly, and we were deposited at the beginning of a small track that led steeply up the side of the valley.

After a short walk up the track, the first signs of the monastery came into view, peering down at us like an eagle from its perch high up on the craggy edge of the mountain, clinging so spectacularly to its rocky escarpment that it looked like a distant fabled giant's castle. We looked at our path that wound its way ahead of us then buried itself in the base of the vertical cliff, and wondered how we were expected to scale it, but as we gradually approached, the route opened up to us between the crags and up the rock face like a secret passage and we finally arrived at the village of Dhankar, and on upwards to the monastery.
The peaceful village is a smattering of rural houses implanted in a large basin on the mountainside. We stopped for a drink after our tiring climb, at a small guest house, above the village and just before the monastery. Beating us there was a local that we had seen on the same bus as us and we started to make small talk. He was a farmer in the village - some crops (basically peas) and one or two animals - mostly for his own family, but some also for sale. Farmwork in the village in general, being primarily based on peas, was highly seasonal - for many months of the year there is nothing to be done, and in the harsh winter the village becomes more isolated, often completely cut off when the road is unpassable from snow, and they survive on a diet of stored rice and lentils.
At the highest point (3870m) are the remains of a fort, which as far as I can tell dates back to the times of the Nono - a relation of the king of Ladakh to whom they depended in around the 10'th century) who's descendants administered local rule of this remote region, switching allegiances from Ladakh to Kullu, and then finally to the British, according to the prevailing power.
The crumbling monastery is an amazing 1200 years old, and having looked up for the last hour at its precarious position on the edge of a precipice, we were reminded of its age once we were inside by a reassuring sign saying in big no-holds-barred letters "MONASTERY IN IMMINENT DANGER OF COLLAPSE", and a plea for donations to help. We happily gave our donation, but in the solemn awareness that the ability of this legacy monument to cling on to its rocky home for the duration of our visit depended not on the scale of our donations, but on those of our predecessors, and hoping that they too had given generously. Budhism started in India in the 6'th century, but it was Rinchen Zangpo, a Western Tibetan translator of Sanskrit, who played the key role in invigorating Gelugpa Buddhism in Spiti (and also Tibet), and was the founder of Dhankar monastery as well as others.
The operational life of the monastery having now migrated to a more recent, much larger monastery built lower down in the village, the old monastery is inhabited by only 2 monks, who eat and sleep there, clean and maintain, and practice puja (prayer) as well as hosting visitors such as ourselves. One of them, Changchoopl, enthusiastically showed us around, unlocking each door and turning on dim lights as we went. We padded around in our socks in virtual silence, crouching under beams to enter dark rooms, with the distinctive monastery smell intermingled with incense, the wall full or dusty rolled-up scrolls of scriptures that were hauled over the treacherous Himalayas by fleeing Tibetans, ancient Thangkas (Buddhist silk paintings), fading murals, statues and painted face masks that were traditionally worn by the monks for dancing at festival time. We were in another era and another world.
When we climbed up the wooden ladder up onto the roof, the views were breathtaking, with the confluence of the blue and white-water Pin and Spiti rivers and their respective valleys snaking away between the stark, barren dusty mountains, and the backdrop of the ever-humbling peaks of the Himalayas.
As our limited conversations with Changchoopl, the monk, diverged from the subject of the monastery, he discovered that we lived in France, and told us that his teacher lived in a monastery in France.
"Do you know where?" we asked.
"In Cergy-Pontoise" he told us, 20 minutes from our home, and where I have worked at 3M for 9 years. We had no idea there was a buddhist monastery there, but we vowed to look him up when we were back.

We wondered back down to the village and had a simple lunch at the new monastery before taking the 10km track down to the main road. We were down by 3:00 in the afternoon - the bus back to Kasa was due past this spot only at 4:30, but we were hoping that we would be able to get a lift from another vehicle in the meantime. However, hardly any vehicles passed, and those that did looked distinctly local and waved enthusastically at us, sometimes stopping, but none were able to give us a lift.
It was scorching hot and we huddled in a small patch of shade under the wall of the only house on the road, and played clapping games. The ladies from the house, after they had arrived back from the fields loaded with their heavy bundles of grass, disappeared inside then reappeared with a tray of chai for us all - which we gratefully sipped while we all made a form of simple conversation without mutual vocabulary, and looked at each other and smiled.
The bus arrived, and together with an Israeli couple who had descended from the monastery to join us, we all climbed on. They were a lovely couple, and we crossed their paths several times subsequently in different towns. Fia and Tamsin spent the bus journey chatting particularly to the girl, enchanted with her very long hair and friendly smile, and who had a gift of animating and charming them both.

When we were back in Kaza, Inder, our guide for the trek had arrived with his helpers and had been trying to contact me, though there had been no phone network in Dhankar. They were leaving for Kibber, the starting village, that evening, but we were not ready, so said we would join them early in the morning, and spent the evening buying our last provisions, ready for an early start.


11 August
We had over-ambitiously left our packing for the morning, and as a result were late for our jeep arranged at 8:00. It was a 45 minute climb up to Kibber, stopping on the way to briefly see the magnificently picturesque sight of the 13'th century Ki monastery, the largest in Spiti, mounted on a rocky pedestal, encircled by the white-washed houses of Ki village tiered down the sides around it.
We needn't have worried about the time, as when we arrived, the mules and their handler were still on their way from Manali. They probably had more of an excuse to be late than us - the trip from Manali which had taken us 4 days of trekking and a 5 hour bus journey would be completed by them in 2 long days of walking.
Looking around us on arrival, we immediately fell in love with Kibber. This small village sits at more than 4200m of altitude in a scenic wide open basin, dotted with rural white-washed houses, and lined by steep tracks along which trudged the villagers and their donkeys, both already laden with their loads of grass-bundles brought back from the fields. In the warm sunshine, and under the deep blue sky, we stepped out of the jeep into an aura of total serenity.

We took our bags to the open terrace of a guest house, where the floor was covered by the equipment and supplies for our trek, and met Lakpa, our cook, and Karam, the helper. We had heard from Ravi at the agency, that Lakpa was a mountaineering legend with a lot of experience, and had been looking forward to meeting him. A Nepalese, Lakpa was short and wirey, notably fit and strong, and with a face that already spoke the stories that we would later hear, about his different adventures climbing Everest and other legendary peaks in the company of some eminent mountaineering names. He was in India for work while the trekking in Nepal was in the off-season, and was serving as a cook on this trip, though had fulfilled many roles in his lifetime of mountain work. Karam, also Nepalese, was young and much less experienced, but seemed pleasant, enthusiastic and hard working.
We had time, and ordered some eggs, toast and coffee for breakfast, which we ate stting on the terrace, soaking up the peaceful mountain atmosphere around us and watching for the appearance of our pack of mules around the ridge at the far edge of the village. We were excited about the trek - the presence of Lakpa and the quality and quantity of the equipment and supplies around us reinforced our expectations of this high altitude, 9 day venture, longer and more challenging than the Hamta Pass trek that we had recently completed.

