Leh to Manali: the vomit comet

Mini-bus ride from Leh, in Ladakh, to Manali, in Himachal Pradesh: 473 whiplash-enducing, gut-wrenching kilometers that takes 17 or 18 hours depending on the number of vomit stops.  This works out to an average speed of 28km/hr, so you can imagine how slow we were bumping along when we were things were really rough.

We left Leh at 1:45 am.  In fact, all buses leave Leh at pretty much the exact same time, even though the town rolls up its sidewalks at 10pm and there's next to nothing to do in between.  I think I experienced something of this phenomenon leaving Nainital: there are lots of different bus services, but they all leave at exactly the same time, giving the customer no range of options.

In any event, off we went at 1:45 headed to Manali, across what is apparently the second highest drive-able pass in the world at over 5,200m in elevation.  Indian pop music blaring over the loudspeaker helped the driver stay alert, I guess, but didn't make sleep any easier and was a far cry from the subtle pony-bell music camping in Markha Valley.  Also, the guy beside me was a bit creepy and took more than his share of the double seat so my ride wasn't as great as it could have been.  But at least I didn't have to sit upright and awake on a metal box in the aisle for the first 15 hours like that other guy had to until one of his mates spelled him off.  Crossing the pass meant driving across a broad dish-shaped plain, rather than up and over a quick saddle.  On top, especially in the pre-dawn light, the landscape was lunar: just dust, stones and the odd clump of thorny shrub.  In fact, there wasn't even a road a lot of the time, so driving was more like dune-buggying or moon-buggying at times.  In my half-asleep, half-awake daze, it was a pretty bizarre experience.

I think the combination of the bumpy terrain and the high elevation can make the ride pretty hard on some people and, as a result, two puke-stops were required for us (not me, thankfully) and we could see other mini-buses stopped in the middle of nowhere for the same reason.

Finally, we made it over the hump and started the bumpy way down to this parachute cafe stop at Pang, just in time for sunrise at 6am.  Needless to say, it was freezing.

Sunrise at Pang parachute cafes in the middle of nowhere

My long shadow, as the sun just
tops the horizon

On it went, gradually grinding, bumping and hairpin-turning down through valleys and more passes for hours and hours while everything got greener and hotter and started to more like the Himalayas than the moon.  In fact, by Manali, things were so lush and it looked a bit like British Columbia: tall pine trees, sharp mountains, ferns etc.  But also cactuses: a bit of a wierd combo.  But what a difference all that foliage made to the air quality.  Goes to show you how well trees and plants clean the air.  No more dust and diesel.

Our driver was great, but could be a bit of a cowboy, trying to overtake everything in sight.  More than once, he was too impatient to take the hairpin turns and just short-cutted straight down the hillside.  Good way to pass multiple vehicles at once, I guess, until we got stuck together while construction crews removed landslide debris on the road.

Finally, we arrived in Manali and drove into the bus parking lot.  Not five feet from where the bus came to its final stop, one poor sod, who'd probably been struggling for hours to hold it in, couldn't any longer and launched projectile vomit from the back row of the bus - not the same fellow who was in trouble at the top.  Your's truly, one row ahead got it in the hair, shirt and pants.  Nice.  Strangely, didn't bother me that much.  I mean what can you do?  It's not like he meant to do it.  Maybe I was just delighted to have arrived, high on oxygen-rich air or just happy to get away from my seat mate.

All in all, it was actually a really beautiful drive and an experience I probably won't forget: the moonscape, dune-buggying accross the high level pass, sunrise at Pang and the gradual descent to the green mountains of Manali.  Beautiful.

Nainital: Delhi's Cottage Country

When it gets really hot here, Delhi-ites like to go north to the hills of Uttarakhand and Nainital seems to be one of the most popular destination towns.  Situated around a lake and at a high elevation, it is much much cooler than Delhi and the air is much more breathable.  High/low temperatures were probably 31/24 last weekend and, predictably, the locals were in sweaters, if you can believe it.  

