Manali – This post has got nothing to do with steven seagal!!
I woke up in Manikaran to some perfectly blue skies. All off a sudden I questioned my desire to leave the town, I felt myself wanting to know what was beyond where I turned back the previous day. But despite this pang and the protestations of the hotel clerk who put on an oscar worthy performance when he heard that I was going to leave a day earlier than I had informed them when I checked in, I jumped on the first bus out of manikaran. This bus was just going to the town of kullu which was about halfways to manali so I needed another bus from there to complete the journey. All in all it took about 4 hours, a relative blink of an eye.
The first two hours were complete torture though. I decided to take the front seat up beside the driver as the view was unimpeded and there was plenty of room for my two bags. What I didn’t count on though was the position of the speaker which was directly above my head. For two full hours really bad hindi music blasted out of this noise box, for two hours I plotted a way to sever the wire that connected the antiquated cassette deck to the offending speaker. But it wasn’t to be, I swapped buses in the town of kullu and got on the road at last to manali.
The road up to manali goes through the kullu valley, its pretty wide so it doesn’t have the same impact as the other two valleys I have travelled up. The last few kms leading into the town itself is lined up by either big ugly hotels or bigger uglier signs for hotels that are off the main road. As a first impression for a place it really sucked, though I have to admit from what I have heard of the place I wasn’t that surprised. The bus station is right in the middle of the old town, when I arrived the place was swamped, it was friday after all and the place was full of indian couples around for the weekend. Luckily enough there was a tout at the bus stop who was peddling his last free hotel room, reckoned it was worth at least a look. Managed to bargain him down to half the asking price for a really nice room with hot water and a big tv I could catch the weekends soccer on. Sweeeet out!!
After sorting out the room it was off for some grub and then bed, luckily enough I found a place that served some good pizza to almost, almost banish the memory of the previous nights misadventure. Back to bed and some snooze. Woke up early the next morning and made for the old part of the town, creatively titled ‘Old Manali’. It is such a departure from the new part, traditional black slated rooftops dot the landscape under the inevitable set of snow peaks, the most beautiful ones I have seen so far!! I sat in one cafe and devoured a bowl of muesli while I pondered the climability of the pretty large hill that looked tiny between two of the big peaks. I asked the doode who worked in the cafe if I could climb it and he muttered something not even the enigma war machine could decipher but being a generally optomistic kind of person I reckoned it was a positive response, so off I set. The first mile or so leads up to a fairly well visited temple, after that following the path was a solitary exercise with the exception of some mountain ladies (hardly the most flattering adjective) bringing down rather large bundles of sticks on their back. I figured that they were from the village that the sign back in manali pointed to that was 4 miles out of town. So curious to see what the village was like I went in the direction from where they came.
I met a local along the path who had good english, he was struggling with this big sack – I offeredto help him carry the bag as his load was already full, now its a good job that he didn’t say yes as I didn’t for one second consider the slope, the terrain or the sheer dead weight of the bag. I did give him a hand lifting it ontop of the rest of his load, I’m tellin ya these himalayan men are made of stern stuff. Off he went and I figured I would follow him but after about 20 yards or so he turned and pointed up the hill and said ‘Foreigners go that way’. Hmmmm wasn’t sure what to make of that, obviously my tan and tash needs a bit more work before I am completely assimilated here. I took his order and followed the steep path. After around 5 minutes I found what he was pointing at. The Rasta Cafe – it consisted of about 20 plastic chairs in a small field about 1/4 of an acre. There was also some very basic cooking facilities. I ordered a chai and sat and gasped at the view that this little field had. The little village was perched about 200 yards down from the field, over it you could see the full Kullu Valley over to the other side and up to where it starts with some dazzling mountain peaks. There were countless waterfalls on the other side all contributing to the flow of the Beas river that flows through the valley. I stayed there for the guts of 5 hours reading my book, though the distraction that was the view meant that I didn’t get to read that much…
The following day I was wrecked and went for a walk out another road to a small village, the weather was quite poor so the views weren’t as stellar as before. I had intended to go visit a glacier that day that a few local lads recommended called Rothang but when I inquired at the bus stop as to if I could go up there they simply told me that the weather had turned and it wasn’t possible. I found out later that that same day 15 people lost their lives just out that same road when an avalanche hit their bus. This gave me and the town a massive shock – everywhere closed down as a mark of respect and I thought to myself, tis a good job I didn’t try and find another way to get up there as buses were travelling up.