Not all was on our side though. Tamsin had started to feel sick in the jeep on the way up to Kibber, and didn't recover as we thought she would when she was out of the car, refusing blankly to eat any breakfast, until she was finally sick. After that she felt much improved, ate some eggs and toast and was back to her old lively self, leaving us optimistically confident that it was related to the car journey. Inder had very thoughtfully presented both the girls with a present - a story book each, and a colouring book with crayons - they were both absolutely delighted and were immediately lost in reading and drawing, as if it was the first time they were discovering these pleasurable activities.
Finally the mules and horses arrived, and while the team were busy with the task of distributing the weight between the animals, and then attaching the loads, Inder led us off on the start of our trek - each of us with our day packs, containing waterproofs, cameras, a fleece and our lunch and water, on our backs.
The path lead initially through the pea fields, and being in peak harvest time (seemingly later than Dhankar further down the valley) they were a hive of activity - teams of villagers, crouching down picking the peas, chatting and laughing as they conscientiously went about their task, and it made for an atmospherically rural scene. After a steep descent into the valley down to the river, we started the ascent up the other side. Everyone had been on good form, but as the going became more strenuous, Tamsin began to lag, and then announced that she wasn't feeling well again. The alarm bells rang - we made some stops, tried water, glucose solution and some things to eat, managing to encourage her to continue, but the stops and the lethargy became more frequent. We decided to make a longer break, and found the only scratchings of shade from the now punishing sun under a prickly bush, with my jacket draped over the top, and let Tamsin lie down, cuddled up to Jacqui, while we picked at an early lunch.
However she wasn't improving. The symptoms were not at all conclusive. Inder thought there were signs of altitude sickness, but elected for a diagnosis of a stomach related bug and provided some appropriate medicine, which Tamsin anyway was unable to take. As there was no signs of improvement after the rest, I suggested that, before it was too late, we headed back to Kibber for the night to see if Tamsin improved by the morning. Everyone agreed - in any case, the first days walk was normaly 6 hours of challenging uphill - if we had continued at our current pace we could have been walking until after dark before we would reach the camp site. In addition, we had already ascended more than 600m from our last sleeping altitude at Kasa, and Jacqui and I were both starting to suspect that Tamsin could indeed be suffering from mild altitude sickness and maybe had done also when she was sick at the top of the Hamta Pass, despite ours and others previous conclusions to the contrary.
We turned back. The support team had overtaken us earlier so would continue to the first camp-site, unaware of our problems, and Inder decided that he should also carry on while we retraced our steps back to Kibber alone. I was comfortable with that decision, but after an hour of walking, Inder re-appeared behind us - he had also turned back after deciding that it was more important for him to stay with us and ensure that Tamsin was ok. Even as we started to walk back, Tamsin improved radically, starting to chat incessantly and laugh again. It was perplexingly confusing, but we had no intention of changing our plan again now, we were heading back to Kibber for the night.
When we had discovered Kibber only that morning, we had regretted not having spent time there. Now, as we walked back along the path through the pea fields, our wish was unexpectedly being fulfilled - though not quite as we would have hoped - and indeed it looked as beautifully tranquil on our return, as it had done on our arrival. We checked into the guest house, and put Tamsin to bed for a sleep, while we sat on the terrace, and had a bite to eat. Sam, a middle-aged English man, whose substantial travel in India and other parts of Asia showed in his clothes, hair and ear-ringed face, as well as his accumulated knowledge, was with us at the guest house and we had several hours getting to know each other. Disallusioned with his life in an office job, Sam left to travel for several years, but was now setting up business running motor-bike tours in India and South-east Asia, organising the hire of the ubiquitous and charismatic Enfield bikes, the itinery and acting as an accompanying guide. He had a customer with him in Kibber, but their trip had been disrupted by the rains which had washed out roads leading out of Kasa. He was a mature traveller, and we found in each others company a refreshing break from the young affected backpacking crowd typical in Manali.
Amazingly for this tiny mountain village, there was a guest house that offered wi-fi - something that was not available even in much larger Kasa. I made the walk up there with my laptop to send some e-mails - it was a satellite connection, painfully slow, very expensive and after 10 minutes of using it, the village electricity cut off for 45 minutes before I was able to resume. It was a long time to send a few e-mails and a tweet, but I was happy enough to have been able to at all - at one point this village held the world record for the highest village with both electricity and a road.
Tamsin surfaced, a little refreshed, but we soon realised that she was still ill, and she spent the evening whimpering on Jacqui's lap and not willing to eat anything, At one point, the guest house owner pointed out a lady from the village passing by - she was a doctor. We raced out to grab her, and she kindly came in to take a look at Tamsin. She gave her a good check, and assured us that it was not acute mountain sickness, and unlikely to be anything serious - it could be a mild mountain sickness but was more likely to be a stomach bug. She gave us some medicine and told us that if she was not better by the morning we should head back down to Kasa. We were reassured, but still unsure on the diagnosis.


12 August
I was up early and while out on the terrace, spotted Lakpa wondering around the village. When we had not turned up at the camp site by evening, he had set off with the horseman thinking that we had got lost or had some sort of accident. They had searched for us, looking for footprints and calling, and had ended up sleeping out, under the horseman's make-shift tent. Inder had wrongly assumed that they would quickly come to the conclusion that we had returned to Kibber. Sitting with my cup of tea in front of me, after my full nights sleep in a bed, I felt pretty guilty, but it wasn't me that Lakpa was angry with and he expressed his feelings that the agency had been too ambitious with this trek.

