Hotel Vintage Manali

... on vastutuleva auto tuled. Tolmab.
Mõned tunnid ja mäed hiljem oleme Kullus. Martti nõuab puhast, teest kaugemal asetsevat ja mitte-india söögikohta, mille peale juht teatab, et siin sellist asja pole. Nõutud Hot Stuffi-nimeline koht on siiski olemas ja saan veel täidisega naani ja sidrunivett.
Möödume paigast, kus viimase jupi oma elust veetis Nikolai Roerich. Manalisse jõuame kella kahe paiku. Meid tervitab kerge vihm ja äike ...

... by wind, since this was during the period of the two-and-a-half hour unexplained traffic jam) they failed to reappear again until we were at the station. We went on to have the pleasant experience of being astoundingly ripped off by a rickshaw driver (as a westerner, you are always being overcharged, not only by hotels and rickshaws, but also by the government standards charging sometimes as much as 50x more for a westerner to enter a site than for a ...

... Italian tourists, and worst of all, power shortage. The only 2 refreshing stalls i found were run by the Ecological Foundation, one selling locally-grown organic foodstuff and also stocking ultra-heat treated water for refills (instead of buying fresh water bottles everytime) and the other selling locally made stuff like apricot jams and creams etc. Due to the frequent power cuts in Leh town, i found myself inhaling air polluted with ...

... it once and I certainly won't do it ever again. Had the chance to upload some videos and some other random pictures. The Chemrey monastery was the most stunning I've seen on this trip so far and included a few pictures of that. Also, I know most of my pictures have been of scenery and not of people - this isn't on purpose and I think that will change as I leave the mountains and head once again to Delhi, the Taj Mahal and places such as Mumbai and Jaipur.

... were out in force to take a look at us!! All coming in to greet us and Manu told me many /most of them have never seen the white skin thus we were such a novelty .... I think the funniest moment came when I asked where the loo was as I needed to go, and he told me go with his daughter down the road, I had no idea where...and I said 'no problem I can go where you go here somewhere'(imagining ...

... no on board toilet and only stop twice in twenty hours or so. Three times if you're lucky. Probably for the best that they don't have one on board anyway, because like everything else in India, it would be nice only the first time it was used, and then would turn to a stinking cesspool, overflowing and splashing down the aisles, probably with a poor little man trying to clean it up with a rag and bucket and no soap. . . Delhi's Metro and some places in Bangalore as the exceptions ...

... problem. When we arrived we had dinner (nothing to write home about, in fact the sooner this muck is forgotten the better!) and then we went straight to the Golden Temple. It is absolutely incredible, so beautiful. You walk in and it hits you. It was like going bowling as you have to give your shoes into a big entrancey bit before going in. The actual temple is surrounded by a big calm lake and around the lake are 4 walls of rooms and arches. The rooms house ...

... explain our reasoning, it was mostly to be close to the amenities of Manali. It is out of season up in the mountains there so nothing was open in Vashist and as nice as it is to be somewhere where you are the only tourists, we really enjoy eating. At the farmhouse we met Chrissy, daughter of a Parsi, who is here to study Hadimba temple for her MA in art conservation. I should explain Parsi here -a parsi is a person of the Zoroastrian faith, a very interesting religion founded in ...

Leaving McCloudganj by night we took a bus to Manali, a quite famous hill station from the time of the British Raj when the British would head to Shimla, Manali and other hill stations to escape the summer heat on the plains. Its now a jump off point for trekking. The journey was through the Kullu valley, The Valley of the Gods, and it was a pity it was dark because the route was amazing. A ...

... as well. The grandest and most famous building is, of course, the Dalai Lama's temple (Tsuglagkhang) which is a large yet modest-looking building in the south of the town. Also in the town is a buddhist Chorten and prayer wheels which Tibetans walk around in a clockwise direction, turning the wheels and praying.

The people in town are almost all Tibetans. Some are recent refugees whereas others have been there long enough to set up businesses and create homes for ...