Wednesday 8th May 2013
We pulled into McLeod
Ganj (home of the Dali Lama and the Tibetan government in exile) early this
morning where two out of three of our band of merry women were struck down with
the Delhi belly by the time we had finished breakfast a third party was also struck down which was
sad times. After driving about for a while we found a guest house we were happy
with that was close to the main square we checked in and then went to explore
whilst the others retired to bed. Daisy and I walked all over town looking at
the markets and eating momos before going back to check on the sickies, they
were in much the same state and so we left them to it and went to find a cold
drink we sat on a rooftop and were swarmed by wasps, as we sat we thought of
options for the day first off we tried to go fishing but the lake was a two and
a half hour drive away so that was a no go next we wanted to hire a scooter and
whizz about but they only had kick-start ones so we left that as well, next we
tried to visit the astrologer but it was closed on Wednesday so at a loss of
what to do we found a café with some Wi-Fi and sat there and ate cake. We met a
girl who was on our bus and we all decided to take a walk to Bhagsu and to the
waterfall the walk was really pleasant in the sunshine in the mountains. We
could see the snow tipped peaks way up high the walk was fairly easy although
very steep and by the top we were all overheating and dreaming of swimming in
the waterfall, the water however was freezing it was pure melted snow so was
enough to dip your big toe whilst basking on a rock in the sun. We sat up there
people watching and day dreaming for a while before heading back down with the
plan of getting a drink. We go back into town and found a stall that did dreads
so I thought what the hell and sat there for the next three or four hours
having my hair pulled into a million knots. The girls had gone to get a drink
and brought some back and had a music lesson whilst the guys finished my hair
after which we were starving so after a check up on the sickies we headed for
some food. We ended up at this little café that was having an open mic night
and watched all the travellers and the many Tibetan owners get up and sing and
dance which was a laugh, then we attempted to walk Larka home to her hotel
which was extremely difficult as she didn’t remember what it was called or
where it was, eventually after walking up and down these ridiculous steps about
14 times and getting beautiful legs we found it and headed back to our place
where we had to wake up the staff to let us in, the only boy about spoke no
English and so I couldn’t get a mattress to sleep on so spent an amazing night
sleeping on the wooden floor.
Thursday 9th May
2013
We woke up this
morning hoping that the girls would be better but unfortunately it was not the
case and at day two they actually seemed to be worse. We had some breakfast and
then headed to a café that had Wi-Fi and cake and I spent the morning doing
some writing. On the way back to the hotel we stopped off at the pharmacy for
more drugs and advice for the invalids. Once we had checked on them we headed
once again to the astrologer but he was closed for lunch (I took this as a sign
not to go and see him) we decided instead to go and get a feed at a rooftop
café and ended up whiling away the afternoon with some other travellers. We
went back to check on the sickies and got sucked in watching some crap TV for a
while before we went out for some food after eating we went to watch a movie at
the Tibetan education centre accompanied
by delicious Tibetan pizza. It was a documentary film called “murder in the
snow” and was about a group of Tibetan refugees escaping into Nepal through the
Nangpa pass in 2006 when the Chinese border police opened fire on them, it
happened right next to the Mount Cho Oyu
basecamp in which there were several western mountaineers who captured the atrocity
on film. It was a hard watch and didn’t leave us in the mood for much but we
walked down to another café having an open mic night and had some desert whilst
we watched the music we cut the night short around 10.30pm to make sure I got a
mattress to sleep on although we did need to wake up the hotel manager as there
was only the no English speaking boy kicking about and I didn’t want to sleep
on the floor again.
Friday 10th May 2013
Some of the team
had recovered a little today and so joined us for some sightseeing we started
off in the complex which is the house
of the Tibetan government in exile as well as the home to the Dali Lama and the
temple. We walked all through the complex and had a look inside the beautifully
decorated temple which had loads of sweets and chocolates as tributes. We spun
the prayer wheels and people watched in the courtyard for a while before
heading into the museum which to me was the most interesting part it told the
story of the Chinese invasion as well as many personal stories from refugees
and many Tibetan views on the attempted eradication of the culture by the
Chinese there was also a display about self-immolation which was quite hard to
read especially as it came full with graphic pictures. After the museum we
headed across town to the Tibetan education centre where we took part in a
conversation class, it was mostly Tibetan monks but was open to anyone wanting
to practice English so there were people there from all over the world. We were
put into groups where we (as the English speakers) were the teachers, three
questions were written on the board and the students discussed their answers as
a group with us the teachers helping with any words they didn’t understand,
they then wrote their answers and we checked their sentence structure grammar
and spelling after the hour was up they then presented a question each to the
class to practice their speaking in front of a group. It was such a good
experience and all the students were so grateful for us volunteering our time.