Tamsin had a full nights sleep cuddled up with Jacqui, but woke up in the morning without any real improvement. Inder and Jacqui went to ask the doctor, who restated that we would be wise to go back to Kasa and have her checked at the hospital. She offered to organise transport, and within 20 minutes, the sleepy time-less peacefulness of little Kibber village was broken as a siren-blaring, light-flashing ambulance came through the village entrance portal and came to a halt outside our guest house. A crowd gathered round to watch a bemused Tamsin being carried into the back of the ambulance where she was gagged with an oxygen mask. Inder and Jacqui climbed into the back with her and Fia and I hopped into the front with all of our day sacks. It felt a little over the top, but at the least, we were glad of an immediate transport down to Kasa, as it would have taken the morning for us to organise a jeep to come up to pick us up.
We had two stops on the way, when Tamsin was sick, but as the road was very winding and the ambulance drove fast, I looked through the little separating window both times, half expecting Tamsin's mother to have joined her on the sick bed. The hospital in Kasa was rudimentary and shabby, but the medical staff looked competent. Tamsin was taken into a ladies ward where a young doctor asked a number of questions before organising a rehydration drip, which she needed to keep for the rest of the day, when she would be reassessed. The diagnosis was dehydration - though this was more of a consequence of the sickness - the initial cause still seemed to be a mystery with the doctor seeming unsure about any altitude connection.
We took it in turns to stay with Tamsin. I went off with our bags (still only our day sacks from the previous days trekking) to find us a room for the night, and booked us back into our old room at the Zanchuk, then Fia and Jacqui went off to eat some lunch while I stayed in the hospital. Tamsin improved by the minute, and was starting to enjoy the excitement surrounding her.
It was mostly older Spiti ladies in the ward, but they were all accompanied by their daughters or other relations. No food was provided by the hospital, so the visitors supply flasks of chai, packed meals of rice and dahl, sweet Spiti biscuits etc, and by the time I had returned from one of my outings, friendship had been struck with several others in the ward. One lady in particular had two sons, Tenzin and Thinlay, roughly Fia and Tamsin's age, and promised to bring them to see us in our guest house.
By mid-afternoon, Tamsin was released on great form, and we all headed to the hotel. By early evening she was tucking into dinner at the Mahabuddha restaurant as if she was making up for lost time.
We were full of gratitude for Indian health service - from the doctor in Kibber, the ambulance, and the hospital in Kasa - Tamsin received a professional and trustworthy care and we were never asked to pay a thing, not even for medicines that we walked away with. Later in the week, Jacqui bumped into the doctor from Kibber in the Kasa pharmacy and was able to pass a donation for the hospital, with which she was delighted.
Inder had tried to get a message to our trekking team, who with the exception of Lakpa were still up the mountain, through a separate group that were heading off on the same route that we had been taking. But by the end of the day, we had no news of them arriving back to Kibber. He joined us for dinner and we took advantage of our familiarity by bombarding him with potentially sensitive questions on the caste system in present day india - a subject that in talking between us had raised a lot of curiosity.

In the middle of the night - I heard noises in our room. I sat up in alarm, as it sounded as if someone was shuffling through our bags. I tried the light but there was no electricity, and our torches were with the rest of our luggage still up the mountains. By this stage, Jacqui was also awake, and as the scuffling noise continued despite my vocal challenges, it was clear that this was not human but an animal, and we soon realised that it was coming from above our heads - bigger than a mouse, smaller than a dog. Our ceiling was merely several dilapidated sheets of hardboard - in the middle there was a hole, plugged with a plastic bag, and at one end the hardboard had become unattached and was hanging loosely. The defensive barrier between our visitor's frenzied activity and our sleeping bodies was hardly robust, and the thought of him joining Jacqui and myself in our bed, followed by a frantic scrabbling race between the three of us to get out of the bed, was not appealing.
Somehow the three of us managed to get to sleep. Fia and Tamsin slept through it all, blissfully unaware.

Fia and Tamsin are in town!

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Trekking to Chattru (Hamta Pass)

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3'rd August

Day 1
We were at the trekking agency at 8:30am, after having had a quick breakfast at the German bakery. We met Chotu, our stocky Indian guide of Nepalese origin, as well as Stan and Sophie, the two Dutch students that were trekking with us. After a 15 min drive to Prini, where we would begin, we were joined by the horses and the other men - Pritam, the cook, Ratan, the horse-man and Tilak and Romish the 2 helpers, along with enormous amounts of camping equipment and supplies. We packed the lunch boxes that we were each given into our day packs, applied our sun cream and with a great sense of excitement, had started walking by 10:00, leaving the 4 men loading the horses with all the equipment and supplies.
It was a steep uphill for 2,5 hours, mostly on steep steps, and we all found it a pretty exhausting start. We arrived for lunch at a sweet little tea house, with the mama cooking on the floor in the corner of their one room. She served us all a welcome chai (Jacqui, myself and Fia starting to get a taste for this sweet milky drink) and we then ate our cheese roll and other bits from our lunch box in glorious sunshine and already with beautiful views of the mountains. A bird with a huge wingspan, that Chotu informed us was a vulture, gracefully glided across our view causing a lot of camera fumbling and missed photos.
The afternoon Walk was initially through an uinteresting area in which a dam was being constructed, but then on a barely defined path through increasingy beautiful mountain scenery, to arrive finally at Chikha, the camp site, at around 4:30. It was less demanding than the morning and Fia and Tamsin, having found a captive audience other than Mummy and Daddy, let their conversational flood gates open, latching alternately onto Chotu, exploiting his gentle, caring manner with children, and to Stan and Sophie - who displayed immense patience and goodwill, but had probably not expected this kind of endurance test on their trek.
We were camped in the most beautiful spot in the valley with the river runing below us, breathtaking views both up and down the valley, and up the steep sides of the valley to majestic mountains, with patches of remaining snow dotted around us, and snow capped peaks in the distance. The weather had been hot all day, and we sat with the chai and biscuits that were brought out to us, relaxing and soaking in this wondeful wilderness. We had climbed 800m (1900 up to 2700m) that day and been going for about 6,5 hours - the girls had had a few complaints but basicaly managed to keep up well, sustained by a little glucose enhanced water solution at the low moments.
Ratan, the horse-man, together with his five horses and all the equipment would set off in the morning after us, but always overtake us at some point during the day, allowing for the team to set everything up in advance of our arrival. The horses would then be left loose to graze and roam where they wanted, but miraculously could be recuperated in the morning for their next day of work. Ratan was an experienced horseman, and his smiling weathered face revealed the years of his mountain life. He let Fia climb up on a horse, and told her all their names. His confident and engaging manner allowed you to somehow have a conversation with him, though he didn't have a word of English.
We had some spare time (what luxury) before dinner would be served and I sat on a rock, opened up the laptop and started writing up the blog notes, while the girls wrote their diaries and Jacqui continued her rapid digestion of "Passage to India". Jacqui and I thought back to our trekking / camping in the Pyrenees with our beloved donkeys, when from dawn to dusk we never seemed to have a moment spare - hurried walking to get to our target, unloading everything, setting up the tent, beginning the cooking, looking after the donkeys, and then all over again in the morning before we could start walking. This, by comparison was luxury camping - to have our tents set up on arrival, to be able to sit in the sun and read a book with a cup of chai after our long walk, until we were called for the soup course of our dinner was.... bliss.
It was a coriander and mushroom soup - served al fresco. Everyone mopped it up, even the girls, who previously were prepared to go to war to avoid eating a single mushroom. After the soup course we were invited into the big tent where the candlelit table was laid out - the metal boxes used to transport food doubling up as tables while we sat on the floor behind them. The cook co-ordinated all the work but all the men seemed to contribute to the dinner, cooked on the floor in front of us with two kerosene burners. All 11 of us were in this tent, the 6 of us and Chotu sitting behind our tables like royalty being served and the other 4 men squatting down rolling out chapatis, serving dahl, and rushing out every now and then to wash up something in the freezing cold source close to the tent, or just smiling at us and our vain but enjoyable attempts to make conversation with a common vocabularly of around 10 words.
Tamsin put Stan and Sophie under the spotlight by boldly, persistently and publicly investigating potential marriage plans.
We went to bed straight after dinner (I think at around 9:00 - 9:30). We used the children as our excuse for the early night, but in reality were exhausted and dying to get into those puffy warm sleeping bags, and we heard Stan and Sophie, with no excuses to offer, following straight afterwards.
Everyone was on good form. The girls were buzzing with excitement over having a tent to themselves, and as they zipped up the door, were giggling away with their torch and who knows what amusing and imaginative games.

