British Hotel Manali

30/10
Hello family and Friends!

Greetings from New Manali -the place i'm staying because this is where you catch the bus to Mandi (then Dharmsala the day after). Nothing more than that!

I left Vashisht (finally) and arrived in Manali this morning hoping to catch a bus straight away to Mandi but there wasn't one leaving until the next morning. So upon looking for a good place for chai ...

... also listened to a guy play a wonderful sitar solo for about an hour.



Now moving on to the Ladakh roadtrip.

The night was pitch black and a vicious street dog fight had just finished when a car arrived to pick us up from the deserted main street of Vashisht and take us to our 2am private bus that would spend the next 20 hours crawling it's way to Leh in the Indian Himalayans 479km away. Ladakh translates into English as "The Land Of High Passes ...

... weeks later. We passed for a second time on the way back some trucks that had been broken down and waiting for parts. All manner of repairs are done on the side of the road you often see a gearbox or diff in parts being fixed, the trucks are repaired where they stopped, often in the middle of the road, with large rocks blocking the wheels to stop them rolling away. When they are finally fixed they just drive off and leave the rocks in the middle of the road !!

... each and a few spare spinners, and headed upstream alongside a fast flowing river that spewed from the mountains. There were points where the river appeared tame, almost enticing, a dreamy clear blue that begged to be swum in. In reality, as we were to find out when we had no option but to cross at shallow points, the river was fed by melting snow further upstream and had a heart-stopping, alien coldness to it, a mere thirty seconds submerged turned ...

... We decided to go to KFC which was a lot of fun and very satisfying. Then we went to Art History class. We had talked about going to Rodeo, and Mexican food restaurant near the museum, with a couple of friends. I thought that only a couple people were going to show up but it turned out that word had gotten around that it was my birthday and almost everybody in the group showed up-at about twenty people we almost took over the entire restaurant! It ...

... that knows the meaning of building relationships in a world that seeks to tear them apart, but most importantly, a man with a hope, a vision, a purpose, a belief. How I long to find my niche, to find my purpose, something that I believe in and can pour the entirety of my being into. I ask God for help, and I know he will guide and direct me to that higher purpose. This evening ...

... African Americans and racism. In a stroke of supreme Irony, the main recurring commercial was for an Indian "skin whitening" product. Here, as in Africa, darker is "lower class". Leaving Keylong we find a sign for (more) road work ahead (oy. the stretch from Zingzingbar to Keylong was exceptionally bad), which includes the compensation for the standard road worker at 2650 Rps/month. They work at least 6 days/week, so this works out to 90-100 Rps/day, or $2.50, max ...

Wstajemy jako ostatnie.Co chwile nerwowo do dormitorium zaglada wlasciciel probujac nas stad wykurzyc W autobusie nastepuje spora wymiana pasazerow.Biletowy bardzo przejmuje sie swoja funkcja, kilkokrotnie podczas podczas podrozy sprawdzajac I przeliczajac bilety, ktorych mamy calkiem pokazny pliczek. Daje nam rowniez wyklad na temat odpowiedzialnosci posiadania I ...

... and she showed me the main monastery where His Holiness resides. Overlooking the valley below, the monastery is encircled by a small footpath where Buddhists make their way (clockwise) around the monastery, passing majestic stupas and brightly colored prayer wheels which they turn as they chant the mantra "Om Mani Padme Hum" the meaning which evokes compassion and chanting this mantra also helps cultivate the path ...

... rough mountain road right through a massive sheer canyon, with the back of the bus, where we had to end up of course, hanging out over black emptyness a lot. Maybe it was just as well it was dark actually. Our intention on getting to Manali was to go on a trek for a week or so. Mine was also to buy some clothes, as I had left home with one pair of trousers and two **** shirts from LIDL (10 ...