Throw Me A Life Ring...I'm Drowning In Culture (The Second Installment)

I decided that in order to make the retelling of this story more palatable for the reader I would break it up into three, semi-logical sections; the first of these sections being Delhi, the second Manali, and the third Leh. This would ideally make it possible for you to read my ramblings in smaller doses and hopefully preserving any enjoyment one could possibly derive from hearing the story. Let me apologize in advance for the length of the entries and any pain it causes.

In case you had a break since reading the first installment, I'll take a second to bring you back up to speed. Ruby and I have just narrowly escaped the grasp of The Dark Prince himself in the terrestrial hell that is Delhi and are currently on the road to Manali.

Manali, at an elevation of 1,950 m or 6,398 ft, was a welcomed change from Delhi. The ride to Manali was quite long (550 km) and took nearly 22 hours in the bus, mostly due to the accident and a couple stops there after for meals and to switch buses for one with a less smashed windshield. One meal was particularly interesting as we stopped at a restaurant along the road. Ruby and I were cautiously approaching the place where it seemed the food was coming from when we were approached by a tall, smiling Indian who immediately addressed us in loud English, "You want food?" to which we nodded, apprehensively, and he responded quickly, just as loudly as before, "Sit!" We sat and were each nearly immediately served with large metal dishes of food. We ate between giggling and marveling to one another that we actually made it out of Delhi.

Upon arrival Ruby, the French Canadians, and myself took the 2 km walk from main Manali to the town of Vashist. When we reached Vashist we parted ways with the French Canadians in the search for a place to crash. We found the Hotel Valley View, which came recommended, albeit understated, by Lonely Planet. The rooms were 250 INR (approximately 5 USD) and overlooked the Beas River Valley and various snow capped mountains, this in addition to the hot water was well worth the 5 USD a night (rather 2.5 USD since there were two of us). We ventured upstairs to eat and were greeted by the smiling faces of the French Canadians asking about the rooms, we told them we were staying there and told them that the view was spectacular and there was hot water. We sat to eat in the hotel, lacking the energy to explore the town further, and were greeted by another smiling Indian whose name was Jammin. We ate and returned to our room discovering a feature that we had overlooked previously. Through the door to the room was a light that became known as the “submarine light” seeing as it was just a bare, red bulb.

The following day we went upstairs again and were greeted by Jammin and ate a quick breakfast where we decided to climb the ridge behind our hotel. A quick note about Jammin: he, when asked how he was, would answer “I’m good man; good day, you know ‘santi santi.’” A phrase we didn’t really understand, but would nod and say, “Cool man, good to hear.” Also, breakfast most days consisted of a cup of milk tea, known as chai. This sweet nectar of the Gods consists of black tea brewed in milk to which a little mixed spice and enough sugar to rot your teeth are added. Manali truly introduced us to this drink that we subsequently drowned ourselves in for remaining time in India. Anyway, it was overcast and drizzling off and on but we left anyway with the idea of just diving into the forest and clambering our way to the top of the ridge. There was a small path towards the end of the road so we started on that which soon dissolved into us following animal paths through the woods. We reached a waterfall about two-thirds of the way up the ridge, but that marked the point that ended our climb seeing as in front of us we saw thick, overgrown brush and beyond that was a rock wall. The trip down was much easier than the trip up and consisted of us sliding down a washout path that covered most of the distance we had climbed. We then proceeded down to the river valley to do some walking along the river. We walked down behind the hotel and walked through the apple orchard behind the hotel and came to a rock next to the road. I jumped down the two or three feet without incident but Ruby didn’t quite have the same luck. She took the jump and landed with her body positioned to far forward over her feet and tumbled forward, jamming her finger in the process. In case you forgot, Ruby was present when I got my concussion and bruised ribs taking a tumble over a hedge, so I took the opportunity to have a good laugh at both the situation (Ruby falling) and the role reversal. After walking up the river bed for a while we returned to the hotel to shower and then headed out for dinner.