4'th August
Day 2
Chai was served to the tents at 7:30 (though I was already up at 6:00) Everyone had slept reasonably well. We set off at 9:30, again leaving tents for the men to pack up and load on the horses.
It was a beautiful trek up the river valley virtually the whole day, with a steady constant ascent and an enjoyable rocky terrain. It was much colder though, and at around mid-day started raining.
We had several rickety and roughly improvised bridges to cross, but at one point, we had to wade through a freezing and fast running stream, taking off our boots and socks, rolling up our shorts and feeling our way across, resisting the strong current of the river. The girls went on Chotu's back while Jacqui and I, Stan and Sophie followed one at a time, all wearing Stans Teva sandals, the only ones available, which had to be thrown back over each time for the next person. We stopped for lunch on the other side of the river, and ate in the rain, dressed in our waterproofs. The conversation was certainly a little less sprightly than it had been the previous sunny day, though we were still getting a kick out of the ruggedness of it all. As clouds enveloped us though, the temperature suddenly dropped and we all became very cold - lunch lost its interest and was hurriedly stuffed away so that we could get moving again and warm up.
We arrived at camp at Juara (altitude of approx 3400m), the foot of the Hamta Pass, at around 4:30 - it had stopped raining, but was still cold and we had tea in the tent, and then an over-the-top snack of pakoras (battered vegatables) and a bowl of noodles. Exhausted, Jacqui and I went to rest - I snoozed virtually until dinner time, and Jacqui read. Our more energetic daughters were in the big tent with Prittam (the cook) and the others - we're not sure who was entertaining who but there was a lot of singing and giggling.
Both of the girls were up sick in the middle of the night - we asked them if there were any headaches (to understand whether it was altitude related or not) but the answers were not very conclusive, and we decided to wake up Chotu to get his opinion. Both girls felt better after having been sick, slept the rest of the night without problems and woke up on good form again - so we concluded it was just a stomach upset.
While I was up, in the pitch darkness, I saw two bright eyes dashing around at a distance from our camp site - it was most likely a jackal, I was told, hoping to pick up some easy dinner.

Day 3
5'th August
This was the big day, where we would cross the Hamta Pass at 4270m. It was thankfully sunny and warm when We set off at 9:00 on an exhilarating trek up the valley. The climb included our largest glacier - for about 45 minutes we were trudging up snow, hard, but a little slippery.
The sight of vultures had become frequent, but on this day we also sighted two eagles, soaring over our heads and then gracefully on down the valley.
Having been going well Tamsin started complaining at 11:00 of feeling a bit sick. We gave her some glucose solution but she was needing to stop more and more frequently. Chotu, having wisely sensed earlier that we may need some extra help that day had asked the other helpers to wait for us at a certain point in case of need, and as Tamsin was not improving, Tilak was there to take Chotu's backpack and Tamsin went on Chotu's back. Each time we stopped however, Tamsin was getting more morose and only 25 minutes away from crossing the pass, she was very reluctant to continue. In the cold everyone took the opportunity to eat their lunch while we waited to see if Tamsin would improve. Tilak was amazing - aside from his strength at carrying anything loaded on top of him, holding Fia's hand and walking faster than any of us in his flip-flops, he could also sit there in his T-shirt in the freezing cold, refusing any additional clothing while we were all wrapped up in fleeces and coats. Tamsin stayed cuddled to mummy and wasn't really improving - she was sure she was going to be sick (which probably would have made her feel better) but wasn't. By this stage we were all sure it was altitude sickness and knew we had to go down. I had some horror stories in my head about altitude sickness and had started to envision alternatives to going ahead over the pass, but in truth, there weren't many, and after pulling Chotu out of ear shot of Tamsin, managed to reassure myself that the risks at our height and given our acclimatisation were limited - so between us all we decided to push on to the pass, having to use all our resourcefullness to persuade Tamsin back up onto Chotu's shoulders.
The Hamta pass gave us an amazing feeling, and in particular because we were now exposed to an immense and stunningly beautiful valley in front of us - steep rugged mountains rising up as far as we could see, snow-capped peaks and glaciers, and a wide green valley floor stretching out on both sides - it felt like we'd opened the secret door to a new world.
Tamsin was neither better nor worse at the pass, and we didn't linger before starting our steep rocky descent. How Chotu managed to dance his way across boulders with a 7 year old on his back we have no idea. After about an hour we were on the valley floor, and Tamsin, who had fallen asleep on Chotu's shoulders, woke up, and came down for a rest. As soon as she was on her feet, she was sick. Chotu, Jacqui and I waited anxiously around her. She lifted her head, gave a smile and said:
'All that time I was on Chotu's shoulders I wasn't sick, and as soon as I got down I was sick'.
It was the first sign of the real Tamsin since she had started to feel weak on the other side of the Hamta Pass, and Chotu, Jacqui and myself all collapsed in uncontrollable, and unexplainable giggles - I think more from relief than anything else. The transformation was incredible - Tamsin, then danced the rest of the way along the valley to the camp, with conversation bubbling and jumping between random subjects, trying to make up for her lost time. It was hard to believe that we were all so worried about her just one hour before.
Fia had walked the whole day (and in fact the whole 4 days) without help, at a pace that challenged Jacqui and myself, climbing up and down rocks that were half her size, and hardly pausing from her cheerful chat, despite the attention that her sister was getting. Her energy and strength amazed us.
We were once again camped in the most hauntingly beautiful spot, in a place called Shiagorou, next to a river which snaked its way up this dramatic green valley, with glacier tongues clinging onto the sides of the near vertical slopes, abundant cascading waterfalls and all set against the backdrop of snow capped peaks.
Tamsin again lost her appetite at dinner time and started to feel unwell again - our diagnosis conclusion had switched from altitude sickness to plain stomach upset by now. It was cold in the evening and we all squeezed into the main tent for dinner, with Tamsin curled up against mummy in one corner, whimpering and miserable. The rest of us made polite conversation, but were all keeping a watchful eye on Tamsin and hoping she would pick up. The mood was broken, when Ratan, the horseman, squatting in the middle of the tent, nonchalently let out a long burp (entirely acceptable in Indian etiquette). Tamsin looked up and gave a big incredulous smile and we all fell about laughing.


