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