Beautiful Manali

Hi All,

We are now back from our trip to the Himalayas and back to the realities of work, washing, food shopping and the like!

We had a fantastic trip trekking and exploring Manali and a bit of Delhi on the way home.

We left Bangalore early on Friday morning and due to various delays arrived in the center of Delhi at about 11am. We didn't really do that much on Friday apart from sort out a sightseeing trip for our day in Delhi on the way back, get some lunch, have a little wander and wait ages for our bus. After an overnight bus from Delhi (a semi sleeper which allowed for some sleep) we arrived in Manali about 9.30 on Saturday morning. We eventually found our hotel after a very good breakfast of chow mein at a roadside shack and had a much needed shower before exploring Manali for the afternoon.

Hidimba Devi Temple, Manali

The Beas river which runs through Manali
(photo from our 2nd hotel which was a bit out of town so had a better view!)

The following morning we met our trekking group at 7.30am (although of course everything is late in India, so we finally all assembled at about 8.30). This was the acclimatization day, Manali is at 2050m and our trek went up to about 4300m. We were taken up to the Rohtang pass, the first high mountain pass on the Manali to Leh highway at 3980m and, when the clouds cleared every now and again were treated to some amazing views into the next valley.

The road up to the Rohtang pass (if you look carefully!)

Prayer flags by a temple on the way up

Doing the touristy bit at the top.
We are sporting traditional Kullu dress (Manali is in the Kullu valley)

One of Ben's highlights, meeting some yak at the Rohtang pass
(luckily they weren't the slightest bit interested in him!)

There was a fair amount of confusion as the group was split on the road trip, 12 of us in a minibus, and the other 6 were driven by the guy coordinating it. Somewhere along the way we missed each other and never met up at the pass. So a lot of waiting around ensued, but we finally met up at the campsite that afternoon. 

On the way back from the pass we stopped fairly abruptly (particularly since there was quite a lot of snoozing going on!) and told, the trek starts here. We walked for about 1/2 an hour up a pretty steep mountainside and found a campsite all set up for us. 

Similar to the Inca trail, we had 7 guys who cooked all the meals, put up the tents etc. so all we had to do was walk, eat and sleep really. The sleep part eluded us a little, the ground felt very hard in those tents, we must be showing our age! At least we had a group of horses to carry everything for us.

The first proper day of trekking was mainly a fairly steep ascent through what I guess you would call flower meadows. 

Our group were all very nice. There were 13 Indians from Bangalore and 3 from Delhi and us, I think I just about managed all their names by the time we were finished! There were some very keen photographers among us, so the group generally split into 2 groups with us somewhere near the front group. When I say keen; we took about 580 photos on the whole trip, I think most of the photographers must have taken about 3000! Needless to say it took a while for them to catch up. 

Beautiful flowers all over the place!

 We arrived at our campsite at about 1pm. I think this campsite was the best, in a hanging valley surrounded by peaks. After lunch a group of us went for a little wander to try up towards one of the peaks (although you can't see it in the photo) We made it about 1/2 way before deciding to come down again, it was very steep and slippery with rock hiding under the tufts of flowers. We had to pretty much come down on our bums as it was!

After tea (it was fairly food centered, as these things tend to be!) we went to see a patch of snow a bit further up the valley. There was a lot of excitement from the rest of the group who don't see a whole lot of snow!

A very posed snowball fight! 
We expected nothing less from the photographers among us! 

2nd night's campsite

I got something of a nasty surprise when I came out of the loo tent in the morning, finding an interested cow right outside! Needless to say I came around the other side! Ben was going to come to the rescue, but decided to take a photo instead!

The 2nd day of trekking we went up to Bhrigu lake, the main destination of our trip. Sacred to the locals, although I can't remember why. That means you have to take your shoes off when next to it! We then started to head down, reaching our campsite on the other side by about 3.30pm. 

Ben in the chilly waters of Bhrigu lake

The final day was the longest and we started a bit later than planned due to a pretty wet morning. Luckily we didn't actually get too wet, by the time we set off we were just in a cloud really.

Spooky forest in the cloud on the way down

More lovely flowers on the way down

 We had a very chilled out day on Thursday back in Manali, not least due to some very sore legs. Approx 1km downhill is very hard on the legs! We thought we would try and ease them with a massage at our hotel spa (we splashed out a bit on the hotel as we had 3 nights in a tent and 2 on a bus!). Also, Manali is meant to be quite the destination for honeymooning Indians so it seemed like the right kind of thing to do (getting a bit of practice in!). A good massage, but painful, and I'm not convinced it helped the legs!

On Friday we hired a taxi which took us on a tour of Naggar, a village about 20km away and on from there to a waterfall along a slightly hair raising road. A pretty impressive waterfall though and well worth the trip. It was a shame that an art gallery and a museum on the tour were shut (it was Independence day) but not much we could do about that.

The cloud rolls in again, a view from our tour of Naggar

Jana falls

 The weather was pretty wet, so we did a bit of shopping and hung around for a while to see if anything was going to happen for Independence day in town (it didn't!) before heading back to our hotel for the night. Just as well we didn't have our hearts set on a trip to the bar as public holidays here a generally dry days as it turns out. So the hotel bar was shut, although that didn't stop the cafe we had a drink in earlier from serving Ben a Kingfisher strong (8.25%!).

On our last day in Manali we tried to go paragliding, but it was raining first thing so by the time we went to book it we didn't have time anymore. So we had a walk to old Manali about 3km from new Manali and quite different, a very hippy little town strung out up a hill. We visited the temple at the top and wandered back down.