Nainital from Saddle Back peak

Because of the popularity of the place and the fact that we booked our bus tickets last minute, we only managed to make an iffy hotel reservation.  So after a long night-bus ride, we disembarked in Nainital bleary-eyed and a little confused about why they’d let us off outside of town rather than at the bus stand that we’d just driven past in the centre of town, and were promptly accosted by a grizzly but friendly looking guy who wanted to know whether we needed a place to stay or a trekking guide.  Now they warn you about touts that prey on foreigners, but he looked pretty friendly, his English was great and we didn’t have a lot of options, so we let him take us to check out his guest house (i.e 400 sq.ft 3-room flat) and then the Aroma Hotel where we had the iffy-reservation.  As it turned out, it looked like the only aroma there would have been from the mold on the walls so we opted for Lalit’s house instead and were back there with cups of chai and fried eggs for breakfast by about 9:30am.  Being a trekking guide meant that we found accommodation, food and a local guide all in one spot.  

Lalit

Lalit in front of his house

 

After breakkie we headed out with Lalit to climb to Tiffin Top, a popular (too popular) hike on the other side of the lake and stopped en route to cook lunch in the forest.  Or to be more precise, for Lalit to cook lunch over a campfire in the forest: turmeric rice with cauliflower, onion and tomato.  That was when the cows wandered over.

Lalit and his wife were great hosts.  She wouldn’t let us photograph her, but Deepa was a fantastic cook but her food was really spicey – more spicey than hot.  And I thought I had a pretty good taste for spicey but I couldn’t help coughing or stopping my eyes watering.  Eventually, I had to excuse myself to wipe my eyes and nose on some tissue in another room.  Kind of embarrassing.  It made me realise, though, how bland the ashram food is.  I don’t know how the Indian guests stand it.  

Dining room table

Sunday, we got an earlier start hiking, but not before another breakfast of omelettes and chai.  Why do I keep mentioning the breakfast?  Because there were eggs and we hadn’t seen many of those since we got here.  Sunday’s hike was even better than the day before: Cheena/China Peak and then Saddleback Peak.  We were promised views of the Himalayas but, as you can see, no luck.  

 Lunch was turmeric potatoes with mango pickle and pooris.  Another high starch meal, but deelish.

Then back to Lalit and Deepa’s for another good dinner and off to catch the Sunday night bus back to Delhi.   

Just a guy on the street

The bus system here is not as organized or transparent as it could be.  And for some reason, the powers that be schedule things so that every single bus leaves town at 10pm.  Given the large volume of visitors and the small space in front of the bus stand, it quickly becomes obvious that it is not possible to load all those buses at once.  Therefore, the police bring the buses in in three-sies and four-sies and you just have to wait patiently for your’s to approach.  By 11:30 pm when the square in front of the bus stand was clearing out and we’d been waiting two hours, we started to get a little worried, even though we weren’t the only people still waiting.  Just then one of the local tour operators put the two of us on the last two seats on another bus and off we went.  I don’t know if the rest of the people ever got on a bus but we were just happy to be off our feet and on the road – even though the bus was pretty inferior.  After a really uncomfortable night with not much sleep we were dropped off on the outskirts of Delhi at 7am and just had time to get back to the ashram for a shower and then to the office.  It goes without saying, we were pretty bagged that day.  Nevertheless, it was worth it.  Great weekend.  Great to get out of the Delhi heat.   Great to have met Lalit and Deepa and to have been welcomed inside their home.  

Our bedroom

Combo kitchen washroom plumbing

I don’t want to reinforce stereotypes, but I’ve heard it said that Indians have a very indirect way of addressing things where westerners would be much more direct and I think Lalit’s style would be an example of this: part indirect, part passive-aggressive, part overly polite.  For example, he repeatedly said things like ‘Maybe you didn’t like lunch’ or ‘I hope you are happy with the room/dinner/walk/him/chai/etc.’ which, of course, would force you to immediately compliment the room/food/hike/weather/chai/whatever.  And it was good and we meant it.  But it just got to be a bit like a broken record.  He also liked to repeat “I’m just lucky to have you in my house/have you stay with me/be your friend” again forcing you to return the compliment by saying “oh no, it is me who is lucky/we appreciate everything you are doing/blah/blah/blah.”  And so it went on and on.  Also he had a very indirect and non-committal way of talking about money: how much for staying the night, how much for trekking, a little advance to buy food here, a little advance there, that sort of thing.  So that made us feel a little awkward and wonder whether there were going to be any surprises at the end.  Actually, as it happened, there was a little surprise extra charge for the food for the second day, but given that they gave us three square meals a day, including eggs and chicken on Saturday – on top of accommodation and a hiking guide, it was a great package.