6'th August
Day 4 - the end of the trek
Tamsin went to bed without eating, but slept well, woke up on good form and managed to eat several slices of toast at breakfast, which we had sitting outside in warm sunshine. After that point, Tamsin never looked back - she was chirpy all the way down and insisted on walking herself, refusing Chotu's offers to carry her.
Our warm-up was another river crossing, just by our camp site. Colder and wider than the last river crossing, our feet and legs were stinging painfully as we climbed out on the other side. After that wake-up call, it was another lovely walk, and for the first time, it was virtually all descent into the valley of the roaring Chandra river. We followed the river, crossing at one point another glacier that plunged steeply straight into the thundering waters. It was a short crossing, but the most frightening, given that if we slipped, there would be nothing to stop us sliding all the way down into the churning icy river below. This time, we went one by one with Chotu and his steady step at our side.
We arrived at the end of our trek at a sunny, clearing by the river, where the jeep was waiting to take the team and the equipment on the 8 hhour drive back to Manali from where we had started. We said our goodbyes, and gave our warm thanks and a well earned tip to the team, and Jacqui and I headed off across the bridge to the village of Chattru - in reality a gathering of a couple of tented dhabas offering dorm style beds and some basic food. We were on our way to Kasa (opposite direction to Manali) and the next bus was the following morning. One of the dhabas had a tent set up, just about big enough for the 4 of us and cheaper than the dormitory beds, so we opted for that, and then prepared ourselves for our nearly 24 hour wait for the bus (our longest ever...so far).
This felt truly like the middle of nowhere. Apart from the roar of the river, we were in a mountainous silence, broken only by the occasional sound of an approaching vehicle, crescendoing from a distant rumble down the valley. There was really nothing to do except read, play cards, chat, drink chai, eat dahl (lentils) and rice, and occasionally chat to some other passing travellers that called in on their way to Manali or to Kasa. It was calm, and very relaxing after our arduous trek.

7th August
Day 5 - Chattru to Kasa
True to form, that even after 24 hours to get ready, we were so relaxed that we nearly missed the bus the following day and when the shout came that the bus could be seen winding its way at the other end of the valley - we were hurriedly stuffing clothes into our rucksacks, starting to imagine another 24 hour wait if we missed it.
The bus rumbled to a stop. Having verified that it was going to Kasa (there weren't really any other options, but best to be sure), I climbed up onto the roof and attached our rucksacks, and we all hopped in. We had been told that we had an 8 hour trip in front of us and knowing what the roads were like, Jacqui and the girls had all taken a travel sickness tablet (recommended by the pharmacist that the girls had befriended in the train to Chandigarh - if you're following - thank-you!). This was true travellers stuff - the bus was rugged, basic, noisy and dusty, and ground its way up or down amazing winding tracks on valley sides, occasionally crossing rickety bridges at the bottom (whose perennity was emphasised by the remains of the previous collapsed bridge by its side) before winding its way up the other valley side and wading through melt streams that flowed down the mountains, burying our road on their way down to the river. Our hearts were in our mouths as the bus veered round corners, the road edge disappearing from our view under the bus, leaving us exposed only to the sheer drop down the rock side. The track was mostly single laned, and sometimes looking in front of us there didn't look like there was sufficient space for a bus between the rock face and the cliff edge, and we closed our eyes and reassured ourselves with the fact that this bus took this route every day and, as far as we know, survived. While we were unable to take our eyes off the scenery for one minute during the whole duration of the trip, our experienced fellow passengers were of course completely unruffled and were more interested in us, and in particular the children, or otherwise slept with their heads being rolled from side to side, often onto my shoulder.
The bus stopped for lunch at a roadside dhaba, and we all had some excellent and very cheap dahl and rice inside this dark atmospheric room before heading off again. We stopped again at Kunzum Pass (4551m), which marks the transition from the Lahaul valley into the remote Spiti valley, and has a small Buddhist temple on the top where the passengers all say their prayers (offering, I imagined, thanks for having survived the journey so far, or pleas to survive the next leg, or both).
Manali had already had a Buddhist flavour - we were now moving into true Buddhist territory - the faces on the bus, the whitewashed houses with sticks stacked on the roofs, the chow mein and momos being offered at roadside restaurants, the ubiquitous colourful prayer flags - we felt like we had left India and entered Tibet.
We saw Kasa, a collection of houses nestled into the side of the valley, probably 1 hour before we had wound our way down the valley side, across the bridge and along the river to arrive there. This is the capital of the Spiti valley - but everything is relative - the Spiti valley is one of the most sparsely populated regions of the world. When we arrived it was cold and had been raining. We wondered up the main bazaar street (not more than a puddled rocky track), checking rooms in guest houses for one that suited us. This small town was immediately interesting, but at the same time seemed dreary and empty after Manali.
THe girls were starting to get into the swing of budget travelling - when we visited one over-priced guest house, who showed us to their best suite, it was Tamsin that pointed out that we had no need of a bathroom that big, We ended up in a very basic, but cheap guest house at the top of the street - we had two run down, basic, dirty double rooms with nothing in them other than the beds, and a shared smelly hole in the ground toilet. We were counting on the promise of a larger room becoming available the following day, and sure enough at 12:00 the next day, we moved into a larger run-down, basic, dirty double room, but enough space for a mattress on the floor for the girls and with its own bathroom. We haggled on the price, and ended up happy enough.
Our first impressions of Kasa were not helped by the lack of electricity. The rains had caused problems and the electricity came on just to tease us for a few minutes every couple of hours or so, and we stumbled our way around that evening with our single torch. We were tired and dirty after our trekking and our journey, disappointed with Kasa and down about the cold wet weather. So we drowned our sorrows in a beer and a pizza - eaten by candlelight.
As we had only one torch between two rooms, Tamsin and I put ourselves to bed in pitch darkness - working by sense of feel only, and hoping we wouldn't need to get up before morning.