I defiantly would have gone back but they didn’t hold classes over the weekend
and by Monday we were gone. After the class I decided to try a yoga class the
other girls opted out as they weren’t feeling up to it but it was a great class
running for 90mins with just three other pupils. After yoga feeling Zen but
sweaty I headed for the shower and then we headed for dinner after which we
went to the wine shop and brought a cheap bottle of vodka we took it into a
café and had some cheeky café mixes on the rooftop before heading into a hilarious
club we didn’t stay long as we were being swarmed on the dance floor which was
quite intense the power went out soon after and there was an immense lightning
storm which we watched by candle light.
Saturday 11th May 2013
Today was a day
of eating we started off with breakfast and soon after decided to go and eat
cake. We signed up for some more yoga and then headed into the café we hadn’t
been there long when the rain started it was a huge thunder and lightning storm
and the sky got so dark it was like it was night already although it was only
12pm. The storm knocked out the power which didn’t come back on until about
10.30pm that night but luckily where we were was one of the few places with a
generator because of the rain we decided to hold out there until the rain
stopped so ordered huge slices of spinach quiche and salad and then ate cake . Eventually
feeling stir crazy we headed back to the hotel at a run to get rain coats and
then headed back into town to try and book a jeep to Manali as the sickies
weren’t feeling up to riding ten hours on a bus. We found one for the same
price each as our bus from Delhi so wasn’t bad. after that was booked we
organised a cake to take with us to Manali for Claire’s birthday, by the time
we had done our chores and looked at a few market stalls it was time to head to
yoga, Alex came with me for her first ever yoga experience. In the evening we
had a big romantic dinner by candle light in a local Indian restaurant. Because
the power was still out we headed into a café and had a cup of tea by candle
light and listened to some music. We headed back to the hotel just as the power
came back on which was good as we didn’t have and candles.
Sunday 12th May 2013
This morning we
got up early to get our jeep to Manali we wanted to have breakfast in our local
but it wasn’t open until 8.30am much to our disappointment, we eventually
packed all our stuff into the car and headed onto the road. The drive was
really beautiful up and down through the mountain valleys we stopped a few
times for photos and to stretch our legs and at lunchtime stopped in this burnt
out looking shack with clay ovens in the front where we had a meal of dhal and
rice. We arrived into Manali at about 4pm and got the driver to take us
straight to old Manali where we found a cheap guest house we checked in and put
on some warmer clothes before taking a walk through the town later on we went
for a meal at a new café that served falafel and hummus much to mine and Ayla's
delight, we concluded the meal with a desert called sweet Jesus which was
chocolate filled fried dumplings in some sort of creamy sauce which I think was
mostly condensed milk. Feeling stuffed and freezing cold we trudged back up the
hill in the rain to crawl into warm beds and have craft time to make Claire
birthday cards.
Monday 13th May 2013
HAPPY BRTHDAY
CLAIRE! We woke up early this morning hoping to post our birthday cards under Claire’s
door but she was already up when we opened our door the sun was out in full
force and the skies were clear and blue. We gave Claire our cards and wished
her a happy birthday before getting ourselves set for the day we had a birthday
breakfast and then me and Alex visited a few travel agencies to compare prices
to paraglide. We found a place we were happy with and booked a taxi to pick us
up in 45mins we hung about waiting in nervous anticipation at 11.30am we jumped
into the flat bed back of a 4x4 to drive 30mins up the mountain to the base the
drive was really pretty and as the jeep had good suspension we didn’t get thrown
about to much in the back. At the adventure playground we were faced with three
options to get to our jump point we could take the rope way (which in winter is
the ski lift), get a mountain pony or walk. Ayla and I wanted to walk but the
many touts tried to dissuade us telling us how steep it was and that we would
never make it, that it would take hours etc. we stuck to our guns though and
whilst Alex headed up the mountain on a horse we followed behind on foot, we
struggled to keep up with the guide dragging the horse along and had to stop
for a few photo opportunities. We reached our jump point after about 30mins and
headed over there was no ground crew and seemingly no organisation as there
were people who had been waiting over two hours but they wanted us to jump
straight away, luckily that was when Claire and Daisy arrived by horse as the
ropeway was closed. Claire wanted to go first and so was put straight into a
harness and within minutes was flying. We then had to sit about for a while
which gave us enough time to become even more panicked about jumping especially
after seeing two people have bad take offs. Eventually it was my turn I was strapped in to
the most unsafe looking harness the chest harness was done up with a plastic
buckle and I wasn’t at all attached to the parachute just to the pilot and only
by two carbineers however I threw caution to the wind and started to run off the
side of the mountain as always I followed instruction to a tee and my legs were
still running as we flew out. As soon as we were actually in the air all I felt
was calm it was amazing to be so high up floating above the ground
I clicked off some pictures without actually looking so was glad when I
looked at them afterwards and there are quite a few really cool shots. My flight lasted the longest at
about 10mins which I think was mostly down to the fact that we keep getting
caught in wind gusts at one point we were so much higher than everyone else and
then suddenly we were so low the trees were just a metre or so under my feet.
