Manali

02/06
After a short night we make our way to Macleod Ganj bus station. It's 5.30am and we are everything but looking forward to our trip to Manali. Manali, Manali, Manali shouts someone and in a rumble of people gathering as fast as a lightning, our bus arrives. We thought it would be a crappy old local bus with (close to!) wooden benches, but it has rather nice seats....but no leg room! We look at each other and we instantly now that this trip won't be fun... We find two seats and make sure we can sit with the legs on the side. The seats in front are so close to us that we cannot fit our legs in the space provided! Even sitting sideways, our legs are still touching the back of the seat!! 11 hours of pain are to follow. The bus stops every 500 metres, it takes every single person on the road who waves to catch the bus. We have boarded a properly local bus. A local bus that will still cover 275km! The driver has a whistle he blows right in our ears once everytime someone wants to get off and twice everytime the bus can drive away again... We must have endured some 1500 blows in the time of the journey!!!!! Everytime we stop in a bus station (off course it stops there also!!) the conductor shouts 'Manali, Manali, Manali' at such a speed that it makes us laugh...A very entertaining journey indeed. The bus is sometimes a bit more empty (we deploy, one per seat or row, if possible, to stretch a bit), most of the time completely full. At some point I get a sleepy Val on one of my shoulders (she has the window!), a standing passanger leaning on my other shoulder (the bus looks like the tube in rush hour) and the guy in the seat in front resting his elbow on the knee I've managed to squeeze in the aisle between 4 passengers (yes the bus is FUUUUULLLLLLLL)!!!!!
We finally arrive in New Manali (Manali, Manali, Manali!!!) where we share a taxi with other tourists and make it to Old Manali (Manali, Manali, Manali!!). I check a couple of guesthouses and we check in a small hostel with character, communal stinky and as damp as sea bathroom, but a lovely garden. Dinner and we go to bed. We are exhausted, I have a migraine, and our legs are missing...I think we have left them welded to the seat in front...

3/06
Wake up after a cold and damp night. The guesthouse has some character but our room is on the ground floor and does not receive much light. As the climate is far from what we have had in other parts of the world, we decide to move before catching a cold!!! We still set off for a walk to Vashisht, a village close to Manali, set on the high banks of the Beas river. The walk is very enjoyable, in the middle of orchards and small agricultural farming lands where women harvest the mature wheat. Men, as usual are waiting under a tree somking a cigarette, a joint or simply sleeping under a tree!!! Some farmers are ploughing their minuscule parcel of land with cows pulling that old piece of wood with a single blade that splits the ground in a perfect line. We make it to Vashisht, a lovely village wrecked by tourism in its main part. There are hot springs (the water is not renewed, just constantly heated up) in a massive concrete tub, where indian tourists seems to enjoy splashing... and a famous wooden Vishnu temple. We have a drink in a nice cafe overlooking the main stage of the local attractions, entertainers with snakes around the neck passing it to daring men for the picture, snake charmers, himalashi women with their angora rabbits posing for the 20 roupies picture (did not managed to get a sneaky snap, they're really good at spotting cameras...), the odd saddhu waiting here for something (usually a smoke!), and off course the Indian tourists from all over the country. Some in their own traditional regional outfit and some other very westernised...It is quite interesting watching 'local' tourism in a different country. The way one interacts with compatriots whom they have not a thing in common... We go for a walk around the village and discover that the back streets tell a totally different story. We discover old and beautiful regional houses with their painted and carved wooden balconies which appear to be traditional himalashi farm houses, wood and stone houses, cows and sheep in the village (the small alleyways are ridden with cow faeces, dungs which makes them quite sensitively interesting!), women washing their clothes, the newly harvest wheat is laid on every open part of the area, roof top, front yard, car roof, the road itself, we see farmers leading cows to walk on the harvest in circles to split the grain from the stem, men carrying the bunches back from the field to the village, they look like a big ball of straw on two min legs! It is very unusual and makes us feel like we go back 100 years earlier. It reminds us of old postcards and pictures of rural mountain areas we could see in our school books about farming at the beginning of the 20th century. It is very striking how we forget that we are disconnected from the reality of the world sometimes, and that technology and modernity has not come to some parts of the earth, even in a country which wants to show the world a modernity that is in fact very superficial and anecdotic. 70% of indian people live in rural areas and still cultivate the land. Only 6% of indians belong to what we refer in the west as the 'middle class'. Puzzling! We stop in a lovely cafe,the Seven Space, located on the balcony of one of the farmhouses. Cows are just below, and the farmers are fouling the wheat with the cows. We have lunch here, the smell does not even bother us. It smells... natural! As natural as the cigarettes our neibourghs smoke, cannabis everywhee hee, it gros like weed! We then make our way back, crossing the wobbly wodden bridges over the Beas river, and we see the same women working and the men still smoking. Some other women are digging a big rock which fell and smashed the road, and the men sitting on the tractor, simply waiting for the trailer to be loaded by....women!!!
On the road, we meet Matteo and Lisette, thay arrive few days earlier and after a quick chat we decide to meet up for dinner. Back to Old Manali, we decide to check a few guesthouses around, a bit less damp and we end up finding a (tired) room with bathroom and a lovely balcony wide open to a fantastic landscape of snow capped mountains. We move in. We catch up with our friends and have a chat till quite late.