The following day we set our sights on climbing the ridge across the valley from our hotel. This involved us walking down to Manali to the bridge across the river, then turning around and walking along the river towards Old Manali, and then diving into the apple orchards across from our hotel. We again ended up following more animal paths up towards the top of the hill through apple orchards and past people working in the fields. We covered a considerable bit of ground but again never reached the “top.” The way down we decided to try another path and ended up stumbling through apple orchards and past houses trying to find the road at the bottom. Eventually we popped out on the road, oddly enough, about 50 meters up river from where we dove into the woods. We walked back to Old Manali and had lunch in a shanty next to the river that was packed full of Indians. We figured the fact that there were so many of them there meant that the food had to at least be halfway decent, which it certainly was. Along the walk back we were intercepted by a pack of Indian girls that wanted to take their picture with us. After taking a couple of pictures with them we continued our walk back towards Manali which was soon interrupted by nearly two full barrels of monkeys (we assumed each barrel of monkeys would hold about 20 monkeys, and there were about 30 to 35 monkeys present). Clearly the person who coined the phrase “As much fun as a barrel of monkeys” had never had monkeys blocking their path. We tried to walk through them appearing as non-threatening as possible, but one small monkey decided that wasn’t going to happen and decided to shriek at me and bear his teeth whenever I got anywhere close. At this point we were surrounded by monkeys and began to slowly back away. We waited on the fringes until they had disbanded themselves through intense infighting and dissolved, screeching, back into the woods, and we made a mad dash past. On the walk back from Manali to Vashist we walked past a puppy, which was much more excited to see us than the monkeys were and jumped around and barked happily at us.

The following day, tired from the two previous days of hiking, we decided to walk around the towns and check out the various temples in the area. The first temple we visited was built in the 1553 and was a building around a rock outcropping that once inside, you crawled, one at a time, underneath had a look at the statue and came out. Once out from underneath the rock you would walk over to a guru and he gave you a handful of sweetened, crispy rice and gave you a red dot between the eyes. Leaving the temple we ran into a group of Indian school boys on a school trip. They walked with us for a while and introduced themselves to us, one of which was introduced in the following way, “This is my fattest friend.” To which the fattest friend responded “Yep, that’s me! I like fast food!” The guy that was introduced as “the group leader” walked down the road with his arm around my shoulders and asked me what my favorite foods were. All of my responses were hilarious to them, and by the time we parted ways with them our pictures (sometimes with the kids and sometimes not) were on multiple cameras and camera phones. We walked back up to Vashist and visited the temple in town and continued walking to a waterfall along a path that led out the far side of town. Along the way we ran into a couple groups of cows being herded back home for the evening, one of which “like[d] [Ruby]” as stated by the farmer walking them as the cow took a couple steps down a mountain directly towards Ruby. I truly thought the cow was going to plow Ruby off the mountain. The waterfall we found at the end of the trail was spectacular and I walked behind the waterfall getting soaked by the spray off the rocks at the bottom. We returned again to our room, satisfied by another awesome day in the Himalayas, where at the door we saw Indian women holding giant white rabbits. These bunnies were also at the temple and if you paid 10 INR (0.2 USD) you could take your picture holding the rabbits, which Ruby gladly participated in.

The following, and final day we spent in Manali, we spent walking up the Beas River Valley and through a couple small towns up river from Manali. The weather was clear and the walk was awesome. We spent most of the day walking. When we got back to the hotel we tried to call the company through which we booked our van to Leh and find out the number of our van, but when trying to call out from the hotel room phone, we accidentally called the front desk. The person on the other end was Jammin, who was thoroughly confused by what we were asking and came down to the room where we had to try to explain that we called the desk by accident. We paid our hotel bill and then there was a knock on the door when I was getting into the shower and it was Jammin with his cell phone in hand. He handed the phone to Ruby and he had called the number of the place we had reserved our seats through and we were able to get a couple of bus numbers. We went, after sleeping a little, up to the meeting point for our van to Leh where we waited in the cold for about 45 minutes to an hour at which point we were picked up by a taxi and driven down to the van which was parked in Manali. After careful selection of CDs by the driver we were on our way to Leh across the second highest motorable road in the world.