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Manali

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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.
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Shimla

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Day 1 25 July
After a quick breakfast near our hotel, we set off in a rickshaw for Chandigarh station, for what was going to be virtually a full day of travelling on trains. Waiting on the platform, we saw three youngish lads a little distance away, clearly talking about us. Being in a station we were back into our security mode - trusting no-one, keeping an eye on our bags etc, and we had already noticed these lads with a sense of suspicion. Sure enough, after a few minutes the three lads sidled over to us, and the spokesman launched the conversation with a "which country you from?". We replied politely while tightening our circle around our bags, Before we'd got far in the conversation, another man with good english appeared on our other side, and also launched into loud conversation, but in between sentences, approached close to me and whispered to me not to trust the three lads as they weren't 'good'. We didn't trust the three lads, but weren't particularly inspired by our new protector either. We exchanged a few warning words between us in French, and our circle around our bags tightened even further - now we were being approached on two sides.
The game continued - the new protector proudly showed us his identity card (which meant nothing to us at all), to prove his trustworthiness versus these common rogues (presumably without identity cards) and having scared away the three 'thieves' was making valiant efforts to develop conversation with us, despite our reluctant minimalist responses while we never took our eyes from our bags or relaxed our tight Bassett security circle. Finally we tried to make a move away from this uncertain situation, and despite his suspiciously loud protests, wondered further along the platform and close to a policeman. He didn't follow, but as our train arrived, and we were all climbing on board - we saw him bounding across the platform towards us - I braced for what I thought would be his last attempt at something, but all he wanted to do was to confirm that this was indeed our train - a little unnecessarily when we were half way up the steps. In the end, nothing was lost, and once again we were left not knowing whether we had narrowly escaped a devious trickster through our shrewd judgement of character and street-wise handling of a dangerous situation, or whether we had made a gross over-dramatisation, and left a friendly bemused man wondering how on earth europeans could be so cold and strange.
We had a short 45 minute train journey from Chandigarh to Kalka, but long enough for Jacqui to squeeze in a first French lesson with the girls. At Kalka, we had a little wait before boarding the small traditional train which would take us in 5 1/2 hours up the mountain to Shimla. Jacqui grabbed a few "packed lunches" - lentils, rice and chapatis, all in little tubs, and wrapped in newspaper (the Indian equivalent of fish 'n chips) - from a seller on the platform, and we were off.
This train did not have the comfortable modern seats or trimmings that the previous trains had, but it was a delightful journey. It chuffed its way up the mountain, winding through villages and rainforest-like countryside, stopping every now and then for an opportunity for us to buy some local something or other to eat or drink off a platform seller. Sitting in our small carriage, accompanied by a friendly but non-english speaking Punjabi extended family, with the door and windows of the carriage all left open, we dashed from one side of the train to the other peering out and soaking in the passing views. The time passed quickly and we were soon stepping out into our first cool air since leaving the UK - we drew deep breaths and smiled at the sheer pleasure of fresh air. No wonder the British Raj chose Shimla as their summer retreat station from the oppresive atmosphere of Calcutta and Delhi.
A couple of guides immediately hooked up to us, and tried to sell us their recommended hotel (where they would make their commission). We stubbornly resisted, but one persistent one accompanied us all the way up the hill and waited outside a hotel (that we had selected from the guide book), while we were checking the rooms and discussing price on the off chance that he could still get a deal.




The Dalziel hotel was in an old colonial building, and in truth we were delighted with the room that we could get for the price, particularly compared to Delhi, but still went through an obligatory performance of calling other hotels and saying we would look around to see if we could get the price down. The price didn't move and we moved in to this huge wooden panelled suite, with two large double beds, a spacious bathroom, and an additional room with table and chairs which was perfect for our school lessons. It opened out onto a large terrace with exhilarating views for miles across the forested hills. The room was still run down, with the semi-finished electrical fittings, worn decor, ragged carpetted floor and without a working shower (hot water could be used via a bucket and jug), but we were delighted with our find.
Shimla looks as though it was initially placed on a narrow ridge and has gradually overflowed down each side. Most of the area that we frequented were along the ridge - our hotel had long forested hill views both north and south depending on the window you looked from. The pedestrianised main street (the Mall) had a sophisticated holiday feel, reminiscent of the towns on the Italian lakes, and in the evenings filled with strolling couples and families, browsing the branded clothes shops, or sitting in the square watching the world go by. Restaurants and cafes were also upmarket, although heading down the side of the ridge, we found the India that we had come to know, winding through chaotic bazaars, selling everything from mangos to metal pots to fake Reebok trainers, ending at the road at the bottom jam-packed with hooting cars and buses belching black exhaust.
Our first night we wondered up onto the mall, stumbled on a bar that was showing the England India test match, and then treated ourseleves to a pizza at Dominos (the only one we had seen in India so far). THe pizza's were good, but cost us over 1000 rupees (16 euros) for the meal - our most expensive in India - and we vowed never to go there again.

Day 2 July 26'th
I woke early, and while the others were sleeping, used the time to prepare our first maths lesson. I was interrupted by noises outside our door and when I looked out, a troop (is that what you call them?) or monkeys were on our terrace outside our door, swinging on the wires, climbing on the roof and play fighting. I resisted waking up the girls, assuming that the monkeys must be regular residents.
We had breakfast in our hotel - they had a menu that offerred some continental delicacies that we had not seen up until now: cornflakes, fried eggs and toast, toast and jam. Our waiter had an extremely limited vocabulary in english and the breakfast turned into a giggly affair as we learnt the lessons of eating continental food rather than Indian. It took us a while to get clarity on what we wanted (cornflakes, eggs, coffee), and when the bowl of cornflakes arrived with a glass of hot milk we launched into our Fawlty Shimla Towers scene:

Jacqui: "Do you have cold milk?"
Waiter "Cold meelk?"
Jacqui "Yes.....do you have cold milk?"

