Ambassador Resorts Manali

... has came to help - an MP3 player! The driver plugged a disk-on-key into the radio, and we had some 2G of music to "enjoy". 
By 2 in the night we had a surprise - snow on the road. I already saw some snow at Khardung La, but then it was probably some 900 meters, and it was a day, and it was sunny. Now the situation was much more grieve: night, cold, just the start of the mountains. It was pretty scaring, especially when the driver pulled up, and even ...

... painful. It was a minibus, and the three of us...being significantly larger than any other person in the bus, were assigned the three smallest seats...just behind the driver and the screaming baby. Ben, in an unlikely turn if fate, was awarded with the only FULLY reclining seat in the whole bus. With a little pharmaceutical help, he slept like a baby. Better than the screaming baby actually.... Hooper and i were left to balance precariously atop our ...

... don't know. Anyway, in it, there's this girl, and she lives on this other planet where they live in the forest. They drink out of rivers and live from plants and its good. And she has to go to the earth one day. I don't remember why. To get something? I don't know. Anyway. She comes down in Paris and she's so confused. By the noise, and the traffic and all of these people - and money, to use money - and you know, how things are ...

... it looked and sounded totally ludicrous, The quality of the actual production looked to be either 30 years old, or done by Rhesus Macete monkeys. The sound quality was piercing and difficult to deal with for the 3 + hours it was on for (it was split over two discs), but I watched it and tried to piece together the story line as their were no subtitles of course. It seemed to be about a man with an awful mustache and mullet who drives an auto rickshaw around with this kid that ...

... every direction, I wanted to get an early night and was slightly apprehensive about the 5000metre passes tomorrow, not so much risk of AMS (acute mountain sickness) as id been higher than this before or about the bike but the cold on my hands today had been so painful and I worried about frostbite (as once the tissue is damaged, if it is not treated immediately, then it becomes permanent as nerve damage will occur due to oxygen deprivation). I slept well.

... and traveled from there through the Middle East down into India then over to SE Asia and even across the sea to Indonesia and then back again. He had come back to Manali to live and work as a tatoo artist. There was a fair going on as well that I enjoyed.

... a bit by the rush of the river. Quiet at last. Then back to get what little sleep I could get. There are more half-feral dogs in Manali than people, it seems like, and with no program of sterilization or elimination, things are headed from bad to worse. One outbreak of rabies and a big problem could arise. The people who pass the anti-dog-poisoning laws do not realize that even though this seems cruel to some, there is a reason for it. The ...

Leh to Manali After our trip to Nubra Valley we decided to head to Manali in Himal Pradesch with our 3 new Irish travelling companions, Brendon, Claire and Fiona - aka. 'The Lads'! The trip was going to be our biggest endurance journey yet - a two day bus journey over the Himalaya's (including the world's second highest motorable pass) - Arrggghhh!!! Day 1 We had an early start heading off from Leh at 4.30am ...

The Ladakh festival is drawing to a close and some of the events are actually quite interesting although very funny. We attended an archery competition for locals where most of them could not hit the tiny target that had been set up. I proved that I can shoot a bit by actually firing 2 arrows, one of which nearly hit the target. We also saw a mock wedding complete with drunk uncles taking over the show and all the pomp and ceremony explained in ...

... a bit of indian cheese, cubed. No masala sauce, not spice - just plain food. It was spot-on - the chef was a good guy - he'd talk cricket to me and I'd pull up cricket statistics on the internet for him to check out. My last night in Shimla, watched TV - a fairly amusing film, plenty of awful acting and basic comedy moments - think it was called 'White Chicks' actually it was terrible but it appealed to my basic sense of humour - tomorrow back down to the heat - night...'