We caught the bus back to Delhi that afternoon and arrived at about 8.30am. We were picked up as arranged on the way there and spent the day sightseeing. It was really hot so we struggled a bit and to be honest were quite please to get to the airport at about 4.30. I think we will go back when it's cooler and see the sights properly. We had a good taster though; we saw the red fort, Humayun's tomb, Qutb minar, Raj ghat (a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi) and we had a peak at the Lotus temple (but given the ~2hr queue we didn't go in!).

Humayun's tomb, Delhi

Qutb Minar, Delhi

I can't believe we only have 3 weeks until we come home now. Looking forward to seeing everyone. 

Next post when we've done something interesting :-)

Love to everyone,

Kathryn and Ben

Birthday fun

Hi everyone,

Just a quick post before we head off on our summer hols. Thank you for all the birthday wishes, I had a lovely couple of days.

At the weekend we had a quiet day on Saturday before going out to a play on Saturday evening with Jagannath. It was quite an odd play it has to be said, it was called 'Hamlet - the clown prince' and was about a group of clowns who put on Hamlet. I was quite pleased to find at the end that the part gibberish, part English with a bit of French and Italian accents thrown in for good measure was confusing for everyone and the gibberish bit wasn't just Hindi or similar that I didn't understand!

On Sunday we had a very nice day out at the zoo with Shravan. There was a safari park type bit as well as a regular zoo and a butterfly park.

We got there just early enough not to have to wait long for the bus and were lucky to be first in the queue for one - this guaranteed the best seats at the front and the driver turned out to be an excellent photographer!

 

Not sure they were particularly wild animals though! 

On Monday I did a North Indian vegetarian cooking course for the afternoon which was really good. I made paneer mattar masala (paneer and pea curry), kadhi veg (a dryish veg curry, a kadhi is the pan you cook it in) and some potato and cauliflower koftas in a creamy sauce. I also made roti and nann from scratch. I think the nann were the best, and the way of making them without a tandoor oven was very cool!

Left - paneer matar masala, right - koftas, bottom - kadhi veg, top - breads

Then I went saree shopping with Lata on Tuesday (you'll have to wait to see the result!) after meeting Ben for lunch. In the evening we went for UB city for cocktails. It is a very posh shopping mall, with lots of designer shops which you would never actually buy anything from!

Very cool bar, outside on the 16th floor of UB city

 Thank you everyone for the birthday wishes, cards and presents, my collection is slowly growing as the mailbox gets full and I can extract them again! We are getting really cross with them about not getting the key made for us, but it isn't doing much good. Hopefully it will appear by the time we are back from holiday! It prolongs the excitement of receiving post anyway.

The lovely cake Lata bought for me - yum!

We best be getting to bed now as we are being picked up at 4.30am. Looking forward to telling you all about Manali.

Love to everyone,

Kathryn and Ben 

Savandurga

Hi Everyone,

So Saturday just gone we went on a trek with the Bangalore Mountaineering Club. They organise a lot of treks, both around Bangalore and further afield. We have decided to go to the Himalayas with them in a couple of weeks, so thought we would get some practice in with a day trek to start with!

We went to a rock called Savandurga, about 60km from Bangalore. It is thought to be the largest monolithic rock in Asia. It certainly is one big rock!

It ended up being quite a long day really, we had to be at the pickup point at 6.30am, and then, as is generally the case with such things, we set off late and then spent a while driving around Bangalore to the other pickup points. We stopped for breakfast en route and finally got there at about 10.30.

The 1st bit was pretty steep and had a few people nearly beaten.

The warm up!

The walk wasn't very far at all really, only about 3 miles total, but it was quite steep, and pretty much just up, and then down again. There were a few somewhat unprepared souls amongst us, so some of it was a bit slow going. But there were lots of lovely people to talk to and waiting gave us a chance to chat.


It was really good fun and we are really looking forward to the Himalayan trek. Although I am slightly worried that I need to be a bit fitter! A couple of trips to the gym required I think!

He was waiting to greet us at the top!

Matching by accident!

Yesterday there was a 'Bandh' in Bangalore, a strike, in protest about the lack of things being done following the gang rape of a 6 year old at a school a couple of weeks ago. Ben's office was shut, although a couple of rebels (including Ben) did work as they would have had to arrange a different day to work instead otherwise. Ben thankfully wasn't up for working on a Saturday!

Thought I'd share a few random things that have made me smile (or say 'really?!') this week.
It always makes me chuckle who people choose to talk to when we go out together. We went to a shopping mall the other night. If Ben is there they generally always talk to him and not me. Except in the chocolate shop and the shampoo shop where it was all about me!

We were looking for some antiperspirant deodorant for Ben because so far we have only been able to find deodorant (no antiperspirant). The ever helpful shop assistant's response on not finding any - 'what do you want that for?!'

I got told off at the post office yesterday for licking the stamps I bought! Apparently not 'self gumming', although I have to say the one I licked seemed to stay on better than the ones I stuck on at the gumming counter!

I don't know why but it makes me chuckle that eggs come in bags! 

Next weekend we are off to the Himalayas for a week, so quite excited about that and I have a North Indian cooking class on Monday and Lata is coming saree shopping with me on Tuesday, all very exciting!

Love to everyone,

Kathryn and Ben

PS. if there is anything specific you want me to ramble about please let me know! :-)