Manali, IN

As we drove through the Himalayas, I witnessed a beautiful sunrise casting large silhouettes of the mountains. After a 14 hour bus ride from Delhi, we arrived safe and sound in Manali, where the altitude is at 2050 metres. My initial impression of this little mountain town was that it was similar to Banff, with the backdrop of evergreen trees and snow-capped peaks. Admittedly, since we had a long night, we spent the first half of our day sleeping in the hotel room before popping out to do some exploring. It was best anyways, since the day was a little showery.

We made our way from the Aleo area to ‘The Mall’, which was in New Manali proper, and across the river from where we were staying. Dan was pretty hungry, since we ate nothing but chips and water on the bus, so we stopped in at the Mountain View cafe, whose menu boasted of chinese, japanese, italian and indian cuisine. We ordered the special vegetarian fried rice as well as a medium pizza, which we enjoyed immensely. Dan couldn’t get enough for the fried rice, especially since they had a side of garlic chili sauce – so the meal was reminiscent of his own infamous rice and garlic chili sauce during his bachelor days. All that was missing was the cheddar cheese. We explored the streets a little more and found a small bookstore that sold artistic postcards, which we purchased and I wrote to our friends and family back home. In the evening we caught up with our journalling and blogging and made plans to find our way up to Leh, which, for some unknown reason, wasn’t sitting well with me.

The next day we woke up to clear skies and a bright sun. We first went to a tourist agency to set up a booking for a 2-day tour up to Leh. We then took a rickshaw up to Old Manali and were dropped off right next to an Enfield repair shop. Dan admired the selection of Bullets and a few custom jobs. He longingly looked at them and had made a passing remark to the tune of, “If I were here with Joe or Steve, we would rent Enfields and take a motorbike trip up to Leh instead”. Guys, if you’re reading this, this might be a future road trip in the making. 🙂

We climbed the streets and made our way around the shops, looking hard for Manali souvenier fridge magnets which we were hoping to get for Sanam and Nick.

We were on a mission to find them this fridge magnet, but came up empty-handed. I did, however find a nice little coin purse and a dress to replace my old (and nearly torn) summer dress – correction, Camille’s old summer dress, all for less than $10. As we ascended further up, I noticed the village homes that had million dollar views. In some ways, I felt like we were in a secluded area, far away from trappings of civilization. We also found a nice relaxing cafe called ‘Drifters Cafe’, which I ordered some american style pancakes and chai tea and since they provided free wi-fi (unlike our hotel), we took that opportunity to send out quick emails and post on our blog.

As the day wore on, my uneasiness about travelling to Leh grew, so by the afternoon, we cancelled the tour. We ate dinner at Johnson’s Cafe – and Dan was so hungry (and the food was so good), that we ordered two pizzas. By this time, a small shower had settled in just as sunset was taking place.

During our dinner, we racked our brains as to what we would do in place of Leh and in the end, we chose to buy bus tickets to Shimla, which Dan had commented was adventurous in its own way, because we decided to go via a government bus, and because we were leaving the following day at 6am, which made this a ‘spur of the moment’ plan. So, at 8pm on Saturday evening, we made our way to the government bus station and bought ourselves two tickets on the morning route to Shimla for 880 rupees ($20 CDN).

Sunday morning came quickly and since it was too early (5am) to get a rickshaw, we hoofed the 20 minute walk to the government bus station. We scanned each and every bus to see if their number matched the one on our ticket. However, we soon realized that this ‘number’ is really no use at all. Through some asking around, we finally found the bus that we were to board to Shimla, which, lucky enough only had 4 other passengers, two of which were university students making their way back to Shimla before semester starts. The one indian girl, Monica had chatted with us and was very friendly. She was surprised when we said that we were both from Canada, as she had assumed I was Indian – she commented that I looked a lot like the North East Indians. The ride was quite bumpy and quick, likely due to the light load of passengers, but had great views of the river and mountains. We arrived in Kullu an hour later, where we then switched buses. This time around, the bus was full.

Despite the fact that the seats were cheap, I quite enjoyed the ride, since I was able to open up the window and enjoyed a nice breeze during the whole trip. The drive from Kullu to Shimla took us to an ascent into the Himalyas and being by the window, the edge of the road got steeper, higher and more dangerous.

There were some turns where I couldn’t see the edge of the road, but this didn’t unnerve me until 55 km away from Shimla, where we were stuck in a traffic jam. I noticed that there were a few people along the hillside, but not till we passed that part of the road did we see that one of the Goods Carrier trucks had plummeted over the edge. There were guys trying to tie up a rope by the roadway and of course I got really nervous, because as we passed by, everyone on our bus wanted to see what was going on, and they were all on our side of the bus (which was the slope side). After that, I said many small prayers, one for each corner. As we got closer to Shimla, we could see the outskirts of the city wrapping around the ridges of the mountains. It was amazing to see a huge city hugging the slopes. From a distance it was reminsicent of the favellas we saw in Rio de Janeiro, but this was no favella, it was a well developed city with proper housing, businesses and roadways, which seem to climb in broad longitudinal strokes. At 4pm we arrived safely in Shimla.