Dream View Manali

... busying myself with a cup of Chai, I was fast approached by a peculiar young man. Adopting the ostentatious "camp" gait, he flopped his way over to me. I couldn't help realise the imbalance of his barrel-chest to his short, spindly legs. Across his face was plastered a vacant but sincere smile, and his eyes were two different colours. I was in trouble here. As it turns out, he was American, and so found it necessary to point out that this was the best time for me to visit ...

... with a business partner and teaching tourists how to make the breads, momos (dumplings) and soups that are the staples of Tibetan food. He talked about the Tibetan protests of last March, and situation in Nepal ('very sad, very dangerous. They will do anything to make the Chinese happy - they vote for the Communists because you can say anything - say they will give you anything, money, food - but now? There's ...

... and even greenish-black (from the limestone, i presume). Jagged edges, caves and grottoes, stupefying heights and in the middle of it all, the Indus where i sat on a grey raft, paddling away according to the commands of our Nepali rafting guide. At one point, as we rafted along the confluence of the Zanskar and Indus rivers which eventually becomes the Indus, the moment of truth dawned. This is where it all began..the timelessness of the ...

I'm so tired. And what's worse, is that I have started using the blog as an emotional outpouring. We've had a pretty knackering past few days, Jared's been ill, eventually diagnosed as the measles, which seemed quite tiring, and me and Joe have been admirable carers, anyone would have thought we were trained nurses, crazy Sufi lady even said we were as good as a real mother (yes!). We did lots of hotel changing around in Mcleod for him, first took him out of the damp room and into a ...

... from the loo I was given this back, after the daughter had had a serious chat with the toilet attendant!! Anyway, Vishisht is amazing like stepping back in time but by the end of today I really did feel blown away, exhausted.... mentally and physically by everything...like one of those moments in India when you just feel it is all unreal and happening to somebody else...where you suddenly ...

Note to self: don't fall asleep on a Himalayan bus. When you are woken by the desperate honking of the horn, your first thought is, "Oh my God, I'm going to DIE!" That is all.

... glaciers, over moraine and brown rocks, up slush-like snow. We felt the thin air with our quick breaths and slow walking. Nate and Kevin developed headaches. At the last glacier, Kevin and Nate walked hand-in-hand towards the pass. Struggling, Nate was the last one up the scree to the summit. I walked a few feet down, took his hand, and we finished the journey to the top of the pass, where we sat behind sheltering chortens eating Snicker bars.

... ne pridejo, da bi trekali, temvec se pridejo zakajati. No, da bom bolj natacna, tudi na trekinge hodijo. Tu namrec ponujajo enodnevne trekinge v hribe, kjer rastejo plantaze marihuane. Obiskovalci si tovrstno znamenitost tega kraja radi ogledajo, saj si lahko na plantazah sam naberes prvovrstno 'travo' in si jo tudi sam pripravis. Tako si lahko stoprocenten, da je kvaliteta res prvovrstna. Sami vam teh informacij ne moremo povsem potrditi, ker smo eni redkih ...

... overly fussy Larries , no need to mention names! In the end we got a couple of rooms in a hotel near where we first started to look (after we spent the hour looking all over Manli), typical. Anyway, there was a very noticeable drop in the temperature in Manali so after we dropped our bags I went out to the market and picket up a nice warm fleece jacket for the princely sum of 100RS, that about £1.20!!! There was a forest right next to the hotel we were ...

... I wondered what type of people were buried in the graves around me. Were they the typical sahibs and memsahibs of the Raj, who believed that the sun would never set on the Empire ? Were they humanists who hated colonialism and everything that it entailed ? Did they want to live here or were they on some dreaded posting ? Probably there were all these types of people here, now just dusty bones in overgrown tombs on a remote hillside in India that few people bother to visit. <br>