4/06
We decide to go walking today, to explore the area, there are many waling trekking paths here. We set off to walk the path to Solang around 11am, get lost in the steep slopes in the forest, it is nice to see the mountain, to see the view on the valley but we arer lost and cannot find our way back...no path...we have to ge down and climb down, under the heat....after going down, we keep following the river but get lost again in the middle of little streams!!! we both feel tired so we stop for a very nice picnic near a stream, lovely day. It feels like being in Switzerland though, nice river, nice moutains, snow capped summits, sun, fields...What started as a wonky trek ends up in a nice romantic walk along the river bank. We push a little further and finally find the track to Solang but it is time to turn around and get back before dark. We then go for a quick walk in the Old Manali village, very rural still with a mix of guesthouses and farmhouses in the same area, it feels like a serene moutain village wth rock houses, farmers, cows and brilliant views on some of the peaks. I go to a tabla lesson to larn how to play this instrument, it is fun, but quite challenging as I never played those kind of instruments before. My hands are so uncoordinated, it is unbelievable! Anyway I have a good laugh with the teacher and I really enjoyed the session. We meet up again with our friends for dinner at a nice place called People, we ca and draw some pictures, sheets are provided for people to draw and because most of the people here smoke non stop, the drawings are interesting!!!We are reminded that we are in the Kullu valley and so close to the Parvati valley, the capital of charas (cannabis) and an impotant place for drugs here in India. Those valleys have a bad reputation because of the drug stuff but also because many trekers and travellers disappear here....sure it is linked to drug trafficking...Our feets are tired and we ae happy to sleep despite having to fight hundred of small creepy crawlers on the walls....joy of being in a cheap hotel!!

5/06
Day off today. We chill out, we walk to the Manali temple, the Hadimba temple, build in wood in the middle of a small park, for a goddess, Hadimba, associated with Kali. It is so busy so we don't get in and just look from te outside. We then make our way to new Manali, to do some shopping: some socks as we are a bit cold in the evenings, books, and walk around New Manali. The town is divided in two parts, the old bit where we are staying, an old village with some guesthouses and the new part, more urban, more modern with many expensive hotels and lots of Indian tourism. We reach our old Manali in time for the rain and seek refuge for a late lunch at the Shiva Garden Cafe, then we spend some time on the internet. We meet up with our friends to have dinner at a Tibetan restaurant and go back to our hotel, observing the little shacks we see from our windows, the farmers coming back home with their yacks, the women carrying loads of wheat on their shoulders, kids running around, all of that in a very alpine landscape, it's so strange! We fight with more bugs then sleeping time!!

6/06
Today we are hiring a motorbike to go explore the Kullu Valley. We hire a beautiful Royal Enfield Bullet 500 (yes 500cc, and yes without a motorbike license!!!!). The strat of the day is grey but it suddenly clears up. We get on the noisy machine, it sounds half between a tractor and a powerfull Harley Davidson!!!) and we start the ride through nice rural villages, wheat spread on the road, farmers and women in local dresses, cows, yaks, alpine fields and flowers, through villages until we reach Naggar. The road is so full of pot holes and bumpy, a challenge to ride, at least we do not go fast, and even more for Val at the back!! I can hear her grunts in the effort to stay on board, she laughs, that makes me laugh also!!! Our first stop is a visit to the castle, from the 11th century, when Naggar was the capital of the Kullu valley and it was built by a Raj, entirely made of wood and stones and now has been transformed in a posh hotel. Nice wooden work, nice to visit some places. We also go and check some amazing stone temples dedicated to Shiva and Vishnu but from the 11th and 12th centuries, some amazing stone carving work, the deities all have a painted orange dot on the forehead, red, we walk through some lovely paths in that charming village. We then walk all the way to the weird Roerich Gallery, dedicated to the Russian painter Nicholas Roerich and his son, we see some paintings, weird style mixed of surrealism and russian style. The painter was the one who initiated the international Roerich pact which protects cultural monuments during war times. We see the house, the garden and walk to the small Himalayan Folk museum, observe some local dresses and crafts then come down under the heat for lunch at the small German bakery. We set off again but cannot find the temple we are looking for so we decide to make our way back as it will take us some time and we want to see some small villages in the valley and and go back. We reach some villages but suddendly the sky becomes grey, dark and a dusty storm starts before ending in big lightning and pouring rain. We have to ride completely drenched, wet everywhere, it is fun but really hard to steer and see, I have all the rain coming to my eyes and it feels like having open eyes in a swimming pool... We manage to come back safe, completely soaked, head to toes, wet to the bones, everything is dripping, our shoes must contain a liter of water and mud each. We take a hot shower to warm up, go for dinner at the Tibetan place and tuck ourselves, together, in bed, to keep warm!!!!

7/06
We take it easy today, we will be leaving tonight fo Leh, where the temperature will drop sub zero during the nights. We need to do some warm clothes shopping (we regret sooo much to have sent all of our warm stuff back!!!). We find a shop that can make us jackets cheap and made to measure in a day. We take our lunch in the nice little cafe where a blank sheet of paper is given to everybody with crayons... We go back to the guesthouse and do some homework. We start packing because tonight a hell 20 hour-journey in a minibus is waiting for us!!!! We leave at 2am to reach Leh may be at 7pm the next day...Scary scary...