To get to Mcleod Ganj we had to take multiple buses from Manali, which, in total took an absolutely grueling 10 hours. Needless to say, spinal realignments will be in order when we get to Australia. We were fortunate to have had a well deserved break in a bus station. Here is what a normal day in an Indian bus station looks like. After arriving in Dharmasala we had to take a 3rd bus up a steep winding road to McLeod Ganj, home of the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Government in exile. We walked around found a hotel and settled in for 4 nights. One day we ventured out to the Dalai Lama's residence. On another day we hiked up to Triund, a 14km hike through two small villages, past a few chai stands, and around a few farms. The views were incredible all the way up and breathtaking once we got to the top! Along the way we stopped and had masala chai at one of the stands. At the top we made some Indian Mr. Noodles, watched some paragliders come out of the high Himalayas and enjoyed the company of a few Hindu mountain dogs. After our four night stay in McLeod Ganj we jumped on yet another seemingly endless bus ride to Amritsar, to visit the Golden Temple! Stay tuned!
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ShimlaFrom Delhi we had planned to head north to the Himalayan Mountains to do some trekking and site seeing. We spent half a day arranging a night train to take us to Kalka where we would catch a toy train that would take us the rest of the way up the steep slopes of the Himalayan foothills to Shimla. We were told that Shimla was a big Honeymoon destination for Indians and when we arrived we felt like the only foreign tourists around. Shimla was absolutely swamped with Indian tourists but it had quite a nice charm to it. The views from the main town were really nice and people weren’t constantly approaching us trying to sell us stuff unlike what we experienced in Delhi. Instead we had a lot of the Indian tourists approaching us to have their photos taken with us! It was a concept that seemed really odd at first but we quickly got used to it and started to have some good fun with it! We didn’t do much in Shimla, but what we did do turned out to be a lot of fun! We had planned to send a few parcels home and to Australia so we went to a local tailor (yes that’s correct, a tailor) to have our items to send sewn into cloth packages, which were then sealed at the seams using hot wax! It was a lot of fun to watch the tailor and his assistant whip up the packages! While looking for lunch one day we were stopped by and older gentleman in the main square, he wanted to know if we needed help finding something. At first we were really apprehensive and assumed he was up to something but as we continued to chat with him we learned that he was only a retired college professor looking for a good conversation. He introduced himself as Madan and he recommended a few different restaurants for us to eat at and then politely mentioned that we were more than welcome to join him for tea at a restaurant in the main square. So we took him up on his offer and accompanied him for tea in the main square. Our conversations went from understanding the meaning of love to scientific explanations of existence to poetry! Let’s be honest the only poetry we know is the stuff we learned on Sesame Street years ago! It was a lot of fun and it turned out that Madan was written a book entitled ‘Endearing Approach’ and it’s kind of hard to describe but we understand it as a collection of poems that attempt to shed some light on our purpose of existence…we think. Anyway he used poetry throughout his entire career to aid in teaching mathematics to high school and college students. In the end we felt privileged to have met him and we are trying to find his book to buy online. He says that the publisher produces very few copies so they are quickly sold through Amazon, but he also said that the Royal British Library has a copy of it. Maybe one day we’ll get a chance to read it. ManaliFrom Shimla we took a bone-rattling 10 hour bus ride to Manali where we had planned to do a little hiking. Unfortunately Manali was even higher in elevation than Shimla and so it got quite cold at night! We stayed up in Old Manali where most of the foreigners stay. We’ve been lugging all of our camping gear around with us and we wanted to use it one last time before we sent it Australia to lighten our traveling loads. We had heard of and read a few stories of hikers who went missing near Manali. We guessed that the majority of disappearances were drug related, with Manali being the weed capital so we got some info from the Mountaineering Institute and planned to hike up to the source of the Beas Kund, the huge river that flows right through Manali. All of the people we talked to said that the hike was safe, well-marked and easily doable without taking a local guide. We are really comfortable planning and going on our own overnight trips so we went for it. To get out of Manali we took a local bus headed north and hopped off in a small village. Everything was uphill from there! We walked up to a small local ski resort where you could go paragliding for less than $10. We passed on that because believe it or not we still value our lives and continued up towards Beas Kund. We had read that the beginning of the trail was a 4x4 only jeep track; well that was written back in 2009 and now there is basically a 2 lane highway where the jeep track used to be. Luckily the highway is closed to general traffic and open only to authorized construction vehicles so as we walked up the hill dump trucks would pass us on either on their way to pick up gravel or drop some off. We walked up for about two and a half hours and finally we reached a huge construction site. We felt defeated. Even though everyone kept telling us to continue up the road to find the Beas Kund trail we stood there at this huge construction site feeling like we should turn back. They were building a tunnel, someone told us, and when we asked them to point out the trail to Beas Kund or to the Dhundi campground everyone pointed in a different direction and no one spoke more than a few words of English. We stood there, right in the middle of a massive construction zone, debating our next move when a young Indian (he looked to be in his 20’s) appeared from the forest on a hillside about 300 meters up from the construction zone. At first we didn’t think much of it; he was probably just a local farmer coming down into town or something like that. As he approached us he said, “Oh, I thought you were part of my group.” He went on to explain that he was guiding a group of Indians up to Beas Kund and that he could help us find Dhundi camp, where his group was set up. He spoke fluent English and made certain we knew that he was a real guide; probably because he knew that there might be some apprehension on our side. He introduced himself as Mowgli and took us up to the camp. Later on we were invited over for dinner by Mowgli, Raghav and Prem; three of the guides who run an adventure company called January the 14th and who were organizing this trip up to Beas Kund. We were warmly welcomed by all the Indians in the group and we enjoyed an amazing dinner and some really groovy campfire song and dance! That night as we tried to sleep the temperatures dropped… and dropped some more! We were freezing and we tried everything to stay warm in the tent. We zipped our sleeping bags together to share body heat, we put on all of our clothes and we even used our sleeping bag liners for more insulation but nothing really worked. Feeling sick and groggy we decided that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to continue up towards Beas Kund where the elevation only got higher and the temperatures cooler. When we woke up and were having breakfast in the morning (all stuffed up and soar-throated) Mowgli and Rhagav came up to check on us and bring us a packed lunch for the day! Unfortunately we decided to turn back despite them offering us an extra sleeping bag and liner! We thought we would walk up a little ways to get some more views in another valley and then turn around for the day. When we were tried enough to call it a day we headed back towards the road we climbed up and hitch-hiked with a construction vehicle heading back down the mountain towards Manali. The next couple of days in Manali we tried to relax and enjoy a few of the sites around town before another perilous 10 hour bus journey to Mcleod Ganj, home of the Dalai Lama and Tibetan Government in exile!
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