Pause while everyone looks at each other.

Jacqui "can we have cold milk?"
Waiter "Cold meelk?"
Jacqui "Yes....we want cold meelk" (the accent starting to catch on). "Not hot meelk.....we want cold meelk".
Waiter "no hot meelk?"
Jacqui "no hot meelk... we want cold meelk"
Waiter (the penny seeming to drop) "oh....no cold meelk" shaking his head with a smile, as if to say, this is only a retaurant, you can't expect everything.
Jacqui, pausing for reflection " you mean you don't have cold meelk?"
Waiter "no cold meelk".
Jacqui, beginning to allow an incredulous tone into her voice "but how do you make hot meelk then?"
Waiter "hot meelk?"
Jacqui "NO we don't WANT hot meelk...but, if you don't have cold meelk, how do you make hot meelk?"
It crossed my mind to go back to basics and bring in the concept of the cow, but already we had pushed the boundaries too far, the conversation was floundering, and the waiter abandoned us mid sentence, leaving us with a bowl of cornlakes, a glass of hot milk, and two girls in uncontrollable giggles.

When he came back, we made a final do or die attempt at getting the cold milk, and this time, whether through frustration at our impossible demands, or because the short time away from us had been enough to give him inspiration..... the breakthrough came:

Waiter: pointing to the hot milk "you want I make this meelk cold"
Jacqui (taken aback at this lateral thinking, but lifted at the sight of a potential solution) "well....er...yes....make this meelk cold then"

He disappeared with the hot milk and came back 5 minutes later with a satisfied smile and placed the glass of milk on the table. Bursting with curiosity, four fingers dived into the milk to test the temperature. Warm.
We pushed no further, and Fia ate a warm bowl of cornflakes.

We started our school in earnest this morning. Maths was the first lesson. Our adjoining room with tables and chairs made a perfect disconnected environment, and the girls, surprisingly, clicked straight into a scholarly frame of mind for our joint lesson and then got stuck into their individual exercises. Just as surprisingly - I really enjoyed it.
Jacqui followed with similar success straight after with the French lesson, though concentration ended a little prematurely with the return of the monkeys, which caused great excitement. Jacqui and the girls ventured outside the door, Fia armed with her camera, and tentatively approached the monkeys, but periodically, each time a monkey made any move towards them, came charging back through our door in shrieks of nervous laughter.
The monkeys we soon realised were a feature of Shimla, and probably the most memorable aspect for the children. During the day they invaded the town, often on our terrace, but also on roofs in the town and sitting at the side of the main street, occasionally making a dash across. In the evening they would retreat from the town to the forest just outside, where they slept, apparenlty sitting on branches in the trees. The locals were used to them, but often gave them a wide berth when walking past them, indicating that they were not entirely safe. The ones on our terrace were highly entertaining to watch with babies in the group playing and climbing over their mother, with the stereotypical mutual flea searching, and occasionaly launching into amusing acrobatics using any of the loose electrical wires, window frames or anything else they could find.

In the afternoon, we explored Shimla, heading down the side of the hill and wandering through the bazaar, and then along the upmarket shops along the Ridge, and having fun buying a pair of sandals for Fia.

Having been spoilt with Wifi access in our room in Delhi, we were subsequently plunged into connectivity darkness. Our hotel looked as though they didn't know what a computer was (as with all subsequent hotels the check-in was a long form filling process, and included the signing of a huge leather bound registry), so our only means to connect was to sit in the rather depressing internet cafes (mis-named, as frustratingly there was never a coffee in sight). This didn't work too well with children, and our vain attempts to get our blog up and running, find a way to be able to write our e-mails off-line, and keep up with some tweets, were very disruptive to our days. Our 3G Sim card, that we had purchased in Delhi so that we could have access to internet on the phone, was not working and we consumed hours before eventually resolving it to gain a weak and shaky, but valued, connection.

Fia was not eating well. She seemed to be on great form, but everytime we went into a restaurant, she seemed to feel sick at the thought of food, and completely unable to eat anything. At this stage, we thought it was a phsychological block to new foods, and worried that she wasn't eating much put pressure on her, which was stressful for all of us.

Day 3 July 27'th
Determined to avoid breakfast in the hotel, we went out and had a great breakfast of eggs etc at Goofa's, a cicular underground restaurant, in which we were virtually the only customers.
The day passed again with maths and french lessons, and some un-productive internet stuff. For lunch we were looking for a light snack but ended up at a very smart restaurant (white table cloths. big bellied affluent clientele, uniformed waiters etc) called Barjee's (I think). We only ordered a small dish to share between us (particularly with Fia unable to eat a thing) but having seen the sumptuous dishes being eaten around us, and having asked for a few explanataions, vowed to come back when we were more hungry.

We were determined to get out on a walk before the day was finished, and started out out of town. We had heard that there was a hotel around 3 or 4 km away that had an excellent bar, with free Wi-fi, so had envisaged sitting sipping a beer, and munching cashew nuts while we were catching up on e-mails etc, but when we arrived, it was so exceptionally smart that we didn't dare enter in our dirty T-shirts and flip flops, and returned for dinner.

We had a beer on the terrace at Ashiana's - the circular restaurant above Goofas, with exactly the same menu, but white tablecloths and every dish 5 rupees ( 1,5 euro cents) more expensive (presumably to cover the cost of the table cloths), and then dinner inside. By this stage we had realised that Fia had some sort of a tummy bug, and had stepped back from putting pressure on her, though a little worried at how little she was eating. But Ashianas was the beginning of the end of her troubles, and it was the Chicken Tandori that hit the spot with both the girls and remains one of their favourites. We left feeling like we had eaten at the Ritz.