The ride was incredible but somewhat terrifying due to the fact that my pilot
knew no English other the “shhiiit!” and “fuuuck!” not ideal when you are
floating above the earth in a flimsy harness with nothing but a nylon sheet
keeping you in the air! Once I landed (which was very bumpy and as usual
extremely ungraceful) I found Claire and we sat and waited for the others they
took about half an hour but then came down in quick succession (Alex almost
landed on top of the Xorbes and Daisy pretty much took out a bunch of tourists)
we regrouped and took some group photos before heading back to Manali in
another jeep, the car had no suspension so by the time we arrived we all felt a
bit car sick but that didn’t put us off lunch and soon we were in a local café
munching down (and bizarrely drawing pictures with crayons provided by the
restaurant as if we were five) after eating we all had a bit of an adrenaline
come down and so headed to the hotel to chill out for a few hours, in the late
afternoon we surprised Claire with a cake we had smuggled all the way form
McLeod Ganj. It was a hugely delicious carrot cake which only got a tiny bit
squashed in transit. After that we headed to New Manali by rickshaw to check
out the handmade woollen shawls and blankets we wondered about the main road
and eventually headed back to Old Manali unsuccessful in our shopping attempts.
Back closer to home proved a success and Claire and daisy got themselves a
blanket each which they wore to Claire’s birthday dinner. We ended the day with
some birthday cocktails and a spot of dancing in a local café.
Tuesday 14th May 2013
Today was a
quiet one we had wanted to do a hike up to the waterfall but we all slept late
and when we got up the weather wasn’t great. We spent a large part of the day
eating moving from breakfast to a café to lunch we did do a bit of research
into Rajasthan and sorted out our buss tickets back to Delhi so that was
positive. In the afternoon we walked the few kilometres to New Manali through a
section of forest on the way back we stopped to look at the state birds kept in
the aviary’s there to our surprise we stumbled across a cage containing a baby
bear, turns out she had been attacked by something and had a broken jaw some
hikers had found her and brought her to the centre as she was only a month or
so old the man looking after her said she was sad because she missed her mum
but that he would get her into good health and she would be released into a
national Forrest where she would be protected. The aviaries themselves had defiantly
seen better days there were two containing different pheasants and then one
with an blind eagle who only had one eye overall it wasn’t a nice place to
linger and so we kept on our way back to New Manali. Back at the hotel we chilled out for a while
before crossing the road for diner we were lured in by the sign advertising
banoffe pie so were disappointed when they didn’t actually have any. It was a
freezing cold night so we were pleased the hotel was having a bonfire we
chilled out there until the wood ran out and we headed to bed.
Wednesday 15th May 2013
Another day
without much substance we spent most of the day killing time before our
afternoon departure back to Delhi. Thankfully the sun had come out and so we soaked
it up in an outdoor café before having to head off. The owner of the hotel
drove us all to the bus station where we were on different buses we barely said
goodbye to Claire and daisy in the mad rush of finding our bus. Once on board
it became pretty clear our driver was a lunatic he drove wildly overtaking on
corners and generally sitting perilously close to the edge. It seemed we were
on a bus of Indian tourists a lot of whom began to feel carsick and soon enough
I was sitting directly beside across the aisle from and I front of people hurling into little plastic
bags thankfully there was a movie playing to take my mind off the grimness of
the situation somewhat. It was a Bollywood film with plenty of singing and
dancing and a pretty ridiculous storyline. None the less I enjoyed it and it
passed several hours. We topped for dinner and when we got back on the bus the
lights were off and it was time for sleep.
It’s hard to sleep when the driver is quite homicidal and even harder to
after he crashed into a car straight on going around a corner the worst part
being that he didn’t even stop to check if the people were ok he just continued
to drive with a completely cracked windscreen a smashed side window and no
right hand side lights or mirror. We protested that we should stop but no one
backed us up despite grumbling to themselves about how bad the driver was.
(later on our journey we spoke to a policeman investigating a hit and run
apparently it is very commonplace in India for vehicles to flee the scene) we
had an uneasy night’s sleep and woke up to the chaos that is Delhi
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