I stayed in manali another day or two before booking myself a ticket on the bus 17 hour bus to dehli. The bus ride was a mare!!! Didn’t get a wink of sleep, that coupled with the fact that the lad beside me seemed intent in giving me a broken rib with his stray elbow. Never again on a nighttime bus, just ain’t worth it. I arrived into dehli last wednesday morning at 7 and made my way to the embassey where I collected my replacement passport. The muppets in there – one in particular didn’t exactly do me any favours and spoke to me with little more than contempt which was completely unnecessary. The last time I visited he never said there would be a problem getting a full passport, now he produced an 11 month passport saying that because I didn’t have my birth cert he couldn’t issue a full one!! Surely if I couldn’t prove who I was that he shouldn’t have given me a passport at all, even at that I could have easily gotten diarmo to bring over my birth cert when he came to visit me. He was a fckn dick, expected me to bloodywell kiss his feet. Asshole. I will have to go through the same crap again when I get to australia.
Worse was to come, with no sleep I made my way with my flimsy, little better than a photocopy passport to the foreingers regional registration office to get my passport restamped and a visa issued. Now this place is the reason why people get frustrated with india. I had to queue for 4 bloody hours in the sweltering heat, no food, no water. The queue was unbearably slow and their way of processing people was a pure joke. By the time I got to the top of the queue I was told I had to have a letter from my embassey stating that I was missing my passport and pretty much when I arrived into the country. I was teetering on the brink, for the first time in india I raised my voice a little but figured that it wasn’t worthwhile getting thick at an entire country so I jumped in a rickshaw and went back to the embassey to my new best friend where squirmingly I had to ask for the letter which he knew I needed but didn’t bother his hole to tell me. Oooh what would I give to get that lad out in a game of 5-aside, 50-50 tackle…. screw that a 99-1 tackle, he is getting it!!!
Eventually I got my paperwork in order and went into the main square or circle in dehli known as connaught place. I rang the hotel I stayed in before out in the tibetan colony. With all the trouble in tibet this was a little risky but having watched the news things in dehli seemed quiet enough. As I got out of the rickshaw – what I seen really put my own little travails into perspective. All along the walls were pictures of dead monks, their brutal injuries for all to see. There were countless pictures, certainly more than the 9 the chinese have publically stated. In what was a buzzing little piece of tibet in dehli 1 month previous had the air now of a funeral parlour. Every shop was closed, all the stalls empty. All that was on the streets were the clouds of flies attracted my the oppressive heat. I had to knock on the door of the hotel where the cheerful guy from a month ago was ashened faced and looked on the verge of tears. I learnt later that people from the colony were on hunger strike in dehli prison, they wouldn’t even take water. You can picture a prison cell in india being pretty rough, the temperatures got up to almost 40 degrees – imagine no water??
I stayed in the colony to catch some sleep, I watched tv and ventured out as little as possible. I was heartbroken for the tibetan people there, they just looked lost. I left for rikikesh yesterday morning – I will return to dehli, hopefully for the last time on this trip next week to collect my visa. I am going to curtail my trip in india aswell, take it back by at least a month. I have seen all that I want to see bar one or two small things and I am ready for a new country, thailand by the third week of april I reckon….
Adios,
Phil
Tags: Dehli, Himachael Pradesh, India, India, manali, tibet
Phil Gill
Hey Phil, Just back from Hols. God I’ve a lot of reading ahead of me here by looks of things!! Will send you a proper mail tomor x
What a story. Computor kept going until i got it printed. Did the visa come tro’ yet. let us know when you are moving on. My email is down today, dont know what is wrong. talk soon. Mom. xxx