Manali

Blogger: 90 Days In India - Edit Post "Manali"

So we’ve reached theeeee place---Manali. Oh-a haven I think. We woke up at around noon in a lovely new hotel room with balcony overlooking the beautiful snow capped mountain ranges around us which seem close enough to walk to the base of in maybe a couple of hrs. Our journey here on the “luxury bus” was absolutely hairaising. So extreme it was in it’s danger and chaotic driving that Dave & I couldn’t stop laughing for the first half hour as peoples belongings were thrown to the ground from their seats & overhead luggage racks. The seats reclined back a little, but then Dave’s got jammed & wouldn’t return to it’s normal position. Suddenly there was a bang & all sorts of strange noises & the bus driver “friend/assistant” happily got out of the bus with a huge implement to unscrew the wheel. A tire had burst so we all took a piss by the road while he cut pieces of the tire off with the help of one of the passengers who used his pocket knife. This young French lad suggested that they should really change the tire only he met with resistance & “there is no problem”. So we all mounted the bus again to continue on an even scarier journey. We stopped off a couple of times at extremely strange roadside cafes to stretch our legs & finally arrived after about 9 hrs journey in a very cold, windy & grey Manali. All the tourists fought for the few rickshaws that were at the bus stop at this early hr and the rest walked up the hill to Vashisht where the driver dropped us at the hotel we didn’t ask to be dropped off at. It turned out however to be the one we ended up staying at after looking at two others farther up the hill. It is new & clean & there is a lovely French couple next door traveling through India with a kid. This seems like an horrendous idea, but they are saying it’s been not too much of a problem.

Anyway, this is still our first day here & we’ve only just looked around the town which is great! The residents here live in gorgeous wooden houses which seem really well designed (from the outside anyway). They all seem to own at least a couple of cows & huge bales of hay are stacked up outside their houses which the cows munch on. (so mush nicer seeing cows eating hay rather than disgusting rubbish which they do mostly across India). There are also baths & pipes gushing hot sulphur water here. We’ve already seen backpackers bathing with Sadu’s in these waters outside their grungy guesthouses. (don’t mean to sound snooty). We’ll take a walk up to the waterfall tomorrow & explore a bit the surrounding areas. This place of course is a hippy town again, but so far, because we’re in such a nice hotel & have such glorious views, we are happy right now. I’m sure it’ll begin to get under our skin after a bit though, as we’ve already clocked hippies who’ve obviously been here for god only knows how long & are happy it seems to just “hang out” and watch the free movies which show at the restaurants & pay 100 rupees for a dirty room to sleep in every night.

I haven’t really mentioned too much about the “travelers” we’ve been meeting on this trip as it’s quite a subject on it’s own. We’ve met, of course, a few really great characters along the way & a lot of young gap year kids & older people who have been traveling around India & the world for years. It’s absolutely amazing! It is easy to understand why early 20 somethings are taking advantage of their year between school & college to travel the globe. But it’s usually a more interesting story behind these older folk (30 plus) who have been globe trotting for many years. It is always a mystery to me how & why they do it and each of their stories is different of course. I don’t really think I ever knew that there were so many people traveling around the world at the same time. India it seems lends itself to people who have some spare cash and who’ve had enough of working for a lifestyle that maybe to them doesn’t offer enough. It’s not only single people who choose to up route themselves from comfortable western soil, but whole families too, though this is rarer. India has so many different climates and terrains that you can pick and choose which kind appeals to you. A lot of people seem to come up to the North for the summer season and then spend the rest of the year in the south.

The cities, I think, would be very hard but very exciting to try & live in.

Yesterday we hit Old Manali which had an even more laid back lifestyle to here in Vashisht, which has more of a mix of Indian families on holiday & Westerners. In Old Manali the ratio of Indian’s to Westerners is a lot less. We found a crazy “clubhouse” however, which was in a kind of “resort” area inhabited only by Indians. It was pretty crazy of course (as all centers of Indian entertainment are). We spent a few hours here & also managed to get flight tickets from Delhi to Mumbai for the incredibly cheap price of $52.00 each. We’d been trying to book seats on the fast train between the two cities but even though we were booking two weeks ahead of time the train was booked. The only way to possibly get seats was to wait until June 19^th when a few stray seats would become available at 8am. You can imagine the scene, hundreds of people crushing round a small window offering bribes to secure the seats (a minimum of 300 ruppees each bribery charge). So we opted for the flights which are a much better option in this instance. The “extra” you must always pay to get seats on a train is compulsory as otherwise you’ll end up literally fighting for a seat as the train sits in the station. You could really get hurt. The Indians do it all the time, of course, and they take the whole process for granted.

Our next stop is Kasol in Parvati Valley. We shall leave the day after tomorrow for Bhuntar (3 1/2hrs from here) from where we’ll get a bus to Kasol (2 1/2hrs from Bhuntar).