Day 4 July 28'th
We returned to our hotel for breakfast, and having a different waiter, had none of the cold/hot milk episodes of the first day.
We suceeded in having another school morning, and after having booked a car to take us to Manali the following day, headed walking out of town to get the old Viceroy's (leader of the 19'th century British colonial government) house - about 5 km out of Shimla town. It was a pleasant route through the forest and small outlying settlements, and with the road lined by observing, and sometimes unnerving, monkeys. We grabbed a fast, basic and very cheap lunch at a roadside shack, (dahl and rice for Jacqui and me, and toast and butter for our un-adventurous girls) on the way.
The Viceroys house was an enormous magnificent, Great-Gatsby-like mansion, though more impressive than it was beautiful. We wandered round the gardens, and decided not to take the tour of the inside, knowing that we were leaving on an all day car journey the following day and had to pack and get an early night.
The size, and extravagance of this building was almost mind-blowing when one considered the primitive indian life that must have surrounded it in the 1850's when it was built. The imagination is stretched even further, envisaging the summer retreat journeys that must have been made, to get the whole of the administrative organisation from Calcutta up into these remote mountains, before trains were built or roads developed. Did they come all that way on elephants? How many servants were employed just for the journey, how long did it take - weeks, months? Lots of googling to do when we get back. I wondered what the Indians of the time must have thought of these larger than life colonialists and their strange unbelievably extravagant ways, and for a split second - I hoped that India would win the Cricket test series against us.....but the feeling soon passed.

We concluded our last night in Shimla, by returning to Barjee's, the smart restaurant, but this time with appetites, and we were not disappointed. We had avoided meat before Shimla, but inside knowledge indicated that once out of the hot urban centres like Delhi, the meat is normally much fresher. THe chicken butter masala was delicious, as was the Sag paneer (spinach with cheese) but it was again the chicken tandoori that took the winning votes.

We had had a very pleasant few days in Shimla, relieved from the oppressive hot humidity that we had sufferred in Delhi and Chandigarh (though now we were ready to exchange this rainy misty dampness for some warmth), enjoying a much slower pace of life in a holiday like atmosphere, and particularly pleased that we had kick-started the schooling. But we were ready to move on, and stuffed everything back into our rucksacks in preparation for our 8 hour drive to Manali.

CHANDIGARH 24 -25 July

Photo album:
https://picasaweb.google.com/116253494913081133936/Chandigarh?authkey=Gv1sRgCPHniqz62s7w1QE#5648161889439341874

The train to Chandigarh was due to leave at 8:35, but we set the alarm for 6:30 knowing we had all the packing to do, a 30 minute walk, and the unknown Delhi station to navigate. Being aware that the railway station is the prime location for theft, and having two children to survey, we were a little nervous and had talked through precautionary measures that we should take: watch our bags at all times, and particularly if someone starts talking to us, avoid the crowds if possible, keep together so that we can all watch each others bags while they are on our backs etc. In fact, the train was waiting for us when we arrived - we faced a bit of a crowd as the passengers getting off our train charged up the stairs we were trying to get down, but nothing intimidating, and we were quickly settled in our second class seats and ready to go. The girls in two seats sitting next to a man, in front of Jacqui and myself.
The train was quite honestly, fairly luxurious - the seats were almost TGV like, and we were served a cup of chai, followed shortly by a beakfast of yoghurt and bread and jam. THe journey flew by, and or course the girls wasted no time in starting conversation with the pharmacist (as he turned out to be) sitting next to them, and then to a female research doctor on the other side of the carriage. The pharmacist leant his Blackberry to the children saying they could play games on it (probably in a vain attempt to have a bit of peace and quiet) but the research doctor was pulled into the fray when none of them could understand how to find a game on the Blackberry. But, even when foun, the game was quickly abandoned in favour of the exchange of written messages to the research doctor on their notebooks:
Tamsin: "what do you do?"
Research Doctor: "I am a doctor".
Tamsin: "well if you're a doctor, yesterday I hurt my foot"
Research doctor: "oh dear, what did you do? By the way, I am a research doctor. Do you know what that is?
Tamsin: "yes"
Research doctor "then you must be a very clever girl"
Tamsin "what do your mummy and daddy do?" and so on.and When we arrived at Chandiagarh, the cuddles of goodbyes on the platform belied the two and a half hours friendship that had formed. The pharmacist was also extremely friendly, and the ice having been broken by the girls, I also got into conversation with him, and he gave us a huge amount of information on Chandigarh - the different hotels, the rock gardens, the lake, the cost of a rickshaw from the station etc, and finally made a call to his brother and offered us an appartment to stay in while we were there. We were touched but declined, as it was a bit out of town and we were only staying for one night.
On arrival we hopped into a rickshaw (a little bigger than the Delhi rickshaws, fitting, at a squeeze, all of us with our rucksacks) and headed to a street of hotels, so that I could make some price / quality comparisons before we selected. We chose a basic, but reasonably clean hotel, took a double room, and squeezed an extra mattress in for the girls.
After our best Thali lunch yet
and what we thought was a well deserved siesta, we headed off for the renowned Rock Gardens of Chandigarh - an imaginatively designed park with twisting alleyways between rock faces and waterfalls, and opening out into a very enjoyable play area, with giant swings, crazy mirrors, camel rides and an acquarium. It is made all the more interesting because it is lined with the sculptures of Nek Chand, a previously unkown artist who regenerated waste material (old plug sockets, bangles, crockery etc) into walls, animals, figurines. The overall effect of the park is somewhere between Indiana Jones and a modern art exhibition. The park is full of indian tourists, and very few foreign tourists, and We lived the photo experience again with the girls - they must have had a hundered photos of them taken while we were in there - against the waterfall, on the swing, with this person, with that person, with both of them etc. Everyone was very friendly and each time we ended up in a bit of a conversation - normally starting with where are you from, which is not the simplest question for us to answer.
We took a cycle rickshaw for the first time (as opposed to a motor rickshaw) - the girls had been begging for days - along the road to Sukhna lake. Everyone was taking an evening wander along the shoreline and there were various animations, and food stalls and we stayed for dinner at a sort of pub. A teenage deaf girl out with her family spotted Fia and Tamsin across the room, and in no time they were engaged in more writen messages, cuddles, and exchanging phone numbers (she is still texting messages to them now, several weeks later).

Heading back to the hotel we stumbled on a coffee bar, so stopped for an ice cream and coffee before we went to bed.
The night was not uneventful. The Chandigarh climate is as humid and sticky as Delhi and we went to sleep with the air conditioning buzzing away. In the middle of the night, Jacqui wanted to turn the ac up, and tiptoed across the sleeping bodies of Fia and Tamsin on the mattress on the floor to reach for the control. I was only vaguely conscious, but soon became fully conscious when the room was lit up from sparks coming out of the ac and three girls in their underwear were leaping across the bed to get to the other side of the room. I managed to turn a switch off using my walking boot and we survived the rest of the night without ac.